Subj : Heresy!
To   : STEVE QUARRELLA
From : David Wade Hagar
Date : Tue Dec 04 2001 02:26 pm

I would tend to agree.  I remember that my friend and I were getting dirty 
looks because of how we dress, etc...  I would suggest that people stop 
looking at the surface of things.  Its like, in the witch trials of Salem, no
one who was actually accused/killed due to witchcraft suspicions actually 
practiced it.  It was a witch-hunt, like many different things, they don't 
want to blame their poor innocent child who could do no wrong (I KNOW 
everyone here has seen parents like that) for their own actions, it's a 
friend, that damn music, a teacher, their school, etc...  No one wants to 
face the truth.  And as a fan or Urban Legends, I can tell you that the same 
stories are told over and over again with who ever the public enemy is at the
time.  What armies in history have been said to "kill babies and slaughter 
women and children" over and over again.  The worst part is, that it makes 
many of these things more popular!  Why?  People want to rebel and in true 
tradition of those kinds of things they do what is said to be bad or evil.

 -=> Quoting Steve Quarrella to David Wade Hagar <=-

 SQ> They can blame all they want.  That doesn't make it so.  All kinds of
 SQ> evil has  been blamed on RPGs and rock and roll music for years.  You
 SQ> even hear the same  ol' lies about someone like Marilyn Manson that we
 SQ> heard about Ozzy Osbourne  and Alice Cooper when we were kids ("He
 SQ> kills puppies on stage"..."He once  engaged in a gross-out contest and
 SQ> ate shit"...those kinds of things).  The  bottom line is that if RPGs
 SQ> or music were so influential as to make people  kill, there would be a
 SQ> hell of a lot more killings being done.  For every  screwball that
 SQ> thinks he hears something in an album, there are hundreds or  thousands
 SQ> of normal people who, shall we say, use the product as it was  intended
 SQ> to be used.
 SQ> Some screwball saw a movie called "Taxi" some years ago, developed an
 SQ> obsession  for an actress in the movie, and then turned around and shot
 SQ> an American  president and two others.  Using the type of logic
 SQ> involved in blaming heavy  metal music or RPGs for all kinds of crimes,
 SQ> we should thus go out and ban  motion pictures, because they make
 SQ> people shoot other people.  The bottom line  is that there are
 SQ> screwballs out there who will go over the edge, given the  right
 SQ> stimulus.  Do we want to blame the stimulus, or do we want to look at
 SQ> the  real problem?
 SQ> While I'm on it, do you hear anybody calling for a ban on Christianity
 SQ> after  the events of Guyana?  It's been 23 years, and if there's been a
 SQ> call for a  ban, I must have missed it.
--- Synchronet+SBBSecho v2.00
 * Origin: Blue Covenant blue-covenant.idleplay.net (1:229/448)

.