Violence Tax
Sometimes I feel I'm living in a completely different world than the other people in this country. Have I written about this before? I think there should be a tax on Entertainment companies that show excess violence and destruction on TV and in movies.
It's very simple: I have never seen anyone die in real life. I've never fired a handgun. I've only fired a rifle once in my life. I have never seen anyone shot in real life. I've never seen anyone stabbed, strangled, blown up or otherwise maimed.
I don't think most people have. Yet, TV is full of this crap. Janet Jackson's left tit seems to be the ultimate in decadence in American society, yet CSI is the number one rated show. The show is all about these gruesome murders, yet there's no one saying this is a *bad* thing. Why? Have you just channel surfed? The other day (I think it was Christmas) I was amazed at the number of shootings and death scenes I was seeing just by channel flipping. *click* "blam, blam, blam!", *click*, "blam, blam!.
Sorry if my extreme liberal tendencies are coming out but they need to tax the shit out of this. It'd be very fair. Just $10 a death on TV, $5 for any major wounds, $1 per gun shot. You want to show violent television? Great. Pay Up. How many killings are shown per day on all the TV channels combined? I bet thousands. Per day. There was a total of 450 killings in Chicago in all of 2004, yet if you live in Chicago and watch TV, you probably saw ten times as many on television. Hell, one Action Movie will get you a few dozen. And that's just one Friday night.
You know, the same goes for all those freakin' War Video Games. Weee! Isn't this fun! Blam, blam! I just shot his head off! Wow! I mean, in Doom you were killing monsters from hell with kill-o-zap rays, but in these later games it's much more realistic. Is this a good thing?
The FCC should regulate the hell out of all this, just like they do with sex.
Violence is bad, even simulated violence. Why doesn't anyone see this?
-Russ