Violence, Inc.
by Bill Shein

In the news this week were three items that highlight our cultural and political tolerance of real and fictional violence.

First was a report that "Grand Theft Auto" includes sexually explicit content hidden inside this gratuitously violent video "game." Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., responded loudly with a letter to the Federal Trade Commission in which she said, "We should all be deeply disturbed that a game, which now permits the simulation of lewd sexual acts in an interactive format with highly realistic graphics, has fallen into the hands of young people across the country."

Her letter also mentions video game violence. But why does sex, and not violence, raise so many more hackles in our society? Indeed, we are shocked -- shocked! -- by split-second "wardrobe malfunctions," suggestive sitcom dialogue, and the over-the-top sexuality that fills prime-time television and permeates so much media and advertising.

But we embrace all kinds of violence with inexplicable fervor and far less complaining -- particularly on television, where the top-rated dramas are almost exclusively about crime, murder, violence and dead bodies. Thanks largely to television, violence has become the destructive background noise of American society. Perhaps that's why the daily bloodshed in Iraq just blurs into the river of real and fictional violence spewing out of the tube, dulling our emotions and sense of outrage about what our tax dollars are funding.

The second, related item was an underreported comment made by the president's homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend. In the wake of the London terrorist bombings, she defended the president's Iraq policy with the claim that, by waging war in Iraq, we attract terrorists to a place "where we have a fighting military and a coalition that can take them on and not have the sort of civilian casualties that you saw in London."

That a top presidential adviser could so easily ignore the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have died during and after the U.S. invasion is remarkable. Though it does serve to highlight the moral bankruptcy of the president's favorite applause line, "We're fighting the enemy abroad so we don't have to fight them here at home." Translated, that means as long as it's only foreign civilians killed in distant lands, our policy is justified.

The third extraordinary item was news of Stephen Bochco's upcoming Iraq war drama, "Over There," which premieres July 27 on Fox's FX cable network.

Early reviews describe it as a blood-spattered drama that powerfully shows the "reality" of the Iraq war. An article in the San Jose Mercury News summed up the carnage this way: "The combat scenes have such veracity that they look like footage from embedded TV news crews caught up in firefights between U.S. troops and insurgents. The scenes are so accurate that they're certainly not for the faint of heart, with body parts flying and the horrific wounding of men (and women) on both sides."

FX president of entertainment John Landgraf has dismissed criticism of "Over There" by focusing on its "apolitical" view of the war. "I would defy someone to say there's either a liberal or conservative bias" in the show, he told the Los Angeles Times last December.

That misses the point. The program -- conceived by Landgraf himself -- aims to generate profit from the tragedy still unfolding in Iraq. And that's an outrage, especially when, across the hall at Fox News, this war is promoted at every opportunity.

In fact, "Over There" represents a new kind of war profiteering for the media age. Fox can't make money by securing government contracts for bombs or bullets or tanks. But it can support the march to war with terrible, flag-waving "journalism" on Fox News and then profit from the bloody conflict with violent, war-themed programming elsewhere.

In a revealing move, Fox's home entertainment division will release the pilot episode of "Over There" on DVD on Aug. 2, just six days after it appears on TV. Why? Because as the New York Times noted in January, "If American troops are pulled out this summer, when FX hopes to broadcast the "Over There" pilot, it could undermine the premise of the show, not to mention public interest in it."

And wouldn't that be a shame.

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Bill Shein's column is always 100 percent violence-free.

(This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle newspaper on July 17, 2005. Click here to read Bill's previous column, "Rethinking Gay Marriage").