Chicken Soup with Izzy Kalman...

This post is being completely rewritten on 1/11/2013...and further updated on May 23, 2014.

Poor Izzy keeps stepping on his own dick.

It may also be helpful to read this, this, and this first.

The original content of this post was excessively scathing of both Izzy Kalman's techniques and personal character. In an effort to avoid sounding as hollow and insincere as Mitt Romney, I won't be offering any belated apologies. But, after an extensive e-mail exchange with Mr. Kalman I now have more information to work with.

From what I've been able to learn from our e-mail exchange and from what he's written, Kalman's technique involves depriving the bully of the pleasure of precipitating a negative reaction from its victim. I was a runt in middle school and playing dead was a pretty effective short term technique. Playing dead, becoming very quiet, and glaring at some of the witnesses for the next few days also seemed to unnerve many adults who even back then understood the significance of the cliche, "He was a quiet man."

My primary criticism of Kalman's technique is that it has no effect on the bully's sense of legitimacy or its pathological need to dominate, brutalize, and terrorize other people's kids for pleasure. It also neatly relieves adults, particularly the bully's parents of any responsibility for consistently role modeling civilized behavior by transferring that responsibility to the demographic group least able to fulfill it: children who are frightened, confused, and often under siege from multiple directions. In my opinion, bullies and the criminally incompetent parents who raise them are no different than any other group of criminals that prey upon children and should be treated as such. But...since no politician, subject matter expert, or other opinion leader appears brave enough to openly criticize bad parents for their role modeling, I don't see this problem being addressed effectively without even more victims turning into homicidal maniacs.

Izzy Kalman appears to believe in what he's doing, but any technique that simply convinces the bully to move on to more satisfying victims has no overall effect upon the problem. It's roughly equivalent to advising motorists to lock their cars, take their keys, and place valuables out of sight. It's a good thing to do, but it doesn't prevent a determined thief or vandal from harming you and it certainly doesn't transform car thieves into law abiding citizens. It only provides a small incentive for them to break into someone else's car. Bullies will continue to damage victims and precipitate the development of serial killers, mass murderers, and domestic terrorists, and as long as their victims murder other people's children, bullies and their criminally incompetent parents have no incentive to clean up their act.

I believe that Izzy Kalman has convinced himself that his techniques are effective, but I also believe that he woefully underestimates the desocializing effect that community sanctioned bullying has on the victim's long term values and subsequent behavior. Being bullied didn't transform me into a killer, but it did teach me to understand killers. Even Adam Lanza's initially baffling choice of targets presents a certain amount of cold hearted logic. If you despise the community you grew up in and you want to hurt that community as much as possible, destroying what that community cherishes most and then depriving it of any chance to take revenge is a very effective technique. The citizens of Newtown, Connecticut now understand how victims of bullying feel. They're in great pain and utterly confused about why they were chosen and how anyone could be so fucking cruel.

Criminally incompetent parents and the cruel, violent progeny they dump into our nation's schools and neighborhoods are a serious national problem and an obvious danger to everyone. I think it's time for everyone to be brave enough to admit it.