ANOTHER UNFIXABLE SOCIETAL ILL GETS HIGH-TECH
New York's Westchester County has (stupidly)
enlisted Spider-Man in its effort to prevent its youngsters from "cyberbullying."
Cyberbullying is the practice of doing all the crappy things kids have always done, except posting it on the Internet. Heck, Blogger, which is how I post this, is probably hosting several of these wonderful examples of youthful exuberance right now.
The article I read at
CBS Marketwatch.com used examples such as sites where the school's fattest girls were discussed, or showed videos of high school sexual encounters, or posted discussions of what a girl's sexual preferences might be.
Westchester County District Attorney Jeannine Pirro said these were all beyond the scope of prosecution, because, though disgusting, they were exercises in the First Amendment rights of the individuals.
Granted, Pirro has way more legal experience than I do -- a high school class in Constitutional Law and a college class in Commercial Law -- but, despite the best efforts of Reagan and Bush appointees to the Supreme Court, I believe there still is Constitutional case law that is presumed to give us privacy. This would include, I would think, discussions in a public forum about the sexual preferences of high school girls. Of course, Bush 2.2 will probably completely destroy the legal presumption of privacy, but that's not even the real issue here. For instance, while you can hide whether or not a girl will go to third base, you cannot hide whether she's a size 24.
And Westchester County is right to try to teach kids not to be cyberbullies, in the same way it's right to help the elderly cross the street. Society just won't buy it. Picking on people is not only Constitutionally protected, but it's institutionalized even among those who claim to be good people. Heck, count me first among those people, at least when I'm discussing the current occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.
But think about it. Every night, Jay Leno and David Letterman (and a slew of other, cruder, less-watched monologists) rip into public figures. And while I may think making fun of the president for his SAT score is legitimate, I find myself irritated when other public figures are picked upon for their relative unattractiveness or their girth. To some degree, when ethnic jokes stopped being okay, it made it more okay to make fun of fat chicks. And, of course, while you can't make fun of Italian-Americans or African-Americans, you can make fun of people from New Jersey or Arkansas. David Letterman is still telling Monica Lewinsky jokes. Jay Leno became the king of late night when he would tell OJ Simpson jokes when Letterman was conscientiously avoiding them. It proves that it's easy to get dragged into the gutter, too: Because Leno passed Letterman, Letterman felt compelled to start telling Simpson jokes. Because, you know, murder is funny.
Don't get me wrong. Political correctness can be just as bad, especially when it's fascistically applied, as so often happens. But I think it would be a good idea if we all looked at bullying in our society. Bullies are people who believe that because they're stronger, they should get what they want. In elementary school, it may just be lunch money. In high school, it may be date rape. In the real world, it might be imperialism, or slavery, or a protection racket. Heck, in the United States, we all own property because land was bullied away from its original inhabitants. The kings and queens of Europe own what they own because their ancestors bullied it from someone else. The common people of Europe don't own any of that because their ancestors had what they had bullied away. What I'm saying is that, at every level of our lives, we know how people use an advantage to immorally gain something from a weaker person. We've even institutionalized that into our economic system.
So, if our kids see all these behaviors and decide it's okay to pick on some skinny geek or rich fat kid, what's out there to prevent it?
Discussions like these remind me of Columbine High School. It's easy to say that those two boys shouldn't have gone into school and killed students and teachers. But they had been bullied to a breaking point. Yes, like Ron Artest, they should have been able to withstand what had been tossed their way. And, like Ron Artest, they are guilty of what they did. But if the Columbine High School jocks had not been such jerks, perhaps those two boys would not have felt the need to bring weapons into school.
Meanwhile, the only thing you can control in the world is you. So next time you're driving and force a car going too slow out of your lane, remember that you're part of the problem. The next time you yell at a customer service representative to get something from a service provider, remember that you're part of the problem. And the next time you use an election to impose your will on people who don't think like you do -- well, then you're part of the problem, too.
