Posted on 02/26/2014 4:15:32 AM PST by Kaslin
America's most popular cable news host is upset. "Marijuana use, video games and texting (are) creating major social problems," says Bill O'Reilly. "This is an epidemic that will lead to a weaker nation!"
Give me a break.
Crotchety old geezers always complain about "the kids." The Boston Globe frets about "Idle Trophy Kids." The New York Post asks if millennials are "The Worst Generation?" Older folks (my age) complain that young people spend so much time texting each other that they can't communicate. And because they spend hours playing violent video games, violence is up.
Bunk.
It's true that kids today play incredibly violent games like "Halo" and "Grand Theft Auto," but as the games' popularity increased (over the past 20 years), youth violence dropped 55 percent. In Japan, kids spend more time playing violent games, and there's even less violence. And in America, despite media hype, there are fewer school shootings now, not more.
Kids "can't communicate" because they text all the time? Recently, kids invented Facebook, YouTube, Firefox, Groupon, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and so on. They communicate something .
Inevitably, we older people misunderstand new ways young people do things -- we are frightened by the risks and oblivious to the benefits.
If O'Reilly had been on TV in the '50s, he would have ranted about comic books causing juvenile delinquency. The Senate actually held hearings in which the public was instructed that Superman "embodied sadistic fantasies ... injurious to children ... "
Today O'Reilly opines, "The cyberspace addiction rate among American children is off the charts ... they don't learn coping skills! ... In China, young people are encouraged to compete, be disciplined, live in the real world. Not here."
Even if that were true, what have Chinese young people invented lately? Any companies? What music and art did they compose?
O'Reilly worries about "America going to pot ... If you use any intoxicating agent, your goal is to leave reality. You're not satisfied with your current state of mind, you want to get high, buzzed, blasted, whatever."
I say, so what?
Some people like the sensation of getting "buzzed." Some are not satisfied with their current state of mind. Good. That's what gets people to learn new things.
Altering our minds is a most basic right. We alter our minds -- often for the better -- every time we read a book, fall in love or watch a TV show, including O'Reilly's.
But old people worry that young people are exposed to sexual imagery. It's true the Web brings pornography to children's computers, and that culture is often coarse. When Miley twerks, I cringe.
But again, where's the harm? As reporter Michael Moynihan will point out on my TV show this week, "Over the past 20 or so years, sex has been in everyone's face, yet teen pregnancy dropped by 50 percent."
I wish outraged oldsters remembered how we once laughed at those who were frightened by Elvis Presley.
In 1956, The New York Times said Elvis had "no discernable singing ability." The New York Daily News called his act "animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos." Even Frank Sinatra said his kind of music is "deplorable, a rancid, smelling aphrodisiac (that) fosters destructive relations in young people."
Somehow, America survived Elvis.
"Moral panics are one of our favorite things," says Moynihan. "If there's nothing to be panicked about, what do you write about?" Being outraged is part of the media circus.
The danger is that the outrage undermines perspective. It creates a false impression of how risky the present is, and it fuels unnecessary, freedom-killing regulations.
Old people always talk about the good old days. But the good old days were not so good. When I was young, more kids were intolerant, racist, sexist and homophobic. They had little knowledge of life beyond their neighborhoods. Today, thanks to the Web and other innovations, life is better, not worse.
Filthy Ageist!
Free republic has a pretty bad case of the cat disease.
Hope he’s still happy when the next generation thinks it’s only sensible to kill everyone over 75 because they are too expensive to support on ObamaCare. We are witnessing a future generation with no moral training. It won’t be pretty.
This debate was a surprise. Who’dathunk Stossel, who has reported fairly honestly on the deplorable state of education in the country, would contend that children are better off today than they were in the 50s? Better off HOW?—why, because they have IM and iPhones! BOR, for a change, was on the right side of this argument. But any mostly conscious adult should have reached the same conclusion. Maybe that description of libertarians is true: at best they’re childless conservatives.
Lately, I’ve taken to teasing my wife’s cats by mentioning all the delicious dishes I could make using them. It’s as simply as replacing the word “chicken” with “kitten”:
Kitten Noodle Soup
Kitten Pot Pie
Kitten Cacciatore
Oven Roasted Kitten w/Boiled New Potatoes
Kung Pao Kitten
etc.
This seems to alarm and disturb them - although they have not tried to kill me in my sleep... yet.
The anything goes attitude is where I run into problems libertarians. Heck, I know quite a few libertarians who have problems with it.
You’ve got to have societal norms or society collapses into mush. Its why we have a GOP desperately pandering to clearly liberal groups like GOP proud.
Pretty good piece by Stossel.
I believe he is 100% correct that older Americans decry the modern age because they simply don’t understand it. Numbers and facts. It’s the same old story from 20 years ago....40 years ago.....60 years ago....and beyond. New fangled inventions mess with the young peoples’ minds they think all while forgetting about how their elders thought the same of radio, cars, TV, surfing, and, computers. People communicate today more than they have at any point in human history. They do so in a way different than years past, but, they do it. With sex and violence blasted across the waves to them, they are doing less of both.
It’s rather incredible actually.
There’s a huge difference, though, between having societal norms, and having the Federal government enforce those norms. That is where libertarians and conservatives ought to be in agreement on many issues.
> Hope he’s still happy when the next generation thinks it’s only sensible to kill everyone over 75 because they are too expensive to support on ObamaCare. We are witnessing a future generation with no moral training. It won’t be pretty
I’m sure they will lower it to whatever the date that you are supposed to receive your first social security check, you know, to streamline the government’s expenditures and keep costs down.../s
While this may be a subjective topic, on the "violence" scale, "Halo" is generally much lower than the original "Doom" or even "Wolfenstein 3D."
How could you miss “kitty fricassee”?!
FELK . . . the other other white meat.
Disappointed in Stossel. Reading and smoking marijuana are not comparable activities, and the persistent sexual revolution has done nothing to help aborted babies or broken families.
True.
What about reading WHILE smoking marijuana?
Get off my lawn!!!
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