Lead posioning

Matt Dillon wore a cowboy hat and killed people. It seemed like every week the protagonist of the popular television series Gunsmoke shot somebody. Dead. Some weeks he had more than one victim, if victim is the right word. The killing was always justifiable. Usually it was in a gunfight and the other guy always drew first.

Miss Kitty had red hair and ran the saloon. She never showed her titties. Nor did her saloon girls. That is the way it was in those days. Not the 1870's, I mean the nineteen sixties and seventies. You could show violence on TV but not the human body. Matt beat people up, got into fights on a regular basis, and he had real good reasons to get angry. His clothes and his mouth were always clean. Nothing anyone did would make him swear. Oddly enough the bad guys who killed in cold blood didn't cuss either.

Seeing someone naked or hearing them use the Lord's name in vain was considered to be harmful, especially to children. It still is considered harmful by many people. So much so that such things are still restricted on public airways. But graphic depictions or murder, rape, assault, and mental cruelty were and are completely acceptable. The CBS network got fined $500,000 for allowing Janet Jackson's nipple to show for a few seconds during a Superbowl broadcast. Rather stiff considering the offending part could barely be seen.

Although the rules are not as strict as they once were the broadcast airwaves are still for the most part free of bad language and sex organs, but full of violence and mayhem. Carnage is pervasive, carnality is prohibited.

I have never understood this but I have learned that people are often unwilling to talk about subjects that bring up feelings of guilt and shame. It troubles me to think that those institutions who claim to be this country's moral compass are more offended by the occasional image of an areola than by nightly depictions of the death of one person at the hands of another.

OWL

Nov. 25, 2011