Sometimes it seems like evil is winning

By Jeff Hage (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Friday, February 1, 2008

I'm getting older. I get that. It seems with every day I grow older I have ideas that are just a little more old-fashioned than yesterday.

I even believe in the good in this world and that good things can be found all around us.

I saw it this week in the smiling faces on stage at the Fergus Falls Middle School during the Snoball coronation ceremony as young women vied to be queen and macho guys took a shot at becoming king.

I saw it Wednesday in the friendly service I received at a convenience store in Ottertail City as they cooked me a pizza for a late afternoon lunch.I even saw the good of the world at Service Food this week where a teenager with just a few items in his arms asked an elderly woman behind him if she’d like his place in line. Didn’t think that happened anymore!

But the good of the world isn’t found on television, that's for sure.

When you watch CNN every morning as I do, and then catch a drama or two on network television at night, it becomes disturbingly obvious that it’s difficult to tell where the fictitious shows end and real life starts.

An old favorite, NBC’s Law and Order, in the face of the writer's strike I suppose, has in recent weeks repeatedly shown an episode that makes me feel queasy.

It's the one about a serial killer who tortures women in very heinous ways. It's the one where the female crime scene investigator actually breaks down and cries from the horror of the situation — and that was just a show.

If you turned on the news the past few weeks you heard stories about a man who killed and burned a young, pregnant Marine and buried her body in a shallow grave

Judging from the TV footage, the woman wasn’t even buried in a secluded location, but in the suspect’s backyard.

You can argue that the real-life situation was worse than the heinous acts of Law and Order.

What's real, and what's not?

Television shows and movies are full of violence.

I remember when the worst things we saw in movies were Jaws and The Towering Inferno. On TV, crime shows were so timid that Columbo could actually follow clues and solve a case.

Today we’re blowing up cities, schools, homes, cars, shooting, killing, maiming — you name it.

It's all in the name of entertainment. Maybe it’s a sign of reaching my mid 40s, but I have reached a point in my life where I am no longer entertained.

How have we come to this? How do we let this go on? Why do we let this stuff in our home?

I’m not advocating for a return of the "Waltons" and "Little House on the Prairie.” I still think the shows of the 50s were too simple and naive. They were fictitious, yes, but those shows did not fill our minds with images of hate, violence and unimaginable atrocities.

I know there's a wonderful world out there somewhere — even in the world of television.

I'm just afraid it's never going to survive.

Jeff Hage is the managing editor of The Daily Journal. E-mail him at jeff.hage@fergusfallsjournal.com.