The Blob

More frequent text posts at the BNWO companion site The Blob

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Children used in the media to create fear.


Time Magazine July 3 1995 and May 13 1991

I saw a headline today on the CBC web sight about 2 Edmonton teens who helped police make a "break" in a child pornography case.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/07/28/child-pornography.html
The headline photo at their home page for this article looked really creepy and voyeuristic. In it we see through blinds and foliage from outside into the home of the alleged pornographer at work on his PC. As if we, the viewer, were looking surreptitiously at the man who is in turn watching child pornography. It looked blurry and dark and I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a stock image or actually part of the news being presented. Alas, it is no longer on their main page and I can't find the image.
I did however get me thinking about how George W. Bush just recently used a bunch of children in his address to the world about his rational behind his first presidential veto of the embryonic stem-cell research bill . The children were "born from "adopted" frozen embryos that had been left unused at fertility clinics" says this CNN article.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/19/stemcells.veto/index.html
Whatever your viewpoint on stem cell research it seems pretty obvious that the idea of having actual children being held up by president Bush was done deliberately to create a particular image our minds. He could have explained is opinion verbally but that would not have sent such a intense and clear message. The message being along these lines "Stem-cell research kills babies, babies like this one I am holding, right here in my arms. Would you kill this baby right here in my arms?"

The media seems to play the edangered kids card allot lately in there increasingly child pornography filled reports. Armies of sexual predators are seemingly everywhere and ready to take advantage of the youth of the world. Obviously this kind of thing is a valid concern when it does happen but is the frequency and intensity of these reports an accurate portrayal of the threat out there? Could it be that this is all part of a bigger plan to use the fear of child pornography and other internet "evils" to legitimize increased government control of the internet? The comedian Doug Stanhope has also, I believe, discussed this issue in his live act.
Meanwhile I have also been scavenging the online Time Magazine archives looking for interesting covers and have found many wonderful things which I have and will continue to post here. Included in these are some covers relating perfectly to the this topic.
Check out the "Crack Kids" one, a subject that many believe now, in retrospect, to have been a bit of the old "fear mongering".
http://www.ndsn.org/SEPOCT97/POVERTY.html
Some words come to mind like bird flu, Africanized killer bee and maybe even, dare I say it, terrorist?


Time Magazine November 3 2003 and March 27 2006


Time Magazine May 10 1999 and August 6 2001

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