Opinion: Children see, and some children do

First published in The Madera Tribune, on Saturday, Jan. 12, 2013.

Here is how The Wall Street Journal describes a new television offering: “An ice pick impales a woman’s eye in the first episode of the new TV thriller, ‘The Following.’ If the sequence hadn’t been scaled back to meet the guidelines of a major broadcast network, the scene would have been grislier.”

If that makes you want to see that show, something may be wrong with you.

Why would a normal person want to watch a thing like that? I know people are interested in portrayals of violence. They like boxing, wrestling and cage fighting. They like football and ice hockey. They enjoy films about wars and videos about blowing things and people up. But boxing matches and war movies seem tame compared to the carnage advertised by makers of video games for children.