I’ve been listening to Bruce Williams on my iPod, and I finally hear the shows after they’re about two weeks old. I download the podcast every week, and then listen to them in the car when there’s nothing else on. So right now, I’m listening to shows from the first week of January.
One of the things that Mr. Williams brought up was why people are so strongly against wanting to see the execution of Saddam Hussein, when television shows show such violence like that on a regular basis. From my personal standpoint, I draw a big distinction. The stuff you see on television is pretend. It’s “Hollywood magic”, so to speak. A person can be “killed” for a movie, but we know in the back of our minds that they still went home at the end of the day and had dinner.
Compare to seeing the execution of Saddam Hussein. That was real. At the end of it all, Saddam was really dead. He wasn’t going home for dinner after filming was over. The term “snuff film” comes to mind. I’ve never seen a person killed in real life before, and don’t want to. Likewise, I don’t want to see an execution, Saddam Hussein’s or otherwise. I don’t want that image etched onto my mind.
Of course, I still consider the whole concept of executions to be somewhat barbaric in the first place, as I’ve discussed in this entry.