Honey, Hide the Celery! Boys Genetically Driven to Weaponize Ordinary Items Due to Toy Gun Control

On Saturday I viewed much of the Fox News mockumentary, "Reel Politics: If Hollywood Ran America." It was disappointing, largely because it did not portray what America would be like with Hollywood celebrities holding important political offices in Washington, it instead merely named which celebrities Fox News felt would be appointed by Hollywood to fill various cabinet posts. There was some humor in the selections, such as Jane Fonda as Secretary of Defense (sorry to my milblogger readers!), but I had hoped the comedy program would delve into the actual policies the Hollywood liberals would implement and the disastrous results of those policies.

While still considering the frightening scenario of Tim Robbins or Alec Baldwin running our government, I happened upon a seemingly unrelated, but delightful, article at WashingtonPost.com by Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University. Professor Turley's article takes an unintended swipe at an issue near and dear to the Hollywood liberal heart: Gun control. However, this is no ordinary, predictable gun control article, since the guns people are demanding be banned range from plastic to an index finger and thumb held in gun shape: Toys or imaginary guns. Applying the situations described in Hurley's article to the question of what America's gun control laws could regress into if Hollywood liberal activists held positions such as Attorney General or Chief Justice of the Supreme Court provides an unsettling vision of the future.

Turley's wonderful article, titled "My Boys Like Shootouts. What's Wrong With That?", describes his encounters with parents who do not allow their own children to play with toy guns of any kind and seek to enforce this zero tolerance toy gun policy on other children and parents as well, threatening not to allow children to play together and either not attending parties of friends who play with toy guns or not inviting any plastic gun-toting tots to their own parties. Of course, this sounds ludicrous and perhaps an exaggerated reaction by only a few parents out there, but as Turley relates through his own stories and some amazing examples from across America, the toy gun control lobby is growing in numbers and influence in many neighborhoods, perhaps even your own.

Turley begins by relating when he first noticed that what he considered normal role playing adventures for his three young boys was generating unexpected reactions from other parents in Alexandria, Virginia:

I first noticed the "shunning" at the most unlikely of events. Each year on Labor Day, my Alexandria community has a "Wheel Day" parade in which hundreds of kids convert their bikes, scooters and wagons into different fantasy vehicles. Last year, we turned our red wagon into a replica Conestoga wagon with real sewn canvas over wooden ribs, wooden water barrels, quarter horse -- and, yes, plastic rifles. It was a big hit and the kids won first prize for their age group. The celebration, however, was short lived. As soon as one mother spotted the toy rifles inside the wagon, she pulled her screaming children out of the event, announcing that she would not "expose them" to guns. After some grumbling, my friends and I eventually dismissed the matter as some earth mother gone berserk.

But then it happened again.

My 4-year-old son, Aidan, brought his orange Buzz Lightyear plastic ray gun to "the pit," as our neighborhood playground is known. As he began pursuing an evildoer -- his 6-year-old brother, Jack -- around the playground, a mother froze with an expression of utter revulsion. Glaring alternately from Aidan to me, she waited for a few minutes before grabbing her son and proclaiming loudly that he could not play there "if that boy is going to be allowed to play with guns."

Turley found it ironic that he found himself on the defensive side in a gun control battle, given his political views:

My wife and I are hardly poster parents for the National Rifle Association. We are social liberals who fret over every detail and danger of child rearing. We do not let our kids watch violent TV shows and do not tolerate rough play. Like most of our friends, we tried early on to avoid any gender stereotypes in our selection of games and toys. However, our effort to avoid guns and swords and other similar toys became a Sisyphean battle. Once, in a fit of exasperation, my wife gathered up all of the swords that the boys had acquired as gifts and threw them into the trash. When she returned to the house, she found that the boys had commandeered the celery from the refrigerator to finish their epic battle. Forced to choose between balanced diets and balanced play, my wife returned the swords with strict guidelines about where and when pirate fights, ninja attacks and Jedi rescues could occur.

Intrigued by the passionate resistance to toy guns, Turley decided to explore the psychology behind toy selections for children, and what impact toys, specifically guns and other weapon-like toys have on young boys in their formative play years:

. . . I found a library of academic studies. . . . The thrust was that gender differences do exist in the toys and games that boys and girls tend to choose. The anecdotal evidence in my neighborhood (with more than 60 young kids in a four-block radius) was even clearer: Parents of boys reported endless variations on the celery swords. There seems to be something "hard-wired" with the XY chromosome that leads boys to glance at a small moss-covered branch and immediately see an air-cooled, camouflaged, fully automatic 50-caliber Browning rifle with attachable bayonet.

Many parents can relate to Holley and Warren Lutz, who thought that after their daughter Seeley, they could raise her little brother, Carver, in a weapon-free house. Holley realized her error when she gave 10-month-old Carver a Barbie doll and truck one day. The little boy examined both and then proceeded to run Barbie over repeatedly with the truck. By 2, he was bending his sister's Barbies into L-shapes and using them as guns.

As a father of three young boys, Turley took seriously the question of whether playing with toy weapons could potentially awaken "some deep and dark violent gene" potentially found in all boys. Turley's research, however, led him and his wife to conclude that nature dictated their boys' choice of toys and the imaginary adventures they acted out while playing with toy guns and swords. Despite his rationale, founded as it was in research, psychology, and genetic science, neighbors and parents of his children's friends were not convinced.

Turley observed that despite the violent scenarios his children could have acted out with their toy weapons, something remarkable occurred that suggests something profound about toys, parenting, and hero imitation:

when their best friend recently invited them to his Army-themed birthday party, it didn't bother us a bit (though some parents did refuse to let their children attend). In fact, I was struck by how, more than combat fighting, the boys tended to act out scenes involving rescuing comrades or defending the wounded. What I saw was not boys experimenting with carnage and slaughter, but modeling notions of courage and sacrifice. They were trying to experience the emotions at the extremes of human conduct: facing and overcoming fear to remain faithful to their fellow soldiers.

While violent video games perhaps provide too much stimulus to the imagination, creating actual scenarios of lethal force for points rather than patriotism, toy guns and swords alone do not influence children to become violent. In the case of Turley's boys, and billions of young boys over centuries, toy weapons more often were used to imitate noble figures or occupations in a society, such as policemen and military heroes. If we attempt to protect boys from toy weapons in a misguided effort to shield them from good and bad uses of violence, how will they grow up to protect themselves and their nation? If we rob them of their imaginations and dreams of courage and rescue, what type of soldiers will our armed forces consist of in the future? How many will want to place themselves in harm's way in law enforcement or intelligence agencies? All of these require knowledge and use of weapons to be used for morally justified societal needs, such as protection of the innocent and preservation of a nation.

If Hollywood ran America and established the naive gun control policies they espouse, America would be filled with gender-neutral toys that send mixed messages to confused children who will have no outlet for their youthful, playful aggressions. Turley provided a small but alarming sampling of actual incidents nationwide in which young children have been punished, suspended, and even expelled for behavior as benign as pointing a piece of chicken at another child and saying "pow, pow, pow." It would appear that the liberal campaign to make America "enlightened" like European firearm-free nations is exerting enormous influence at the grass roots level, even in formerly play tolerant suburbs.

What toys do your children choose to play with when presented with several choices? After reading Turley's article and perusing some of the psychological books he examined, you may learn more about your children and their natural affinities and values than you may think. Chances are, if you can never find the celery in the refrigerator, your child may be smuggling replacement swords to his guerrilla army comrades at the playground.

American Muslims Rising in Defense of '24' but Offer No Rival to CAIR

Spy the News! makes a conscious effort to avoid commenting on celebrity news, as in fact I do not consider celebrity behavior to be news. There are more critical matters worthy of reading time and attention than what individual entertainers do or what they think about politics. However, Hollywood's influence on American culture is considerable and thus Hollywood as an institution must be criticized when it distorts truth or attempts to sanitize truth in the name of political correctness. It should also be praised when it bucks the trend of political correctness and presents story lines that unite Americans in a common cause rather than divide us by race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or economic status. The Fox program "24" is stirring controversy for its portrayal of terrorists as Arab Muslim terrorists, but it is simultaneously receiving increasing praise for precisely the same reason.

I admit that a few seasons ago I stopped watching the program, mainly due to plots involving wildly exaggerated internal U.S. Government conspiracies in which the main character, Jack Bauer, appeared to be in more danger from our government than from terrorists. It seemed then (and continues to) that Jack's only hope of thwarting terrorists and saving the world was to work completely outside of all government strategy and existing tactics and he spent an inordinate amount of time protecting himself from elements within the U.S. Government bent on murdering him. Fortunately somewhere along the way it appears the producers of "24" have returned to the plots and realities that made the show unique and compelling in its earlier years. The plots once again involve Islamic terrorists working zealously to kill as many Americans as possible through bombings and other attacks, to include a spectacular detonation of a terrorist nuclear device in Los Angeles in this season's plot line.

That depiction of Los Angeles under a mushroom cloud has generated loud objections from CAIR, an organization that wields far too much influence over Islamic sensitivity training programs inexplicably embraced by U.S. Government departments and agencies. CAIR claims that portrayals of terrorists as Muslim will incite violence against Arab-Americans and contributes to stereotypes of all Muslims as terrorists. Of course reality justifies America's fear of Islamic terrorism, but CAIR is not concerned with reality as it sits on the government's shoulder and whispers sweet nothings about Islam into Uncle Sam's ear.

Regular Spy the News! readers routinely scroll the left column for daily news headlines and notable columns, and hopefully followed the link to the Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal today, which contained a piece written by Arab-American Emilio Kareem Dabul. In this article, "In Defense of '24'" Dabul expresses what Americans hope is a growing sentiment among Arab-Americans. Particularly welcome was the following statement:

"In the meantime, the next time a journalist decides to report on Arab-American concerns about shows like "24," maybe he could actually talk to someone other than CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and seek out Arab-Americans with a different point of view. We actually do exist."

In a similar but even more blunt assessment of what Arab-Americans should be doing to fight terrorism within their own religion, M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of American Islamic Forum for Democracy, contributed a wonderful articleto National Review Online last week. Jasser defended the plot line of "24" and declared that Muslims need to unite and defeat the true enemy, which he explicitly identified as Islamism. Jasser, a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, made the following call to arms to fellow American Muslims:

"It’s time for hundreds of thousands of Muslims to be not only private but public in their outrage — and to commit themselves to specific, verbal engagement of the militants and their Islamism. We, as American Muslims, should be training and encouraging our Muslim-community youth to become the future Jack Bauers of America. What better way to dispel stereotypes than to create hundreds of new, real images of Muslims who are publicly leading this war on the battlefield and in the domestic and foreign media against the militant Islamists. Condemnations by press release and vague fatwas are not enough. We need to create organizations — high-profile, well-funded national organizations and think tanks — which are not afraid to identify al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah by name, and by their mission as the enemies of America. If Muslim organizations and the American Muslim leadership were seen publicly as creating a national, generational plan to fight Islamism — rather than searching for reasons to claim victimhood — then the issues and complaints surrounding such TV shows would disappear. The way to fight the realities of 24 is to create a Muslim CTU, a deep Muslim counterterrorism ideology and a national action plan for our security."[emphasis added]

As one who has suffered through CAIR Muslim sensitivity training, I echo Jasser's recommendations and encourage Arab-Americans to establish an organization that, unlike CAIR, has no ties to known terrorists and that promotes Muslim cooperation with terrorist investigations conducted to preserve national security. What troubles many within the intelligence/national security community is the absence of any Arab-American organization to rival CAIR. Occasionally brave dissenters like Dabul and Jasser raise their voices to reassure Americans that our neighbors are not terrorists, but compared to the orchestrated and well-funded machinations of CAIR, such reassurances have only minimal effect on public perception. It is frequently stated that Islamic terrorism can only be eliminated through reform within Islam itself. Well-intentioned reassurances, regardless of frequency, are not reform. Jasser's call for a Muslim CTU is intriguing but currently problematic due to the embarrassingly small number of Arab-Americans and Arabic translators serving within intelligence, law enforcement, and military agencies.

Spy the News! applauds the producers of "24" for not cowering before CAIR. If a War on Terror will ever succeed, it will do so only when enemies are clearly identified, isolated so as to eliminate their ability to recruit, and destroyed. For this to occur, the faithful and courageous assistance of Muslims throughout the world will be necessary. Do they share Dabul and Jasser's desire to reform Islam? That is the question on which the War on Terror hinges.

Hollywood's Favorite Villains: Government, Law Enforcement, and the Military

As part of my previous post, I discussed the growing cynicism and outright suspicion many Americans harbor toward the US Government, and the media’s contribution to that destructive trend. From memory and with a few mouse clicks to refresh it, I have compiled below a sampling of movie plots in which the military or government agencies are the villains. The list is by no means all-inclusive, as I realized when researching that this trend began in earnest in the 1960s and has produced a disturbingly large number of movies that could appear in this list. When films depicting corrupt local police departments (NYPD and LAPD are witheringly vilified) are included, the number of movies in which government or law enforcement are the enemy is far exceeded by the list of films in which criminals are the heroes. Audiences are influenced by these portrayals, and mistrust of police and government agencies is a direct result of Hollywood’s choice of villains.

Here is a small sampling of such films, with a brief synopsis of each plot. Please note that the inclusion of any film on this list is not an endorsement of it. Many of these movies have aired on network or cable television minus their abundant gratuitous violence, sex, and language. Unfortunately their anti-government themes were not also scrapped:

Mercury Rising – The NSA tests an unbreakable super code by putting it in a puzzle magazine. An autistic 9 year old deciphers the code in the puzzle. The NSA sends hit squads to kill the boy. He hides in his home; the NSA kills his parents, and then ruthlessly hunts the boy to terminate him.

Enemy of the State – An NSA boss and hit squad attempt to murder a lawyer who stumbles upon evidence of an NSA murder.

Capricorn One – NASA fakes a manned mission to Mars, and then the mission controller plots to kill the astronauts in a staged capsule fire.

The Siege – The National Guard imposes martial law on NYC, rounds up Middle-Eastern men, and imprisons them in a stadium turned internment camp. Defense Intelligence then tortures suspected terrorists for information.

Mission Impossible – A CIA Spymaster attempts to provide an international criminal with a Top Secret list of all CIA field agents. He then kills his entire field operations team except one.

A Few Good Men – A Marine General covers up an illegal “code red” disciplinary action that resulted in a marine’s death.

The Bourne Supremacy/The Bourne Identity – An amnesiac CIA assassin is framed for a botched CIA political assassination and is hunted by his corrupt former supervisor who must kill him to hide the truth.

Good Shepherd – A squeaky-clean young CIA recruit becomes disillusioned and corrupted by the McCarthy-era CIA culture.

The Recruit – A mole within the CIA kills agent trainees working to expose him/her.

S.W.A.T. – A corrupt LAPD SWAT officer helps a high-profile drug lord escape custody. The officer also kills a fellow SWAT member.

Clear and Present Danger – The US Government conducts an illegal war on a drug cartel in Columbia. The President and his National Security Advisor make a deal with the drug lord, and the National Security Advisor, through the conspiring CIA Deputy Director, pulls the plug on the military operation, abandoning covert US troops trapped in Columbia.

Broken Arrow – An Air Force Stealth pilot rejected for promotions intentionally crash-lands a B3 bomber carrying two nuclear bombs. He then extorts the US Government for a huge ransom or he will give the bombs to terrorists.

Swordfish – The CIA hires an accomplished spy to coerce a computer hacker to steal billions in unused government funds left over from a shadowy DEA operation.

The General's Daughter – The murder of a base commander’s daughter brings an undercover detective to West Point Military Academy. The detective discovers a high level cover up of illicit and violent behavior among cadets and Academy brass.

U.S. Marshals – A State Department Diplomatic Security agent frames a former agent for a diplomatic assassination and then joins a US Marshal manhunt for the framed killer. The rogue agent kills a deputy Marshal and attempts to murder the former agent and the US Marshal.

Space Cowboys – A NASA mission chief sells US satellite guidance technology to the Soviet Union. The Soviets later deploy the technology in a nuclear missile launch platform that threatens to destroy the world.

Air Force One – Russian nationalists hijack Air Force One with the help of the President’s Secret Service detail leader, who guns down his entire agent detail and gives their tactical weapons to the terrorists.

The Sentinel – A member of the president’s Secret Service detail, suspicious of a plot to assassinate the president, is framed for the murder of a fellow agent and blackmailed over his affair with the First Lady. In unraveling the assassination plot and protecting the president, he discovers a supervisor within the Secret Service, in charge of security at the G-8 Summit is the assassination mastermind. It could have been worse, though. In the book on which the film is based, the First Lady was plotting with the Secret Service supervisor to kill her husband.

Snake Eyes – A Naval commander participates in a conspiracy to assassinate the Secretary of Defense.

Absolute Power – The President murders his mistress while a burglar hides in a closet and witnesses the crime. The Chief of Staff and the Secret Service cover for the President by making it look like the mistress was killed during a burglary. The Secret Service agents and the Chief of Staff realize a burglar actually did witness the murder, so they conspire to track down and kill the witness.

Is it any wonder that public trust in government is declining when depictions such as these are standard fare from Hollywood? If this list also included television programs such as The Agency and 24, the plots would seem even more ludicrously cynical toward government. The US Government and military have flaws, as they are operated by imperfect beings. There have been scandals and of course there have also been double agents, moles, and unscrupulously ambitious officials. Yet, considering the millions of people who have served in government since the nation's founding, the number who have plotted to assassinate 9 year old autistic boys who can crack super codes is reasonably small. Apparently only Alec Baldwin was anti-government enough to relish that movie villain role.

Who is our enemy? According to Hollywood, terrorists seem far less sinister than our own intelligence or law enforcement agencies. The Hollywood mantra from these films is clear. We have more to fear from the Patriot Act than from Al Qaeda, more to fear from our military than from any foreign foe. The work of military, intelligence, and law enforcement personnel is difficult and dangerous enough in reality, but when public paranoia, fueled by anti-government entertainment, prevents cooperation and trust, national security itself is endangered.

Technorati Tags:
Law Enforcement Diplomatic Security Service LAPD SWAT Secret Service West Point Air Force Air Force One Government Conspiracies National Guard US Marshal Service Hollywood Marines NSA CIA NASA