Good morning, Lowell... Lowell C. Savage wrote:
> Good evening, Dave: > > You earlier wrote that you were going to "see if I [you, Dave] can make > the > point for you [me, Lowell]." You then proceeded to talk about writing > letters to Congress demanding that it become illegal to write zombie > stories. > I think you missed my point. Rather than presume that the educators are > crazy or irrational, try something even scarier on for size: they > (educators > and police) are perfectly sane and rational. In other words, they really > are afraid of this relatively harmless kid--and for good reason. > > Where does that logic take you? Well, it means that if this kid decides > he really wants to harm someone at the school, then he can do so with near > impunity. That is why the draconian steps are "necessary" the moment some > kid does, says, draws, or writes something that could be construed as > indicating any kind of desire to harm anyone. If you follow that logic, > then it means that the school administrators/teachers/staff and (police > and prosecutors) are all acutely aware that they are completely helpless > should ANYONE have some desire to harm the children (or any adults) in the > school. > > I don't care what your politics are: it's unacceptable that children > should > be so completely unprotected from a known danger (namely, violence). One > way or another, schools need to be made safer so that the sane, rational > reaction to future such incidents can be something closer to the sort of > "reasonable" response we would take to, say, a Steven King. When that > happens, then we will know that the adults in the school believe that they > are protected from whatever anyone might do and thus can conclude that the > children are also safe. Ah! I got your point that time, and to some degree, I agree with you. We need to look closely at ANY possible vector for violence against children or anything that encourages children to "act out" in a violent manner, no? However, if we are going to talk rationally about keeping our children safe from violence, how about we do something about the epidemic, out-of-control violence on television? Neuter the bastards that either sell the idea that violence is hip to our kids, or that attempt to ever suggest that violence is an acceptable means to resolving problems. If we are going after kids who write fiction that is prone to violence, we should at least take a good shot at the idiots on television who popularize violence to begin with. Dave -- Dave Laird ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) The Used Kharma Lot Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 11/24/2004 Usenet news server : news://news.kharma.net Fortune Random Thought For the Minute Rule of Creative Research: (1) Never draw what you can copy. (2) Never copy what you can trace. (3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down. _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [email protected] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
