Make the Children Suffer

It's the "Post-Littleton" aftermath.

Before Littleton (B.L.), school shootings momentarily provoked outrage, but the hype over a long-awaited film or vaunted finale to a beloved sitcom quickly overshadowed the mournful faces. But Littleton is seared into our collective memory because rarely have so many middle-class, God-fearing, porcelain youth met a brutal demise in one fell swoop.

This is an emotionally charged issue, one in which logic is notably absent. Recent studies estimate that only 20 to 30 youths are murdered at school annually, not quite an epidemic when one considers that there are around 20 million middle school and high school students.

The Center for Substance Abuse Protection estimates that eight young people a day die in alcohol-related car crashes, and the most accurate data on child abuse fatalities currently available estimate that in 1996, 1,185 child abuse and neglect related fatalities were confirmed by Child Protective Service agencies. Based on these numbers, more than three children die each day as a result of child abuse or neglect. Since 1985, the rate of child abuse fatalities has increased by 34%

On the day two boys, ages 11 and 13, killed four classmates, a California mother was arrested for suffocating her three children with duct tape.

A few days after Michael Carneal killed three students at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., three West Virginia parents were arrested for burning down their house, intentionally roasting five children.

The day after 90-lb weakling Kip Kinkle slaughtered two classmates in his school's cafeteria, another California mother was arrested for murdering her two young children and burying them in the national forest.

A child is more likely to be killed by his mother than his Goth chemlab partner, but restricting access to "violent and sexual" material is the quick fix that politicians love. When parents comprise such a large portion of a politician's voter base, appeasing them is a high priority. Telling the fruitful mother with two towheaded crotchlings and a bad case of sperm poisoning that her parenting skills aren't up to snuff assures a politician of a one-way ticket out of the Capitol.

Henry Hyde, exalted leader of the House Committee on the Judiciary, recently proposed a bill that is an affront to the First Amendment, and yet another attempt to lighten the parental burden.

The "Children's Defense Act of 1999" would prohibit any establishment – from libraries to video stores to bookstores – from selling, renting, or loaning violent and sexual material to minors.

Among the no-no's on Hyde's list include: acts of masturbation, homosexuality, and sexual intercourse; physical contact with a person's clothed or unclothed genitals, buttocks, or breasts; rape; acts of mutilation upon the human body; and, sadistic or masochistic activity. Which basically rules out all of my favorite entertainment.

Violators face up to five years in jail for the first offense, and ten for the second.

"… Suffer the little children …" Jesus once said, and with those words, we've been suffering from them ever since.

Whenever an incorrigible, undisciplined child commits a heinous act, adults are expected to turn introspective and ponder how we can change our behavior in order to improve children's lives. That translates into zapping all the fun from our plodding existences.

Ban porn. Make happy video games. Regulate the Internet. Confiscate copies of "The Tin Drum."

Fuck that. There's only one solution to this problem: kill the children; kill them all; kill them slowly and painfully, listening to their shrill voices cry out for you to make the pain stop because it's time for their 3 O'clock session with an anger management consultant.

The snivelly-wivelly hellions serve no purpose. They don't do chores. They don't milk the cows. They don't mind the farm. They don't know how to spell. They don't behave. They don't have spines. They don't have coping skills. They don't understand the word "polite."

They've been attachment parented. They've been family bedded. They've been num-num booby-fed until they were old enough to ask for it. They've been timed-out. They've been self-esteemed. And, none of it has worked.

They run willy-nilly through classrooms, restaurants, and our lives because there ain't enough Ritalin to go around, and if the Democrats have their way, there won't be enough bullets to go around, either.

So, let's get started before it's too late.

Providing jack-off material for white misogynists since 1997.

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