Chicken Soup with Izzy Kalman...yet again...

Izzy Kalman is at it again.

His latest criticism of anti-bullying laws published over at Head Shrinkers Monthly (from which I am banned from expressing an opinion by the way) is basically the same badly flawed argument he's been making for years. He's once again arguing that anti-bullying laws increase rather than decrease bullying, possibly because he's confusing an increase in the willingness of victims to complain with an increase in bullying. That's as flawed as equating an increase in the willingness of rape victims to file criminal charges with an increase in the commission of the crime. It's a common misconception, but his readers should expect more from a guy with a masters degree in psychology.

Let's begin with a few basics about human behavior, a subject that Izzy Kalman should be somewhat familiar with.

Laws that are widely perceived as necessary are reasonably effective when enforced. No one argues that burglary increases when victims file complaints with the police and even Izzy Kalman isn't dumb enough to promote a Burglars2Buddies program. Anti-burglary laws are effective because the public does not look upon burglary as a right of passage or some other legitimate activity. Burglars are considered to be criminals...period.

Anti-bullying laws are difficult to enforce effectively because the public is extremely bigoted toward low status individuals. Americans envy, admire, and fantasize about the sort of cocky, belligerent sociopaths who enjoy hurting others, and absolutely despise kids who are physically weak, unaggressive, non-athletic, lacking in social skills, or otherwise different or non-conformist. Americans shamelessly enable bullies and don't give a damn about victims.

And don't let the fact that we elected a black guy to be our President fool you. Bigotry is still alive and well in America. Only the demographics have changed. If the jocks of Columbine concentrated their attention on black students, they would have been expelled and probably subject to criminal charges. But since they primarily bullied students who were simply low status, their criminal behavior was and still is considered to be normal and acceptable.

There was a lot of noise in the media about the claim that one of the Columbine killers referred to one of the victims as a nigger, yet when a high status student sunk a basket in gym class and screamed, "another Jew in the oven," it attracted relatively little attention. In the eyes of the good Christian citizens of Littleton, bigotry is charming, clever, and riotously funny when displayed by a genetically superior member of the gridiron elite but absolutely unforgivable when displayed by a student of relatively low social status.

The American public's tolerance for bigotry obviously varies with the status of the bigot.

Izzy Kalman is correct about one thing. Anti-bullying laws alone will not solve America's bullying problem. Our culture needs to change and Izzy Kalman could inspire some of that needed change if he chose to do so. If you don't like men who want to emulate the behavior of Eric Harris, Timothy McVeigh, and Adam Lanza, then stop creating them. Think of, speak of, and treat bullies as you would treat any other bigot. When you hear someone refer to a victim of bullying as a faggot, pussy, or wimp, just imagine someone in a white sheet referring to someone as a kike, spic, or nigger and you'll have a very accurate assessment of their character and the sort of values taught to them by their family and community.

Perhaps Izzy could add his two cents worth here.

Chicken Soup with Sucker Punch Athletics dot com...

I've given up on the idea of taking a serious break from blogging. Every time I make the attempt, I see something that tops the last colossally stupid example of why terrorism exists.

A few weeks ago I was in my local Home Depot when a man secretly hoping for another school massacre walked by. He was wearing a black t-shirt with the words, "I'm not a BULLY. Your just a Pussy!" in big, white letters. I would normally expect to see such a shirt on the back of one of those wedge shaped Mad Max extras one can find on the Ultimate Sociopath Channel. But the wearer was anything but muscular. From the way he artificially held his arms out as he walked, he clearly thought he was a body builder. He wasn't. When I got close to him in the checkout line, I was able to get a better look. He could have been in his late twenties, or his late forties, or anywhere in between. His physical condition suggested someone who'd possibly eaten out of a dumpster at some point in his life.

Enough about homeless Harry.

My real concern is with an industry that shamelessly promotes criminal behavior in the wake of media events like the Newtown Massacre. The individuals who designed, manufactured, and advertised the shirt in question obviously place no value on the lives of the next group of kids to be slaughtered. If you place a bit more value on human life than they do, here's something you can do.

Write to the knuckleheads at Sucker Punch Athletics and ask them why, 14 years after Columbine they've chosen to display such a heinous level of depraved indifference toward the next group of parents who have to bury their children...and there will be a next group, and probably many more groups after that. In a culture that glorifies brutality and lavishly rewards the most violent sociopaths the American Family can produce, a steady supply of mass murderers is almost inevitable.

After you've written to Knuckleheads, Inc. courtesy copy a few other interested parties like Columbine Principal Frank DeAngelis, some of the gun control advocates in Newtown, Conn., Sports Illustrated, Izzy Kalman, etc. Be imaginative.

Chicken Soup with Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and the American lynch mob...

Let's begin with the facts.

Trayvon Martin was a healthy looking 17 year old man. (And stop calling him a boy. It's very insulting.) George Zimmerman is a pudgy looking 29 year old man. Trayvon Martin could easily have sprinted the 70 yards or so to where he was staying and been contentedly munching on Skittles in front of the television before George Pudgymon Zimmerman had a chance to exit his vehicle. He could have called the police and reported being followed by a weird, pudgy looking pervert.

Trayvon Martin chose not to do that for reasons I consider obvious. In the environment Trayvon Martin grew up in, running away is considered to be pussy. A man...a real man doesn't run away. A real man doesn't attempt to deescalate conflict. A real man escalates conflict until someone is injured or killed.

Trayvon Martin wasn't raised to take the most prudent course of action. He was raised to be confrontational. In his environment, a man who isn't feared by others isn't a man. He's a pussy. Trayvon Martin did exactly what his real man role models taught him to do. He turned on a pursuer whom I could probably out run and escalated the conflict until someone was dead. He just didn't expect the life lost to be his own.

George Zimmerman has been widely accused of practicing what is generally referred to as "racial profiling" usually by individuals who are shamelessly displaying the same behavior. Here's how the racial profiling practiced by America's Zimmerman hating lynch mob works:

All young black men who are accused of a crime are innocent...period.

All members of the law enforcement community who arrest young black men are racists...period.

Anyone who openly admits that the demographic group known as "young black men" boasts a stratospheric rate of incarceration and a tendency to react to every conflict or disagreement with violence is a racist.

Trayvon Martin was a young black man and was therefore innocent, just another tragic victim of racism.

I'm not buying their story and contrary to what many would like to believe, I'm not a racist. I've spent my entire life, the better part of half a century in America and I cannot recall a single incident where a young black man made me feel unusually threatened. I spent my adolescence in the 1960's and 1970's in a community that was politically progressive, yet had only a handful of black families residing there. There was nothing particularly threatening about the few black kids I went to school with. They behaved and talked like everyone else...

Then came middle school and something called the "Metco Program."

In the sixth grade I suddenly came in contact with a dozen or so kids who grew up in an inner city environment. I wasn't abused or threatened by any of them, but they were clearly different and reminded me of characters I only saw on television. At the age of eleven, I learned an important lesson. Skin color did not determine your behavior. Your behavior is determined by your environment and especially by your role models.

I'd like to learn more about Trayvon Martin's environment and role models before the lynch mob hunts George Zimmerman down. What do you think?