Is This What We’re Coming To?
Am I missing something, or has cannibalism come into vogue among the criminal classes of all ages?
It hasn’t been too many months since we wrote about an erstwhile New York police officer who planned to kidnap and eat a woman. And just recently it was that freak calling himself Fat Longpig up in Worcester, Massachusetts who set up a room in his house to fatten up, abuse and eat children a la the witch in Hansel and Gretel.
And now we hear about a 13-year-old and 14-year-old in Spokane, Washington who planned to kill the mother of the younger boy and eat her liver. This is no laughing matter.
Something is going on here.
One of the reasons we can’t simply laugh this off as a seemingly ridiculous teen fantasy is that the boys actually attacked this woman in her home with two knives and a sword, bending its handle in the process. She ended up in the hospital with head injuries and other wounds. The boys then stole the SUV belonging to the father of the 14-year-old, abandoned it after a hit-an-run accident and went in to burglarize and vandalize another residence. A state trooper arrested them when he spotted them running from the scene.
According to Spokane Count Sheriff”s Deputy Craig Chamberlain, the son of the attacked woman said he had been taking “blue pills” and would never do anything like the alleged crimes while sober.
Fine, kid, but not an excuse, though if you keep on like this, you may find you’ve destroyed your own liver.
What is going on, I suspect, is not a sudden yen for human flesh. Knowing nothing else about them at this point, I suspect these junior spree criminals are just bad actors with a bad future in front of them if something radical is not done to turn them around.
What bothers me is that their intention was to commit an anger-assertive crime, and with all of the fantasy video and television and Internet sources around now, I think these kids no longer have a grip on reality or its distinction from fantasy. Killing your mom and eating her liver sounds like a good idea.
Now, let’s keep one thing in mind. Normal, well-adjusted kids don’t suddenly get motivated to disembowel their moms after playing violent video games. You have to have the violent, angry, maladjusted predisposition to begin with. And do I think the first two cases of intended cannibalism I mentioned were motivated by this sort of thing? No, they were out and out predatory, sadistic pedophiles, both of whom were steeped in child pornography and perverted chat rooms.
But in this case, I would be willing to bet these two bad kids were motivated or influenced by the pop culture they took in. And you really have to start wondering, as far as teens, parents and marketers are concerned, where has good taste gone?
And I’m not trying to be funny.
It’s hard to get on the children for imitating television when we worship the adults that child play all their life as if 5 yr olds can’t do it – those special people. In my life I learn these things
– those who like tv have no life
– I dislike it
Too needy of a concept really
I don’t feel qualified to address the effect of fiction (violent TV/movies, video games, or Grimm brothers’ fairy tales) on kids, but I do think there is a real copy-cat phenomenon established in our culture over the last quarter century when it comes to real mass murder and planned mass murder.
The option of sharing your misery by taking other people out with you exists because these big media events become part of our collective consciousness. The killer at the Connecticut school was gunning for a higher total than the Colorado killer.
I remember relishing the black comedy of the movie “Heathers” a quarter century ago. I didn’t take the fictional murder and attempted mass murder seriously. It turns out that movie was prophetic, and it would hit too close to home when watched today.
Look, we know that children, including teens under a certain age of development, can’t completely foresee the consequences of their actions — so what parents are thinking letting their children under 18 play violent-filled video games or watch TV and movies with such violent content is just beyond me. And what is passing for PG13 these days is astounding. I recently saw a big movie rated PG13 that had a scene of the bad guy cutting out and eating the heart of someone. Are you kidding me?
There are only so many influences on kids, and only one of them is their parents — and only part of those parents have a brain, and the rest of what influences them is what they see on their smartphones and the wholesale slaughter, followed by gleeful victory that comprises most of the popular video games.
Sure, normal kids won’t go act it out, but c’mon, if this is all kids are seeing from the time they’re in grade school, it becomes the norm for them. If StarWars taught us nothing else, it taught us that kids want to imitate what they see. If parents haven’t carefully implanted a clear and good set of boundaries and empathy in their children BEFORE they let them watch this tripe, there’s going to be problems. For parents to stand around and act like this is a perfectly acceptable pastime fully endorses what they are seeing in the game. So why would they think it was that bad? Their good ol’ mom doesn’t even object to it! The nicest lady I know, who’d never harm a fly, lets her kid do it all he wants because she can’t fathom anything that came out of her not ending up just like her.
P.S. Thank you for trotting out “erstwhile” in the context of describing a cannibalistic policeman. That made my day. That was special.
As far as war violence – I think bush jr sent notes saying we were coming clear out – voice!
I agree. All the choices – violence popular all over television – road rage – it’s in the everyday of most. The adults who had solid upbringing for the most part can adjust – those who didn’t can be swayed bc lack of foundation. Violence to me is un evolved – woodsy – unintelligent. Why ever read a book? Waste of time for them. If they cannot use their voice. That’s the evolved essence of mankind.