Since Constitution Day(which was September 17th), Mark V. Tushnet has been blogging about both sides of the Second Amendment debate. See parts one, two, and three. Today Tushnet, author of Out Of Range: Why the Constitution Can’t End the Battle Over Guns, concludes his series. He leaves us with an important idea: perhaps gun policy debates are missing the point. Keep reading to see what he suggests.
The Constitution isn’t going to end our fights over guns because those fights are part of today’s culture wars. The position a person takes on gun rights and gun control says something about how that person sees himself or herself as part of the national community, and such self-understandings resist change. Supreme Court decisions and social science studies can’t push people from one way of understanding themselves into another way. (more…)
Share This
by Andy Griffiths
illustrations by Terry Denton
Feiwel and Friends 2007
(Pan Macmillan, AU 2006)
"From the author of The Day My Butt Went Psycho!"
This book is just screaming for that kind of attention.
Take one part Dr. Seuss, one part Edward Lear, place in a blender with a dash of Dav Pilkey and a bit of Cartoon Network juice, pulse until the blender begins to smoke and then breathe the
© Karen L. Syed
Okay, it may be a bit cliché now, but this seems to be the general theme in young adult fiction these days. Don't get me wrong, I love a good shoot 'em up, kill 'em dead adventure as much as the next grown up. But let's think about this. We've got drugs, we've got rape, we've got incest, and we've got murder. Sounds like your typical adult thriller movie, right? Well, unfortunately it is also what you get in a large portion of young adult books.
"Give them what they want!" This is what one author said to me not too long ago. Okay, fair enough, this is what the young kids are reading. Is that because they truly like it, or because it's what's available? Maybe we could give them something a little less vicious to "want."
Before anyone gets all riled up and puts together a mob to lynch me, hear me out. It's a fact of life. I get that, but is it possible that as adults we could put a little more care in what we are pushing into society? I have no children, and many say this gives me no right to say how anyone else's are raised, but I disagree. I can't help but wonder if we could change the likes and attitudes of the young and impressionable by changing what we offer them for consideration. I have often been the victim of someone else's less than adequate parenting. No I am not judging anyone. I know there are circumstances, but let's get real.
Instead of solving problems with fists and weapons, what if we actually taught them to use words and understanding.
Example: walking in Wal-Mart last week I watched a young boy, maybe fourteen, walking down an aisle. There were several people in the aisle and it was a bit crowded…this is relevant because he was carrying a book by a VERY popular author…in case anyone is wondering the young boy was Black. So anyway, he steps to the side to pass another boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen (white). A lady moves her cart, the younger boy bumps into the older boy. The older boy spins around, pushes the younger boy, and yells, "You better watch out, bitch, or I'll pop your ass."
The younger boy, puffs out his chest and snaps back, "You and whose mama?"
Okay. Anyone else see a problem with this? Where in the world was "Excuse me."
It was a casual bump that had all the makings of a gang riot. That is just how high the tension actually rose. Neither of these boys had a parent anywhere in the immediate area and the adults in the aisle simply went along their way with no notice.
Where did the actual breakdown of communication occur for these two strangers and why had neither of them been taught any manners? Okay, maybe they had, but obviously not with enough care.
Why am I going on about this? In my opinion, I think it has a lot to do with what they are being fed in the media and literary world. I scan the shelves at the local library and I see books written for kids with the most frightening themes. Teenage prostitutes, drug dealers, gang members, and even serial killers. How are the kids supposed learn tolerance and understanding when they are force fed violence from every angle.
Am I saying to stop writing these books? Of course not. But maybe I'm asking to temper them a bit, make the lesson a bit more apparent, that it isn't about the graphic violence and sex…yes, folks sex! Maybe we could find a way to feed these young minds some patience and forgiveness. I mean this is something that is out there for the very young. I am currently reading the first Lemony Snickets book, "A Bad Beginning." Yikees!
Drunkenness, child abuse, neglect, violent behavior, the list goes on. This is for young children? I know they are hugely popular and I respect that, but are these really the types of things we want young children to focus on?
Let's really think about this. Isn't there something we can do?
Rebecca OUP-US
Last Monday I featured an excerpt from Evan Stark’s new book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. It garnered some interesting conversation on the internet and so I thought I would round-up some of the sites you can look to for more interesting conversation and debate about domestic violence.
- Salon’s Broadsheet writes: “…the idea that it’s the victims who are to blame eclipses an ugly reality: Ending a violent relationship is dangerous, and sometimes women (realistically or not) don’t think they could survive it.”
(more…)
Share This
Evan Stark is a founder of one of the first shelters for abused women in the US and author of Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life . His book, which we have excerpted below, looks at the domestic violence and why law, policy and advocacy must shift their focus to emphasize how coercive control jeopardizes women’s freedom in everyday life.
In 1979, psychiatrist Alexandra Symonds, published an unusually candid article. When her profession dealt with families “where the main disturbance was violence against the wife or sweetheart,” she observed, they focused on how the women provoked their husbands, or how the women were getting satisfaction in some obscure way by being beaten. “The final proof of all this,” she wrote, “was invariably a learned statement such as ‘After all, why doesn’t she leave him?’” (more…)
Share This
According to an article entitled "Bible Under Fire in Hong Kong for Sexual, Violent Content" in the Christian Post, TELA (Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority), the media decency watchdog group has been flooded with at least 838 complaints against the Bible for its sexual and violent contents.
Protesters want the Bible reclassified as “indecent.” Local media say complaints refer to acts of violence, rape, incest and cannibalism. It would be illegal for minors under 18 years of age to purchase it the Bible would have to be wrapped with a statutory warning notice.
The complaints are thought to have sparked from an anonymous website, www.truthbible.net, which urged readers to press TELA to reclassify the Bible as an indecent publication. A column in the Chinese University's Student Press magazine may have sparked the debate when it was labeled as indecent by the Obscene Articles Tribunal because its survey asked readers if they ever fantasized about incest or bestiality.
The survey has sparked a storm of debate over social morality and freedom of speech in Hong Kong.
Great minds, as they say, think alike. I had no idea you'd written this post. Batta bing, eh?
This sounds like exactly what I needed two years ago when a teacher asked me "My guys are crazy about Captain Underpants, but they've read them all. What else is there like that?"Thanks for the review.