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Politicize? Seriously? POLITICIZE?!?

2/22/2018

A lengthy screed about the latest shooting.

by Meg Langford

Among others. Among many, many others:

A fifteen year old boy is dead, shot down as his friends looked on in horror, because a seventeen year old with a gun decided that was how it was going to be. The gun gave him the power to take life, and he did it.   On the edges of America, both physically and literally, death was in the air that day.

And speaking of things floating in the air . . .

There is a word out there now, floating right in front of us, lurking on the edges of our brains, hovering unspoken in the air. It is on the lips of private citizens and public officials, of politicians and pundits. Everybody is afraid to say it.

That word is: Etymology. That’s right. Etymology. Admit it. You want to say it, but you are afraid.   So afraid, am I right?

For those of you who may be a bit foggy about the definition, Etymology is, “The study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history.” (Not to be confused with entomology, by the way, which is the study of bugs.) I can see that some of you are wondering how and why “etymology” might hold the key to changing America after yet another ghastly school shooting.   Here is why.   And I am only going to say it once, so listen up: WE CANNOT CHANGE ANYTHING WITHOUT TRULY COMMUNICATING, AND PEOPLE DON’T SEEM TO KNOW WHAT THE FUCK WORDS ACTUALLY MEAN ANY MORE.   It seems that virtually every great mind that has graced this sweet, dirty Earth of ours has had something to say about the power of words:
“Better than a thousand words is one word that brings peace.” -The Buddha

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used in mankind.” -Rudyard Kipling

“We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.”    -Abigail Adams, wife of the second President of the United States, John Adams.

“It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and broken promises.”       -Chief Joseph, leader of the Nez Perce tribe who, according to his doctor, died of a broken heart after being exiled from his land.

As far back as the late 1700’s, that august man of letters, Noah Webster, father of the famous dictionary that we all grew up with, (and had such fond memories of, from when we asked a question and our parents shouted “Look it up!”) had much to say about the importance of the true meaning of words. In fact, when asked by the notable colleagues of his day why he chose to spend several decades of his adult life laboriously compiling a 70,000 word dictionary--the first of its kind, really--Noah Webster was crystal clear in his reply: “WE CANNOT CHANGE ANYTHING WITHOUT TRULY COMMUNICATING, AND PEOPLE DON’T SEEM TO KNOW WHAT THE FUCK WORDS ACTUALLY MEAN ANY MORE.”

And why should we be surprised that people don’t know what… well, you know what they don’t know. I just said it twice. Words and stuff.   But in a world where governments and their military branches and their police forces have created bone-chilling lists of euphemisms to describe some of the most horrific behaviors in history, is it any surprise that “politicize” seems mild by comparison. Just look at this list of words that have been euphemistically bastardized, etymologically speaking: Terminological Inexactitude, Plausible Deniability, Paradiastole, Conversion Therapy, Strategic Ignorance, Collateral Damage, Enhanced Interrogation, Terminate with Extreme Prejudice, Ethnic Cleansing, Corrective Rape, and Final Solution.

Etymology may seem to be an obscure reach for approaching something as overwhelming as school shooting, but it isn’t. Not really. Because we only need to look at the origin and meaning (the etymology) of the word “politicize” to realize that it is not the dirty word that Republicans are making it out to be. “Politicize” means, of course, to make something political. And politics, contrary to popular belief, is one of the nobler concepts conceived of by the mind of humans. “Politics” is defined as, quite simply “of, for, or relating to citizens”. It has a long and noble history, deriving from the Latin “politicus” via the Greek “politikus”. To put it quite simply, the word “politicize” means “to cause an activity to become political in character.”
So where is the problem?

Seventeen human beings are shot down, and while it could not be more personal for those who loved and cherished the dead, what could be a better way to honor their memory than by taking it from the level of a personal loss to a public one, and strategizing in the public forum about how we might prevent this from happening again? Of course this matter must become political.   Nothing could be more obvious. And it must become political immediately.

Oh, and for those politicians whose second response, after nattering on some hollow clichés about the victims, is to thank the first responders--well, the kindest thing you could do for those first responders is to design and implement policies which would minimize the number of times that police, EMTS, firemen, doctors, and nurses have to put their hands on children who are bleeding to death. Within the first few hours after a shooting, there is absolutely no reason that we cannot pray AND thank the first responders AND start talking about prevention. Seriously, friends, any politician who can stare at pictures of the dead bodies of children, and then say we should NOT discuss preventative POLICIES (POLITICS), because it is just “too soon” ought to have their mouths washed out with Tide Pods.

The pundits are understandably furious at the politicians, and speaking with a noticeably unvarnished eloquence. Jeffrey C. Billman, of Indyweek, articulates the popular rage: lf there’s one phrase I hate more than any other, it’s that we shouldn’t “politicize a tragedy,” or that “it’s too soon to talk about gun control.” Right now the whole country—the whole world—is focused on this dreadful scene. Seventeen dead. At least a dozen more wounded, some with life-threatening injuries. An entire school, and an entire community, dealing with the aftermath. There’s nothing special about Parkland, in the sense that there’s no reason something like this couldn’t happen anywhere. And if you want to effect change, if you want to at least try to make this school shooting the last school shooting, now is the time to act, to press your case, while everyone is thinking about it. There’s a reason the NRA and other gun groups want to perpetually put this conversation off. But there needs to come a reckoning, and it needs to come now. So yeah, you’re goddamn right I’m going to politicize this tragedy. I desperately hope that you will, too. That’s the only way we can hope to stop it from happening again and again and again and again.

And Esquire Magazine’s Dave Holmes captures the true meaning of waiting to act in his incident autopsy:We are always told not to politicize. To honor the memory of the recently fallen, to respect the families whose children won’t be coming home from school, by doing nothing. So let me say this as clearly as possible: Doing nothing is also a political act.

Waiting until you are more sanguine about another pile of dead children is a political act. Our country leads the world in this epidemic, and everything every single one of us does about it from right now until the moment we put our heads on our pillows tonight is a political act. There, just now, whatever you just did, you politicized it.

These teenagers, these beautiful, bewildering teenagers who just yesterday sat barricaded in their classrooms, hearing their friends get murdered, and searching for le emoji juste to express their emotions because what else were they to do, were doing their jobs.

God dammit, when are we going to start doing ours?

And in case anybody (read: NRA and its evil minions) is wondering precisely what is our parenting task, when faced with these mass shootings, Mr. Holmes sums that up with a chilling succinctness as well: “ Our job, as adults, as the caretakers and stewards of the world they are actively trying to figure out, is to keep them from getting shot the fuck up in the middle of algebra.”

And now, a few words for the Conservatives out there: you’ve read this far. Thank you. But since you have this thing about politicizing, let’s stop for a moment and talk about the biggest politicizer of all, when it comes to gun issues. I am referring, of course, to Harlon Carter. Harlon Carter is the seventeen year old killer that I described in the first paragraph of this blog. Harlon Carter was not only the capo di tutti capi of the NRA during the 1970’s and 80’s, he was also the vigilante kid who gunned down a fifteen year old Latino kid because the kid would not come to Carter’s house at gunpoint to be questioned about some imagined slight.

An archived New York Times article offers us a glimpse of the murder and subsequent trial:  According to the trial transcript, Ramon Casiano was killed in the afternoon of March 3, 1931, shortly after young Carter returned home from school to find his mother, Ila, upset. Three youths had been loitering outside all afternoon, Mrs. Carter testified that she told her son, and she believed that they might know something about the theft of the Carters' automobile three weeks before.

Telling his mother, according to his own testimony, that he would ''see if I could not get the boys to come to the house and talk to her,'' the son picked up his shotgun and walked out of the house. What happened next was the subject of dispute, but within minutes Ramon Casiano lay dying, a two-inch shotgun wound in the right side of his chest. On March 21, 1931, young Carter was indicted by a Laredo grand jury on charges of murder with malice aforethought.

The chief witness for the prosecution was 12-year-old Salvador Pena,who testified that he was returning with Ramon and two others from a nearby swimming hole when ''the American,'' as he called Mr. Carter, ''asked us to go up to his house.''  'We asked him why,'' Salvador remembered, ''and he said, 'Oh, go to my house.' '' According to other witnesses, Ramon, the oldest and largest of the four boys, replied, ''Hell, no, we won't go to your house and you can't make us.''

According to the transcript, 12-year-old Salvador testified: ''Ramon took out his knife and asked him, 'Do you want to fight me?' The American began to curse and Ramon also cursed back at him. Then the American aimed at Ramon, towards the breast or bosom. Ramon told him not to do it, and put aside the rifle with his hand. Then Ramon stood about half a pace backwards and laughed. Then the American asked him if he thought that he was not going to use the rifle, and fired at him.''

Harlan was later charged with murder. But given that this was Texas, in the first part of the last century, are we surprised that after nearly two years of drama, all charges against Harlan were dismissed? Fast forward several decades, to when the Justice Department issued a report following an investigation enumerating “various allegations” of wrongdoing by Carter, including one “investigation into the disappearance of 50,000 rounds of government ammunition, which Carter stole, with the sole intent of converting this property to his own use.” The missing ammo was never found, though, so charges were never filed. Fast forward to the 1970’s, when Harlan Carter essentially took over the NRA in a bloodless coup, and transformed it from the useful hunting club and gun training organization that it had been since the Civil War, into the lobbying juggernaut we have come to fear and hate.

So here are the facts: when it comes to “politicizing”, since Conservatives seem to find that such an abhorrent word this week, well, we need to point out that the first person to politicize guns was this former delinquent who killed another kid--and, it is fairly clear, got away scott free only because he was a white boy living in a border town in 1931 Texas, and that victim happened to be dark skinned. It was Harlon Carter who took the NRA from being a reasonable, middle-of-the-road hunting club and instruction type of organization, to one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the county. NOTE TO CONSERVATIVES: This is called “politicizing.”

But if I may return to my original point--when it comes to school shootings, there is nothing basically wrong with politicizing an issue.

The personal becomes public.
And while it may seem a bit inappropriate or obtrusive at times, the bald fact is, most family members mourning the death of a loved would insist that the private became public, if it means that the victim did not die in vain.

The personal becomes public.

Hell, Trump did it himself just a couple of weeks before the Florida school shooting, when he stopped his own State of the Union speech to introduce the parents of a child killed by MS-13. And do you know what?   That particular act of politicizing wasn’t a bad one. MS-13 gang members are among the most violent criminals in the country, and if Trump wants to make some point about how illegal immigrants who commit murder should be deported, I am with him 100%. (This, of course, was not his point, nor was it his goal. He has demonstrated his goal regarding undocumented immigrants, in the days following that speech.)

My point is this: not only is it wise strategy to politicize--for the private to become public--it is imperative. Anybody who survived first year Latin or a basic rhet crit class (“ethos, pathos, logos”) knows that without an appeal to the emotions, a speech full of data and proof and statistics will bore its listeners to tears. And no change will ever follow. Nothing. Never.

For those of us trying to keep some logic and mental discipline in the post-Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, it is worth noting that Republicans are indulging in that most base of rhetorical fallacies, the False Dichotomy.   Thousands of citizens--parents, protesters, and persons from both political parties--are calling for a ban on the AR-15.   And how do Republicans in Congress respond? They invoke the sacredness of the Second Amendment. This is absurd. Almost nobody is calling for the unilateral banning of guns; the Second Amendment is not threatened. The right of citizens to keep and bear arms is not in play. Just semi-automatic weapons. And while there are some peaceful souls, who will not rest until nobody owns a gun, the fact that the GOP will not even mention the possibility of banning the AR-15 in the days following this latest shooting shows that they are not even willing to consider peaceful compromise. They are sending dog whistles to the alt-right, even as they take millions from the NRA.

Marco Rubio, for example, Florida’s Republican Senator. His response following this tragedy was to talk about the preciousness of the Second Amendment: "And I happen to oftentimes point to the Second Amendment and say it's the Second Amendment, right after free speech, which tells you how important it was to those who wrote those words." And not surprisingly, Rubio stonewalled and stammered when asked by a survivor of the Stonemanl shooting if he would now refuse NRA campaign contributions.

And governor of Florida Rick Scott has earned himself an impressive “A+” from the National Rifle Association’s grading system, because Scott has rolled back gun regulations so that there are fewer of them in his state, and opposed background checks, among other pro-NRA rabidities.

And as for Ted Cruz, Republican senator for gun totin’ Texas, the ferret-faced Frank Burns of Congress--can anybody forget when Cruz, in one of his creepy campaign ads, wrapped some bacon in foil on the end of his AR-15 and cooked it by firing the weapon repeatedly? Cruz has stated repeatedly that he does not want semi-automatic weapons ban, citing the sanctity of the Second Amendment.
Well, I have news for you, Mr. Cruz. A higher authority than you has spoken. Nobody less than that legendary conservative Justice speaking for the Supreme Court of the United States of America has come out in favor of assorted forms of gun control. Specifically, Justice Scalia had this to say: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”   And Scalia also said this: “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

So now, Ted, you can go back to being a butt plug in a suit.

And by the way, I do not mean that as metaphorically as it may sound. I truly believe he is that thing, stopping a torrent of shit from flowing out of the toxic body politic, as it surely would, if Ted Cruz were not there to stonewall and obfuscate.

Let’s face it, these talking orifices would love it if we would just all mourn privately until the matter is forgotten, and the Florida shooting headlines replaced by some ghastly story about our country’s latest embarrassment.

But it would appear that the students who had to witness their friends and teachers die are not going to let this matter die.   Emma Gonzales and Cameron Lasky, for example, are clearly going to set the world on fire, and they are going to start by doing everything in their power to start with changing the gun laws. Their heartfelt speeches have gone viral--and folks, their articulate passion is the reason “viral” was invented.

And the reason that this matter needs to be “politicized”--as in, the personal tragedy becomes out public shame--is because of the following list: none of you reading this know who the hell these people are, nor do their names alter your mood, impact your day, or impel you to action: Jack Beaton.   Sonny Melton.   Kelly Brewster. Shannon Johnson. Jonathan Blunk. Alex Teves. Matthew Robert McQuinn.   Corey Tyler DePooter.   Who are these people? Who cares? In a nutshell--we’ve all forgotten about them, and moved on. Let’s not let that happen in Florida. Let’s not let that happen ever again.    This longform is not meant to take on the issue of gun control in its entirety; the debate is already playing out in the public forum.

FUN UPDATE: There is a President’s Day Sale on Bumpstocks! Can you say Lollapalooza?

There is a movement out now called “Politicize my Death,” and it is a stroke of genius, given the circumstances. It essentially is a petition, or a database, if you will, in which people can agree, before they are gunned down, in the increasingly probable event that they will be gunned down, that their death is to be used to “politicize” the issue of gun control, as soon as the names of the dead are actually known … because in a Trump-heated world whose climate has created a daily tsunami of headlines, if you don’t politicize the names and lives of the dead while the corpse is still warm, the world will have turned its attention to the next drama: the next terrifyingly iminent shooting. But where will it be? How many victims? Will someone you know be gunned down while studying calculus or gerunds?

I gotta tell you, sometimes kids and their phones make me crazy. I mean, do they never look up from these things? But I am not against them owning them and using them, and the Florida shooting indicated why: many of us would never have understood, on a truly visceral level, the terror and the tragedy of what happened in that school that day, had it not been for cell phones.   And let me warn you, Mr. Trump, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Scott, Mr. Cruz, et al. . .one day, and very soon, I can guarantee you this: some kid with a smartphone is going to crawl over to his dying classmate, and that classmate, riddled with bullets and drawing their last breath, will sputter through their blood and their tears: “If any grown-up sees this ...why did you let this happen?”

And that will go viral.

And then, sirs, your political careers will be over.   Is that politicized enough for you?

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”       -Martin Luther King

It is in our lives, and not our words, that our religion must be read.” -Thomas Jefferson

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”      -Robin Williams

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THE LEADER: HANNIBAL AD PORTAS

2/5/2018

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by Meg Langford

Civilization as we know it is going to end in the not-too-distant future.   You can take that to the bank.

And there is one person, more than anyone else, who will be responsible for this. He will influence millions of people with his words and his actions. He will use his great white, blonde, Aryan superiority attitude to make everyone who does not look like him feel inferior. He has wielded great power for some time, and no matter how outrageous his gaffes and ghastly pronouncements, know this: his followers will swell in numbers. When one poor soul saw fit to criticize this Caligulesque king, that critic was threatened with assassination by an ardent fan of The Leader.

He travels to foreign countries, and humiliates the image of America and Americans when he does so.

He is an uber misogynist to women.

He destroys things with abandon.

His display of wealth is garish and decadent.

He loves to ridicule and belittle other human beings.

He is cruel to animals.

And he is always hawking his wares and his wiles, his brand name plastered all over everything he can think of.

Trust me, he is the reason the world will end.    He truly is the antiChrist.

But by now you may have guessed it:

I am talking about Logan Paul.

(Hyperbole? Of course.   But Mr. Paul needs to learn what it is like to be the object, nay the victim, of over-the-top behavior. Subtlety is dead in the world. And nuance has stage 4 cancer.)

YouTube star and mocker of suicides--wouldn’t you love to be sitting next to him during a screening of Sophie’s Choice?--Logan Paul represents everything that is wrong with America.   In a unique twist that will baffle even the most respected medical journals, Logan Paul, in a single ten minute video, manages to be both the disease and the symptom.

Now, before you tune out, because you think I am mad, Mad You Say, to announce that Logan Paul will bring about the end of civilization as we know it, just bear with me a moment.

SPOILER: I misspoke. Logan Paul will not bring about the end of civilization as we know it.   He already has. (And by the way, it’s worth noting that the subtext here should include Logan Paul’s brother, Jake Paul. They often commit their own individual pranks, but they are also known for collaborating. And both of these pinheads are arrogant, hurtful, dangerous, and oblivious.)

TO ANSWER YOUR OBVIOUS QUESTION: Why wasn’t the build-up about Donald Trump?   That’s easy. Trump will do a hell of a lot of damage, yes.   But Donald Trump is (if only in dog years) a grown-up, and hence, he is being watched carefully by millions of grown-ups.

Logan Paul, however, is (or was for years, until five minutes ago) flying dangerously under the radar. In point of fact, hardly anybody whose acne has finally cleared up even knew who Logan Paul was, until the beginning of 2018, when he thought it would be a really cool plan to trek into Japan’s infamous, tragic, and heartbreakingly beautiful “suicide forest”, where he then found an actual hanging dead body. A fresh one, no less. Minutes later, Logan Paul was cackling.   Yeah, yeah, it was a nervous reaction, I get it. But he had all the time in the world, literally, to ponder whether or not he should upload it to the world wide web. And given that the twenty-two year old has a lawyer, an agent, a manager, many close friends, and two parent figures, you would think he would have thought better of posting the whole ugly mess.

Logan Paul tipped his hand more than once in his recent Good Morning America interview. When asked what he was planning before the video blew up in his face, and why he in fact went to the forest in the first place, Logan said this: “The idea was to do another fun vlog, go camp for a night and make an entertaining piece of content in a forest.”   Think about this comment. That trip (halfway around the world, no less), was a choice.   Logan Paul has the world to choose from, and he chose Aokigahara, on the northwestern side of Mount Fiji. The site of hundreds of suicides, we can never even know the true tragic numbers, as officials have stopped releasing the figures in the last few years. In a chilling example of suicide being a permanent solution to a temporary problem, there is an annual uptick in suicides at the end of the Japanese fiscal year, in March. Mementos of loved ones--photographs and children’s shoes and such--are sometimes found with the bodies. So. Logan Paul’s best plan is to put on a large yellow hat that makes him look like a chicken abortion, and whoop it up. This was his plan. His actual plan, going in.

The dead body was just gravy, an opportunity to become truly world famous.

I haven’t been able to get Logan Paul out of my head. And I mean that in the worst way. Yes, I know, there was a flurry of articles about L.P. right after the incident, and that was almost a month ago, but here’s the thing. I actually find I have to think about a subject long and hard before I spew words That and the research, and the fact that this is not my full time job, means I post….after a while. Also, I try to really digest what the world is saying about any particular subject, and I like to give the matter time to marinate.

What I learned about Logan Paul was frightening, but fascinating, and it speaks to why I am blogging about him. There seem to be two categories of people, regarding this manic prankster: kids who have known about Logan Paul for years, and think he’s the greatest thing since grilled cheese sandwiches.   And adults who just recently heard about the suicide forest story. Those adults watched his stupid, rude, cruel antics in Japan during the week preceding the infamous video, and they are now up in arms.   Well, since adults ostensibly still rule the world, it is definitely time for adults to know that there is much more to Logan Paul than just this suicide video.   (Here’s an hour of your life that you can never get back, watching Logan Paul be the worst tourist ever to visit Japan, which he affectionately refers to as “a foreign ass country.” Nice. Video One, in which he taunts the Japanese citizens with an octopus leg. Video Two, in which he mocks the culture and the police have to get involved. Video Three, perhaps the most chilling, because it takes place the day after finding the body--and Logan Paul is not the least bit sobered or saddened. Everything, everyone, is a joke to him.)

Regarding us grown-ups. Let’s use Dr. Phil by way of example.   Now I don’t hate Dr. Phil. He seems like a nice, smart guy who is pretty excited about monetizing his profession to its zenith, but that doesn’t make him dangerous. Just opportunistic.   But he got this one wrong. Clearly, in a sleazeball attempt to cash in on quick suicide video publicity, Dr. Phil commented that we shouldn’t bury the kid’s career over one mistake. Trust me, Logan Paul and his brother have been behaving badly for years.   Endangering people and animals for years. Engaging the police and fire department because of their pranks for years. Breaking the law for years. And Dr. Phil, you should have done a few minutes worth of research before jumping on the free publicity bandwagon. You, of all people, would have recognized the dangerous adolescent behavior.

Cases in point:

After thoroughly offending the citizens of Venice, Italy, Logan Paul was arrested in Rome, Italy because Logan decided to fly a drone over the coliseum, a glorious ancient structure two thousands years old. Logan knew it was illegal, but he not only did it, he recorded the entire incident, including his arrest by the Italian police.

After luring his young fans to his house, Logan Paul waved to them through a wall-to-ceiling glass window on the second floor. As he was doing so, an assassin entered from a rear door and shot Logan in the head, splattering (presumably) brains and blood everywhere, as the youthful audience watched.

Logan Paul attached giant helium balloons to his little Pomeranian’s tiny bed, and let it rise up in the sky.   Dog could have been killed. Logan thought it was hilarious. (Jump to minute 17:00 exactly if you cannot stand 20 minutes of Logan’s nutsy fagan mannerisms.)

Brother Jake Paul is pranked by having 10,000 firecrackers dumped on his head … But if that is funny, surely dropping firecrackers on the heads of unsuspecting girls is even funnier. Ha ha ha ha ha!

Jake Paul was once invited to a media event in the White House. He hid in the bathroom, then stayed in the White House all night, without anyone knowing--until he posted his vlog. Needless to say, the Secret Service had to get involved.

Brother Jake Paul set a pile of furniture on fire outside his house, just because he can. Anybody who lives in California--as I did for nearly twenty years--will tell you this is precisely the kind of behavior that causes those deadly wildfires that destroy millions of dollars worth of property, and kill human beings---to say nothing of thousands of innocent wild animals, and beloved pets. The sparks and cinders could easily have been devastating.

Logan Paul created a vine in which he and a cohort literally lassoed women. (Now deleted.)   Why did this alone not destroy Logan Paul’s career? Simple, because the national radar was not up and running yet, #MeToo was years away, and perhaps worst of all, Logan’’s audience consists of impressionable young kids, who simply wouldn’t think to hire a lawyer, call a journalist, or start a movement. (SAVING CAT)

Logan Paul wrestled an alligator.

Logan Paul wrestled a bear. This was f*cking cruel to the bear. Drop your jaw in horror that dopey Logan Paul could have been killed (he does have a family, after all), or crack nasty comments about what you wish might have happened to Logan Paul, if you are a Hater. But this was cruel to the bear. Cruel.   (I, for example, am terrified of sharks, but was equally horrified at the Floridian creeps who dragged a helpless hooked shark for miles. You don’t terrify and torment and torture animals, Logan. It’s, well, the sign of a budding psychopath. Simple as that.

Logan Paul got a fake service dog certificate for his little Pomeranian, so he could circumvent the airline rules. This seriously endangers people with disabilities, because there is a high likelihood, as is proven by hundreds of stories, that a non-trained animal in an airport scenario with become aggressive and/or interfere with the duties of an actual service dog, with all kinds of horrific consequences. (different video, start watching from 1:55.) The impact and danger is multiplied when that untrained dog is uncaged in an airplane cabin with a service dog.   Equally alarming is the fact that Logan Paul’s untrained and high strung “service dog” not only defecates all around the airport in Logan’s video, but the poor dog is terrified and has to be dragged towards the escalator. Dear Logan: if you don’t have the common sense to figure it out, any veterinarian or google search can tell you, that horrible accidents can happen to small dogs with escalators … You are a monster of a pet owner. (Go to 7:25 in the video.)

In his obsessive craze to break plates--something viewed as wildly hilarious by his fans, and which he does in at least 75 of his vlogs so far--he doesn’t think twice about breaking these plates around his very small dog, that same mini Pomeranian. Shards large and small fly everywhere. The dog is terrified, and could be badly hurt. Logan Paul thinks traumatizing his dog is hilarious.

But it gets better. Logan Paul thought it would be hilarious to let a tiger cub play with his six pound dog.   Tigers are known to be unpredictable, and even their play is aimed at killing prey, so Logan is clearly putting his dog in danger, and terrorizing the little dog. “It’s not a great idea, but it’s definitely entertainment.” Logan Paul’s own words. As he puts the dog down in front of the cub. I hate Logan Paul for this. I hate Logan Paul, period.

So there’s a partial list. Not just partial in the sense that Logan (and Jake) Paul have done so many horrible things, but also in that they are just two of a growing legion of YouTubers who want to make millions of dollars simply for churning out daily the most dildoic videos imaginable. And yes, I will freely admit that Logan Paul is not the worst of the pack.   But with SIXTEEN MILLION FOLLOWERS, he is the most influential. Hence, he is not only part of the problem.

He’s pretty much the cause.

Part of the key, it seems, is that these vlogs have to be regular, just as joyfully regular as a fourteen year old’s problem-free bowel movements. And just as shitting once a week isn’t enough for kids, so YouTubers who seek fame and fortune are learning that if you wait a whole week between postings, you may have lost your teen audience, who will have drifted off to other wannabe celebs. Logan Paul promised his fans a video a day, and since he has no real talent, his pranks must become crueler and crueler until---oh dear. We find ourselves in the Japanese suicide forest. Oh, and a big kudos to Logan’s mom and dad, who are clearly in constant contact with their son (and living well because of it)--but who were too dim and greedy to tell him no, do not, whatever you do, under any circumstances, post that video.

I ask you to watch the links in this blog. This is the most hyperlink-saturated epistle I have ever written, but that is the only way to expose the new YouTuber prank world in which we live. This is what passes for entertainment these days?

“I want to be the biggest entertainer in the world!”   So says Logan Paul. Logan needs to grasp that traditionally, great entertainers are people with great talent, who have augmented that talent with years of practice. I’m thinking Andrea Bocelli Yo Yo Ma, Tony Bennett, Wynton Marsalis, Penn and Teller, David Copperfield, Elton John, Barbra Streisand, Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, the Rolling Stones, Jerry Seinfeld, everyone in Cirque du Soleil, almost everyone who ever won an academy award, almost everyone from the Saturday Night Live casts, Beyoncé--the list could go on and on, growing to include names that dig deeper into history, or reflect the fact that writers like J.K. Rowling and Stephen King are in fact entertainers as well … and we could actually acknowledge on said list that countries other than America United States have produced entertainers as well.

And nobody, my friends, who can legally vote or drink, would put Logan Paul on that list.

Now, I know what Logan and his pissant fans would say: He made 12 million bucks in 2017, he must be entertaining someone. To which I respond, yes, he is. Just as many people are entertained by bullfights, dogfights, kiddie porn, Joanie loves Chachi reruns, and surfing the Dark Web. Logan likes to talk about how old people don’t understand the new business models, and their deep entrenchment with social media. Fair enough, Logan. But you, my young friend, do not seem to understand the meaning of the word “entertainment.” At its face, it is so ambiguous and bland as to be fundamentally useless. True power, Logan, lives in a deep understanding of the power of human communication.

As for Mr. Paul’s supposed acting aspirations, as part of being “the greatest entertainer in the world,” yeah well.   He actually got a journalist from Business Insider to follow him around for a day, and the journalist wrote that watching Logan in acting class was painful--not because Logan was a bad actor, but because Logan made a conscious choice, when put into a gritty impromptu scene about a young couple discussing an unwanted pregnancy, to completely disrespect the scene and his fellow actor. Logan began ad libbing that he had come home because he was horny and hungry. “Eating while I have sex” was his big attempt at a laugh. Horny and hungry, when confronted with an unwanted pregnancy. Logan is about one pound sign away from being a target of #MeToo.

Since the zookeepers were never able to successfully breed me in captivity, I am hesitant to ever offer parenting tips, but oh, fuck it. Why shouldn’t I offer parenting tips? For decades now, moms & dads, I have been the frequent victim of your little prince’s or princess’s antics and attitudes. I taught at three colleges and universities, and was constantly blown away by the intellectual wind tunnels that IS the modern American post-pubescent brain.

So here goes: mind what goes into your kid’s mind. In effect, Logan Paul is babysitting your kids. His toxic pranks and his horrible examples are becoming the lifestyles that teenagers desperately want to replicate.   What? What did you just think at me? You think that after one or two Logan Paul videos, your kid says, “Well, enough of that. Time to view some of those archived Model U.N. training videos,” so they can be a vital part of achieving eminent World Peace. Uh, no.

No, folks ... if they do move on from watching Logan Paul, it will be to watch:

Innocent strangers having their chairs pulled out from under them, just as they are about to sit.

Innocent strangers having ketchup squirted on their shoes.

Innocent strangers having snow cannons shot into their face (watch for the one where they blind a guy riding a bike), drinks smacked from their hands, smashing water balloons on girls,

Innocent strangers on the street, jittery from a horrific wave of acid attacks being perpetrated on innocent strangers on the street, having liquid thrown on them from an Iranian man, who then runs away.   (Apologia from the prankster: “It’s only water.” So it’s funny!”)

There is an entire genre of YouTube pranking which involves white punks going into the hood and terrifying black people.   Or, if all of that is too tame for you, you can watch this man pranking the death of his child in front of his wife.

Or you can watch this jerk pranking his girlfriend so she thinks she ran over her dog with her car. Oh, how you will laugh.

Or you can watch parents smashing their children’s electronics as their children look on, screaming, sobbing, and helpless. Or, you can watch this clip, which actually caused the parents to lose custody of their kids: but fear not. They got their kids back, and they have a new channel, after their old one was quashed by YouTube.

And here is a montage of copycats.   The above parents got so many views from smashing their kids’ toys, it became--yes--another prank subgenre.

(And here is one that shows not so much physical pain, as it does mortal terror mixed with gross prejudicial stereotyping.)

I never thought I would be defending “Jackass” but L.A. Times’ Katie Walsh summed it up in one insightful sentence: “The “Jackass” guys always made themselves the butt of the joke, the recipients of the worst abuse.”   Crimony, people, the message should be obvious: if physical pain is going to be part of your pranks (which is stupid anyway), at least make sure that you or your cohorts are the object of that pain.

Two teenage girls thought it would be funny to put Superglue on a McDonald’s toilet seat. The victim was a little four year old girl, whose skin was ripped off when she was finally removed from the seat.

Oh, and speaking of pain, I forgot to mention the video of the guy squirting fresh pepper juice from fat ripe jalapeno on his girlfriend’s tampon.

And for those delinquents among you who bluster, “but some of those are faked. The person pranked knew about it.”   Let me ask you, dear readers, how much better does that make you feel about this whole matter? Because let me tell you--clearly, most of these prank victims are not in on the joke.

But the pranks get crueler and crueler. It is this simple: the crueler you are, the more views you get. Into the millions. Then, the big advertisers get onboard, the channel creator gets their big cut, and now we have arrived at the big apocalypse of our civilization: People get paid big bucks to be bigly cruel.

Let me say that again, because that is the fact, that is the central message of this blog, and that is what does not make this a generational thing or a hyperbolic thing or a “they said that about Elvis” thing: PEOPLE GET PAID BIG BUCKS TO BE CRUEL.

In the case of a “Call of Duty” video game swatting prank, a man actually died. Shot by police.

Oh, and let’s not leave the endless list without remembering, as the Bible says, “the least among us.” People can be hard to prank. They fight back, they sue you.   Not so with animals.

Some people think it’s funny to terrify dogs with firecrackers--as was the case with this man, in Atlanta.

And so the idea spreads. Here is another animal subjected to a firecracker prank: Ask yourself how and why the incident in this link came to be recorded? It had to have been recorded by the perpetrator of the “prank”, and the only reason you record something is to share it with the world.  “Hey, I know what would be funny. Let’s get this little monkey used to being offered peanuts in a bag from tourists, then … wait for it ...we’ll put a firecracker in the bag, and blow his hand off!”
The world wide web is now broadcasting pranks that are absolutely unspicably cruel.

NEWS ALERT: Before you fall for the remorseful side of Logan Paul, as he attempted to show in last week’s “finally breaking his silence” GMA interview, ask yourself if he’s sincere.   No, ask yourself if he is a liar, a liar who is backpedaling frantically. When asked if he knew that kids watched his channel, Logan acted (see above paragraph for the quality of his thespianship)--shocked. “It’s odd, because Michael, I’m 22 year old, it’s not like I’m making content necessarily for kids. Sometimes I cuss. Sometimes I make inappropriate jokes. I wanna make jokes that kids my age are gonna like. I am my own demographic.”   I call bullshit. Logan is swamped by ‘tween and teen fans at large numbers of events every month, and adolescent autograph hounds (or perhaps I should say “Selfie Sluts”) besiege him virtually every day of his life. Furthermore, he can clearly see the age of the kids who are imitating him on Youtube. He knows. He knows damn well. He condescends to his elders about their lack of understanding of the power of social media in sales and branding, then pretends that he does not know the age of his own demographics--information which is handily available on a variety of free Youtube tracking tools.   Liar. Cop-out.

The problem with Logan Paul is not simply his content. The problem is the ridiculously far reaching influence of that content. Paul wants the mansion, the pool, the luxury vehicles, and the seven figure salary that go with being a social media star, but none of the responsibility.   Ask yourself: how far is the kid who threatened to assassinate one of Logan Paul’s critics from the kid who, in classic Hitler Youth fashion, tried to get his dark skinned classmate deported? Logan Paul’s fans have made comments about how the Japanese should all kill themselves, and the kid who turned in his classmate also wrote in detail about how he would torture immigrants, given the chance. And they learned mocking from their master:   Logan has made disgusting comments about the penis size of blacks and Asians. For what it’s worth, Logan Paul’s antics in Japan prior to the suicide forest incident were beyond disgusting--and when Japanese blogger Reina Scully commented on this, these were the kinds of comments offered by the fans of Paul Logan: “You bitch you don’t have the right to talk about him, you fucking peaces of shit you are just using his name for clickbait fuck you bitch.”   And this: “I feel like Logan has done nothing wrong, like what’s everyone crying for its a fucking dead body like he new he was gunna find a dead body. He’s a fucking savage cause he’s going to upload the video it’s a savage video so enjoy your view from Logan.”   And this: “Shut the fuck up you suicide faggots. Let the Japs kill themselves. LOGANG for life.”

Do you think these kids wouldn’t happily be part of a crowd that would cheer the burning of a witch, or the public drawing and quartering of a person who had offended the Crown? Do you think these kids wouldn’t just love a Saturday at the coliseum, watching wild animals slain and Christians slaughtered? Do you think they would hesitate to join 20,000 decent, churchgoing citizens cheer in the burning and torturing of Jesse Washington and Henry Smith? After all, it was a fifteen year old boy who aided in gouging out Henry Smith’s eyes with a red hot poker, then ramming that poker down the man’s throat while he screamed in agony. And if you think that sounds a bit extreme, ask yourself: has human DNA changed that much in the last couple of centuries? Of course not. All that really matters is what our psyches are fed. And if you think that I am only describing a fringe group of Logan Paul’s fans--or those fans of pranking in general--ask yourself, how big does that fringe have to be before we all live in fear? Before the quality of life in society is eroded past salvaging?

(Sidebar. I have a perverse sense of humor, but for some reason, I find it absolutely hilarious that these “Logang” fans have bought millions of dollars worth of Maverick merchandise from LoganPaul, so they can all look like each other, kinds sorta forgetting that the very definition of “maverick” is “an independent minded person who does not go along with the group or mob.”   And that is not even getting into the fact that Logan Paul has literally stolen this trademarked name from a clothing line that is now suing him, because they are currently reeling from the negative blowback they are getting from the infamous suicide video.)

I know a man who shovels shit for a living. Seriously. That’s pretty much all he does. He lives in the rural town of Appomattox, a hamlet dotted with farms large and small. This man has figured out that if he buys the manure off of half of the farmers in town, who fancy cows and horses and such, then processes the poo, he can then turn around and sell it to the farmers who focus on growing crops. The man is humble, and of modest means, but you must give credit where credit is due: he provides a good life for his family. I bring the shit-shoveler up not as some kind of metaphor, but to make the point that even a man like this, blue of collar and short on formal education, does a damn fine job of parenting. His kids have cell phones. Every twenty-four hours, he checks those phones. If they are used for anything, whatsoever, during school hours, driving home from school hours, or homework hours, the phones get locked away for a spell. If they protest, or should you, dear reader, talk back to this writing, the shit-shoveler would remind you, as he reminds his offspring: HE is the parent. The kids do well in school, and this is part of why they do. The system is simple, and it works. Why can’t we all emulate the shit-shoveler?   Checking your kid’s Youtube feed requires pressing one button: HISTORY, under LIBRARY, to the left of your screen.

Oh, and by the way, I spelled “Mount Fiji”, “eminent” and “unspicably” that way on purpose, to give you a wee soupçon of exactly what it’s like to be a teacher grading papers these days. Watch Logan Paul’s video, and you will see he does not know the difference between the Republic of Fiji and the mountain called “Fuji”. And as for my other unspicable spelling error--that horror is taken from an actual blog comment.

                                                           ******

So, now that we have gotten to know Logan Paul a little better, and seen his oeuvre of work, let me return to my original premise.

Take a charismatic man--a young, handsome, muscled Aryan type will do excellently. Let him use his passion and energy and pizzazz (however hurtful and harrowing it may be) to gain a great following, into the millions. Let him teach those millions the joys of mocking, frightening, demeaning, and perpetrating outright cruelty.   Sit back and watch as millions, in their adulation and adoration, spend every waking moment trying to become him. Imitating his every move. What he mocks, they humiliate. What he breaks, they smash. What he ridicules, they despise.   And most exciting of all, to his followers: emulating him to perfection will also involve not really working for a living. It will involve no creation, but destruction.   And getting fabulously wealthy as you do all of this.

End of civilization as we know it.   Logan Paul for President!

Folks, listen to the shit shoveler.

**********

Our takeaway insight on all of this was, we believe, best voiced by Daniel Dockery, writing in “Cracked”.

“The biggest prank ever pulled is your parents laboring under the delusion that you would be a contributing member of society.”

And, our more global view of this entire nightmare, and its impact on society writ large, is, we believe, best captured by San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, when commenting on the current political realities of our time:

  “WE ARE ROME.”