CNN, You Tube and Crazy People

Saturday morning CNN seems like an effort on that network’s part to fill time with stories that are slightly above, no, similar to cartoons… except the cartoons were usually funny. Today we were treated to a sight downloaded from You Tube, ( a really reliable source for everything nutty going on in the lives of people who are trying to create a life for themselves), the sight of a young man firing a revolver at a laptop, not once but seven or so times. He did this despicable deed to teach his daughter a lesson, “She should not disrespect her mother on Facebook.” It shows the man sitting cooly in a chair, then the laptop on the ground, and then the steel revolver. He fires once, into the heart of the laptop, and another, and another, then one for the mother who was disrespected, and then a few more just to show that he emptied his clip on that worthless, evil, disrespectful machine. And the daughter was to pay for a new laptop, and the bullets. All this to teach her a lesson about respect.

I think one lesson she learned was that her father was crazy, and in so far as the mother thought what the father was doing was okay, probably the mother was crazy too. I think the world who saw this spectacle thought the same. And I wonder about CNN (and they are not alone) who brings this stuff to the foreground, and they say it went viral. Does it go viral before CNN and the other cable news stations put it out, or after it has been played dozens of times on the networks? They do this with political stories: Romney not caring about the poor, the $10,000 bet. There was a hate crime attack on the young man in Atlanta, and there is concern that such crime may be emulated by a series of one-up-manship type episodes from gangs around the country (world) all for You Tube and the cable news.

The commentary on this type of video is always done with a wink, like this is strange, but so what. It takes all types. If they are determined to bring these “cartoons” to the screen, into living rooms and breakfast nooks across the world, why not make a legitimate point about the idiot who is firing the gun -like- “Whatever happened to reasonable conversation among family members?” or “Talk to your kids.”  or even “Seek counseling before you go off the deep end.”

Most of all, don’t put a link to it on your website. People do not need that kind of encouragement.