The Bullies on the Bus

While lately quite a bit of what I've posted here has been gut-reaction stuff, the kind of thing written quickly and without the benefit of a lot of contemplation, the story of Karen Huff Klein deserved more; I knew that almost immediately after banging out my little screed on it yesterday afternoon, one which did nothing to exhaust the feelings I had about watching an elderly woman being bullied from my mind.

My new piece at the Daily Banter, which is up now, looks a little deeper into what happened to Klein on that bus in upstate New York, the anger over it, the backlash to it, the good that's coming out of it, and what it says not just about kids these days but, maybe, about the way certain kids have always been.

Here's the opening:

"I still remember the heartbroken look on his face as he stood at my doorstep in his little green-striped shirt and Toughskins khaki shorts. His name was Doug and he lived up the street from me — and for some reason he desperately wanted to be my friend. He was my age, maybe five or six, and he’d come by every afternoon to ask me if I wanted to play with him since he didn’t seem to have many kids willing to. His eyes would always be fixed on the ground in front of him, as if he were a dog that someone had beaten into a perpetually submissive stance; he was never anything less than a pitiful sight. But I didn’t take pity on him; I didn’t question why his parents never seemed to be around and why I would always see him walking alone to and from the playground at the end of the block; I simply told him to go away, that I didn’t want to play with him and didn’t want to be his friend and didn’t want him in my house. When my mother would show some decency and humanity and invite him in, I’d wait for her to disappear from sight, then press him toward the door and tell him to get out. I’d say those exact words just before slamming the door in his face: 'Get out.'"

Read the Rest at Here

The Kids Aren't All Right

I'll freely admit that while there's a lot of cruelty and injustice that I let roll off my back -- because I firmly believe that you can't allow everything to get to you otherwise you lose the ability to function -- the things that eat at me really eat at me. We are who we are, we feel what we feel and we're affected by what we're affected by. That's just how it works.

So while I don't let myself get too outraged over, say, the desperation of all those political prisoners and refugees overseas, the plight of every single homeless person in America or the pain that some animals suffer before winding up on my dinner plate, I admit that I can be moved to the point of righteous fury over a ten-minute video recording of a bunch of asshole middle-school kids bullying, verbally abusing and essentially torturing with ridicule an elderly widow on a school bus until she cries. It happened recently in upstate New York -- and it makes me want to beat the living shit out of every one of the little bastards seen and heard in the clip.

The good news: The internet is already rising up in support of this woman and to condemn her tormentors.

I confess that I often wonder what would have happened to me and my friends in high school had we grown up in the kind of self-perpetuated Panopticon that society today has become; did our crimes against decency rise to the level of what these kids do but we were simply lucky enough for no one to ever get it on video and beam it out around the world?

God, I really hope not. Because if we were this cruel at any point, I'm not sure I could ever forgive myself.

The Huffington Post: School Bus Bullying Video Draws Outrage/6.20.12

Thought for the Day

You know, Madonna was on Ellen a couple of days ago to lend her two cents to the fight against the current "epidemic" of bullying in America, officially signifying that the whole Heathers-esque anti-bullying fad that's been sweeping the nation has finally jumped the shark. This can only mean that the inevitable pro-bully backlash will soon begin. So prissy little outcasts everywhere, get ready to be dragged kicking and screaming into the giant steel cage your school gym has been converted into, where you'll be beaten savagely by jocks wielding cafeteria chairs while hundreds of NRA-supporting parents in camouflage t-shirts and "Big Journalism" baseball caps look on unashamed.

Remember, everything in our culture these days is cyclical, and it's only a matter of time before people have had enough of being made to feel like they need to defer to the Glee kids.