A Wonder of Stars

The list of celebrities who are involved in human rights causes is, thankfully, long. Most celebrities are affluent and have the flexibility and the resources to get involved to a degree that ordinary citizens cannot. Most of us go to jobs that have inflexible schedules and if we did have the flexibility to come and go as we pleased, we likely wouldn’t have the financial resources to support extended time away from work or home that some causes require. What is more, celebrities have significantly higher profiles than the average citizen, and their faces and personas give the causes they champion notoriety and therefore strength. We revere our celebrities. We crown them” stars” because they remind us that a human being can rise to uncommon heights. Many of us wish we could help others like they are able to help others, but we cannot, so we do what little we can, understand that every little bit helps, and thank our stars to take up the slack for the advancement of human rights.

Some critics pretend to know what motivates celebrities to lend themselves to human rights causes: that the causes are dumping grounds for the guilt that may attend lives of affluence and privilege; that the benevolence associated with taking up a cause somehow assuages or offsets a public perception of Hollywood hedonism; that having your name and face put to a cause is just another self-centered spotlight, another photo op, another PR stunt; or that it is simply another fashionable bauble on an evening gown or a tuxedo lapel. But what does motive matter if a star’s efforts in a cause make a positive difference in the lives of the downtrodden and dispossessed? Doesn’t selflessly helping less fortunate people advance civilization despite a subset of murky motives? Certainly, although it would make little sense to countermand humane endeavor by inhumane endeavor.

Celebrities make movies and TV programs and music that are often times violent in content. People are hurt, maimed, tortured, raped, murdered, and killed in incredibly realistic ways. I am a Vietnam combat veteran and I almost walked out of Saving Private Ryan because of the over-the-top, violent special effects in its first twenty minutes or so. The empirical data that indicates that media violence leads to violence and desensitization to violence in children is questionable at best. For every finding in support there is a finding in opposition. Apparently, the data tell researchers what they want to hear, so objectivity in studies is dubious. I single-parented my first daughter and I was not particularly vigilant during that time in my life about what we watched on TV or at the movies. I even rented a VCR and showed Alien at her ninth birthday party. She is thirty-seven-years old now, has a Master’s in Nursing, her own family, and is an upstanding and outstanding citizen so, apparently, media violence has had no harmful and lasting effect on her. But that is not to say that media violence can’t have a negative effect on some children. What about children who live in violent, abusive homes and also have a steady diet of media violence that, perhaps, desensitizes them to their own plight and positively reinforces the violent behavior that seems a rule in their homes? If so, is it possible that they might have a propensity to pass that violence on to others, including their own progeny, without forethought? We don’t need to scrounge around for a debatable “study” to use as a surrogate for our own rational minds. We know that we can’t answer that question with an absolute “yes” or a “no.” We also know that it is not a question to answer capriciously because the potential consequences for a knee-jerk “no” can be grave when you factor in a 2009 report from Child Help that states that “approximately 3.3 million child abuse reports and allegations were made involving an estimated 6 million children” and that “14 percent of prison inmates were abused as children.” You could argue those statistics, I’m sure, if you are inclined to see this as a numbers game. Nevertheless, the victims of violence in America are deprived of their human rights and often their lives. In fact, America has the highest prison population rate (2.3 million) in the world so, in a very real sense, we are all hostage to violence. We all must look over our shoulders and stay away from the shadows, and that kind of compulsory, intrusive vigilance deprives us of freedom of movement, place, and peace in this land that boasts its freedom. Is it probable, at least, to assume that some of that deprivation owes its origins, in part, to violence in media, media which owes its success, in large part, to its stars?

Off-loading the responsibility on parents who should not allow their children to watch violent media is a cliched excuse and a palliative that can’t soothe because all parents are not responsible enough to keep their children away from harmful things—like loaded guns, unhealthy foods, tobacco, drugs, alcohol, and profligate peers. The reason that we have laws is to protect ourselves from one another—and ourselves. Some states (e.g. Oregon Revised Statue 339.010) even have laws that require parents to make sure that their children attend school, and parents in violation can be cited into court. And, indeed, the Motion Picture Association of America has devised a motion picture rating system that warns parents that a film may contain scenes with sex, violence, substance abuse, profanity, and other mature content because the motion picture industry itself understands that these scenes may be harmful to children. Ironically, the movie industry’s own rating system tells us in no uncertain terms that media violence is harmful to youth. However, the rating system is unenforceable—as it should be— and was instituted primarily to ward off government censorship, so its effectiveness ostensibly relies on parents who are not always reliable. This same irony is laughably palpable on the Surgeon General’s warning on cigarette packages: “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy”—but light up while you're reading the warning. What is more, movies are no longer restricted to a theater where eons ago admittance was monitored by a uniformed usher. Movies these days are readily available at children’s delicate fingertips on devices that fit in shirt pockets. No parents required.

I am not naive enough to suggest that violent films be outlawed anymore than I am to suggest that cigarettes and alcohol should be outlawed. However, I wonder when celebrities glide among the starving and diseased masses in, say, Darfur, if they consider that blowing someone’s brains out in their next movie is perhaps also a cause of human rights deprivation—and what might happen if they took up that cause by refusing to promote violence in their principal work.

Save the Students!

Although faced with stiff opposition, the Federal Endangered Species Act of 1973 has saved the black-footed ferret, humpback whale, bald eagle, American alligator, grizzly bear, Florida manatee, California condor, and the grey wolf. Incontrovertible proof that political will, persistence, prioritizing, and adequate funding work. In 2012 alone, "U.S. federal and state governments spent just more than $1.7 billion to conserve endangered and threatened species."

Our school children are by no means faced with extinction, but there's little doubt that they are endangered. Just since the Sandy Hook School shooting in 2012, "there have been at least 239 school shootings nationwide. In those episodes, 438 people were shot, 138 of whom were killed."

In 2018, 17 students were killed and 14 were injured at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, and two students were killed and 18 were injured at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky on January 23.

By contrast, in 2018, one US soldier was killed and four were wounded in worn-torn Afghanistan. Although a number of factors contribute to the low casualty rate among US troops in Afghanistan, one factor must inarguably be that soldiers live and operate, where guns and bombs abound, under tight security.

Given that schools in America have routinely become the targets of disturbed individuals--typically young males--using a "variety" of guns, why aren't schools more tightly secured in much the same way that America's airports and government buildings (3 billion square feet of building space in over 900,000 structures) maintain layers of security at taxpayers’ expense? The Transportation Security Administration's 2018 budget is approximately $8 billion.

Add to that, that "the bipartisan budget was expected to include $716 billion for military spending in 2019," much of it used to fund wars in countries (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria) that pose no immediate threat to Americans at home, not to mention that the Pentagon . . . "had lost track of more than $800 million in construction projects." Difficult, then, to argue that money is an issue in protecting kids in the nation's schools by funding much the very same security measures in place at the nation's airports and government buildings. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be part of the conversation given the overwhelming focus on gun control and mental health issues--that may or may not deter school shooters--as the only solutions to a horrendous problem that plague America at this very moment.

No doubt that any gun control legislation will help protect students to some degree--but "some" is not enough. What is more, since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, "more than 100 gun control bills have . . . been introduced on Capitol Hill. All have failed." One hundred thirty-eight students and school staff, who are now dead, were waiting on lawmakers to protect them after Sandy Hook. Approximately 50.7 million students across the nation are waiting "today" for protection from the next school shooting. And, regretfully, there will be a "next." "Thoughts and prayers" and political high resolution optic proposals assuage--or dupe--much of the public and typically serve only the master.

True, the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban "reduced" the number of mass shooting deaths by 54.4 percent in a ten-year period, and, although the reduction was staggering and a welcome beginning to an evolution of sensible gun control, "reduction" has no meaning to the 81 students and staff who were killed during that same period and could have been saved had guns been stopped at the door. And then, tragically, the ban stopped automatically in 2004 because of the Sunset Clause and mass shooting deaths skyrocketed by 49.6 percent, from 81 to 163 student and staff deaths (colleges and universities included) between 2004 and 2018, lives that, again, could have been saved had guns been stopped at the door. How one reconciles the Sunset Clause that operates under desuetude, or obsolescence, is a grievous conundrum. Did the authors of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban conclude that school shootings in particular would become obsolete after ten years?

The outcry to once again ban assault weapons is no doubt justifiable, especially after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting where an assault rifle was used. However, banning assault rifles is only a small step in protecting students today given that 66 percent of the weapons used in mass shooting (1982 through 2012) were handguns, 16 percent were standard rifles and shotguns, while just 14 percent would qualify as assault weapons. Logically, then, in order to protect kids in schools today, all guns would have to be banned, and over 300 million guns in circulation today would have to be collected and destroyed. And that's just not going to happen.

Keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill is another strategy that will help keep school children safe, but past legislative efforts--The Gun Control Act of 1968, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, the NICS Improvement Amendment Act of 2007--intended to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally disturbed have been, for the most part, ineffective simply because each act, in itself, admits shortcomings that require enhancement by a following act, not to mention that the latest act, the NICS Improvement Amendment Act of 2007 was repealed and signed into law on February 28, 2017 by President Trump, thereby rendering the previous acts' mental illness clauses effectively impotent. Today, "[t]he reality is that, in most states, law-enforcement officials often can do nothing to prevent even an obviously troubled person from buying guns, let alone take steps to confiscate guns that the person might already own." At first glance, gun control law after control law that aims to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally disturbed points to an evolution of better and better gun control. However, when an act is repealed, the evolutionary chain is broken and "better" is not forthcoming. In that sense, gun control today is in an amoebic state.

Evolution, “a gradual development of something,” works through small incremental changes over long times. America, still young and very much the Wild West, will likely evolve out of a wholesale need for guns like Europe has. Until then--a long time, indeed--and while politicians are forever stuck on the spin cycle advocating, proposing, signing on, and voting for solutions--and then repealing--and while the public at-large hopes and prays, it's time "today" to protect the nation's school children by ensuring that guns are stopped at all entrances by metal detectors, scanners, trained security personnel, et. al. Many will argue that airport and government building security systems in schools is draconian, an extreme. But then so is the death of just one student. That, you cannot argue.