On the influence of old men, religion and AMC
by digby
I have a little meditation today on Maher and Islam and the FBI over at Salon today. An excerpt:
[O]ne has to wonder if a person who thinks that a book, however sacred and meaningful, can induce people to commit acts of violence, is equally concerned about other forms of influence? Does Bill Maher think that because television and movies glorify violence they should also be held responsible for many of the violent acts perpetrated here and around the world? After all, if Islam is responsible for the violence of a handful out of nearly two billion adherents you’d think Hollywood should be held responsible for the violence of a handful out of the billions of people who watch their violent programs, wouldn’t you?
There is a history of trying to hold the entertainment business liable for inspiring the criminal activities of its customers. There was the famous case of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers allegedly inspiring a long list of copy-cat crimes and a lawsuit which was rejected numerous times on both First Amendment and the grounds that the filmmakers did not make the film with the intention that its audience should commit violence. The music industry has been similarly accused of inspiring violence, one of the most notorious being the infamous case of Body Count’s 1992 album called Cop Killer, which resulted in a national hissy fit featuring politicians of both parties wringing their hands over what they saw as incitement to violence against the police. Under corporate pressure the group eventually pulled the song from the album and released it as a free single. There was even a lawsuit alleging that Judas Priest’s song “Better by you, better than me” contained subliminal messages that inspired a couple of teen-agers to commit suicide. (That one was dismissed when the judge found that the “message” was actually a mix-up in the studio.)
The only reason to bring all this moldy history up is simply to point out that people often seek to blame an outside influence for violent and destructive actions of individuals. And when it comes to our entertainment industry, which is clearly very violent, we have always found that individuals themselves are responsible.
Read on for more about a young man who watched Breaking Bad and got some bad ideas and how the FBI is also “influencing” young impressionable Muslims to break the law. And how the law treats them differently…