In a nation in which Anna Gunn, the TV actress
Who portrayed the wife of drug kingpin Walter White in the television show Breaking Bad, received death threats routinely because she was not supportive of her “husband“, WHO WAS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER, should it be any surprise that someone would take it into their own hands to assassinate a CEO of a major company?
We have proclaimed the anti-hero, the mobster, the drug kingpin, the paid assassin, as a positive personality through a variety of very, very clever, literary and dramatic devices over the years. Alfred Hitchcock actually got us rooting for a killer in the film Psycho and since then we have taken upon ourselves to side with Street justice in series and films such as Dexter, The Sopranos, Dirty Harry, The Godfather Trilogy, Goodfellas, the Death Wish films, and a whole host of copycats and original dramas.
It is actually based in Logic as a form of mathematics: If one assumes that traditional forms of justice and law enforcement are ineffectual and corrupt then one may conclude that any behavior may be acceptable to rectify a particular situation. In fact, the assumption in virtually all these examples is that with the occasional exception of the Feds, the existence of these individuals is tolerated due to bribery, yes, but also to the notion that these people police themselves more effectively than law enforcement can.
That is why individuals can grow up, be well-educated, well-raised, and well-fed and rationalize putting together a plot to kill someone whom they perceive as evil. Michael Corleone, his father, and his minions, Walter White and his associates, Henry Hill and his fellow mobsters, Dexter the serial killer of BAD PEOPLE ONLY, all essentially remain unprosecuted for their heinous crimes, and if they’re picked up, it’s on trivial charges relatively speaking.
So this miscreant graduate from a University from which I received my professional degree, taught, and was honored with two awards by the students for my instruction, took it upon himself to create a very short-lived entertainment series. And why not? Everyone he’s ever watched on tv has been “exonerated” (and yes, I know that a finding of not guilty is not exoneration, but you’ve got an individual who is preparing to be the head of our Government using that term, so go no, tell these idiots about the distinction between the two terms) and so why not shoot this fellow IN THE BACK and leave him to die?
The ironic part of this is that if he had watched TV from my generation in the 50s and 60s, he would’ve known that there was no more vilified and cowardly act than to do exactly what he did. In the old westerns, shooting someone in the back condemned that individual to certain death in the TV show. No question about it, this individual, this cowardly perpetrator had to die. And so it shall be for this individual, whether rotting in jail for the next 60 years or the death penalty, if allowable.
This is the new ethos: this is a generation that won’t listen to us, don’t care about any traditional societal norms, reject the past, won’t watch a black-and-white movie or TV show, call us “boomers“ if we proffer a sentiment or thought which is not immediately hedonistic or satisfying, but has a moral context.
My generation endured assassinations of this sort: two Kennedys, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, various foreign leaders, and numerous attempted assassinations, including George Wallace, who by any measure, might have cost Richard Nixon the 1972 election. We should not, nor should we ever be a government by assassination or a society which promotes this. But you know what? It’s great cinema, it’s great TV. So don’t hold your breath for any return to formal justice and traditional morality anytime soon.
Especially with the Pirate captain in the White House.
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