May 18, 2007

Addiction to Violence

Addiction to Violence

Steve Almond says, "We must begin to confront our addiction to violence."
(Steve Almond, "Our addiction to violence," Boston Globe, April 26, 2007) But he
ignores the addiction to psychiatry and to psychiatric drugs which we know are
the cause of violence among young people.
Without this factor his conclusion is flawed. Journalists remain mostly
unaware of the correlation between increased funding for psychiatry and violence
in this country.
e What is needed is an open discussion of psychiatric abuses, open to
persons other than lobbyists for the drug companies and spin doctor
psychiatrists. Journalism leaves its skepticism at home when writing about
psychiatry. It is time to bring it along.

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

Our addiction to violence
Boston Globe
By Steve Almond
April 26, 2007

LAST WEEK'S massacre at Virginia Tech, in which a student named Seung-Hui Cho
killed 32 people, then took his own life, set off a predictable frenzy of media
coverage. For a full week -- while bodies of presumably less divine origin piled
up in Iraq and elsewhere -- America threw itself an elaborate, televised wake.

This has become a national specialty in the age of perpetual news, a ritual
deeply satisfying to all involved: the handsome, anguished anchors, the
sponsors, we loyal viewers. It's that rare chance to experience our
rubbernecking as ennobling, to indulge in the histrionic pleasures of collective
shock.

But Cho's rampage came as no surprise to me. It was merely the latest
manifestation of a culture firmly dedicated to pornographic violence.
[...]
Steve Almond is the author of the forthcoming essay collection "(Not That You
Asked)," to be published in September

No comments: