Friday, January 4, 2013

"Some of the firearms that we've fallen in love with"

A few weeks ago, Wayne LaPierre, the foaming at the mouth executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, excoriated the entertainment industry for promoting violence and contributing to the Newton school shootings.
...I mean we have blood-soaked films out there, like “American Psycho,” “Natural Born Killers.” They’re aired like propaganda loops on Splatterdays and every single day.

1,000 music videos, and you all know this, portray life as a joke and they play murder -- portray murder as a way of life. And then they all have the nerve to call it entertainment. But is that what it really is? Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography? In a race to the bottom, many conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate, and offend every standard of civilized society, by bringing an even more toxic mix of reckless behavior, and criminal cruelty right into our homes. Every minute, every day, every hour of every single year.

A child growing up in America today witnesses 16,000 murders, and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18. And, throughout it all, too many in the national media, their corporate owners, and their stockholders act as silent enablers, if not complicit co-conspirators.
What has LaPierre's NRA been doing to help curb the culture of violence? Pimping that exact form of pornography in exhibits glorifying the firearms used in violent television shows and movies at its National Firearms Museum.

Media Matters for America has a video of the museum's curator boasting about an exhibit that includes the shotgun used by Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight and the shotgun used by Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. Or as the curator puts it, "some of the firearms that we've fallen in love with in our youth and our adulthood wishing that we too could be like our matinee idols."