I Like Violence On Television

Well, not the type you see these days. I mean the Roadrunner and things like that. Cartoons where someone gets blown to bits only to reappear a few minutes later; animated characters who fall off cliffs, get run over by trains, are blown up and such. Farmer Brown used to blast away with his double-barreled shotgun blowing everyone else into the middle of next week. Never did us any harm and I don’t know anyone who blamed the cartoons for his life of crime.

What I really liked was the old “Untouchables” tv series. Elliot Ness and his men were battling crime in Chicago with machine guns blazing (on both sides), cars running into buildings and general mayhem. This, too, did not lead me into a life of crime and I wish the series would run again.

The Muppet Show has been described as possibly the most violent show on tv. When you look at it, you will see why. But all in fun and, again, nobody’s last words as they sat in the electric chair were, “Kermit The Frog told me to do this.”

Sometimes I wonder about all those studies that link real-life violence to that seen on tv. They are made by people who grew up watching all those coyotes slamming head-on into boulders, who watched cowboys wiping out Indians. I just think there are few things more soul-satisfying than watching a stagecoach full of bad guys, on fire, go over the edge of a two-hundred foot cliff.

Maybe my generation got our violence out watching other people portray it.