The pep squad...

Okay. I think I've got this right: six girls in Florida attacked a fellow pep-squad member, while two boys acted as look-outs. The victim was badly hurt. All six girls and the two boys have been arrested. The prosecution wants all eight to be tried as adults which means they could be given life sentences.

The point of this to begin with? To make a really popular YouTube video.

There's been much consternation around the Internet on the fairness or unfairness of prosecutorial intentions, the viciousness of girls, the general lousiness of parents, and our obsession with celebrity, and those are just the meta-concerns. It gets more granulated as you travel around site to site and blog to blog. There are discussions about the rising cult of the mean girl, the contention that girls have always been this nasty, and musings on the attack as a natural outcropping of feminism.

During the Reagan administration, I decided I didn't like the general heartlessness of our culture. Seeing there wasn't much I could do about the large brushstrokes delineating society's direction, I checked out. I lived my life, went to work, tried not to read the papers too often, and did art. However, I did keep an eye cocked on the goings-on, and noted that untrammeled capitalism didn't seem to be doing us much good. I also observed the popular culture of the time: high concept movies replete with violence, the spreading delight in cocaine, and the admiration of wealth for its own sake. Not much ever changed. You might say our country's unhappy situation is the logical outgrowth of snaky tendencies given free rein. You might indeed say that. I sure would.

It seems to me that if girls are allowed unopposed access to violent imagery, see movies in which beautiful women kick ass, are continually exposed to the rewards of empty celebrity, and are never taught how to recognize crap as crap, we shouldn't be too surprised at any outcome.

Richard Price has a new novel out on the gentrification of a dicey neighborhood once the hipsters move in. In his book, one such hipstery guy is walking down the street when he's confronted by two guys, one of whom has a gun. They ask him for his wallet and the guy smiles and says, "Not tonight." Whereupon they shoot him dead and take his billfold. The muggers just needed some bucks for Chinese takeout, while the hipster thought he was in a movie.

It's very dangerous to think you're in a movie. I'm amazed by how many people actually think they're on the big screen, the tiny screen or any screen at all. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, I was mugged and wound up with a smashed hip and a bunch of other injuries. Afterwards, numbers of people asked me if I fought back. When I said I hadn't, I got a lot of You candy-ass looks in return. Sometimes I was asked bluntly, Why not?

There are many answers to this question. Here they are.

Any guy can beat-up any woman.The exceptions are rare. It does not help to take self-defense classes and learn how to smash a guy's instep, unless you practice smashing his instep on a consistent basis. Even if you take self-defense classes and learn to kick him in the balls, smash his instep, and ram your car-keys in his eyeballs, this will not help if he attacks you from behind. If you are grabbed and resist ineffectively, he will likely shoot you rather than jack around.

And, those women you see punching out guys in TV shows and movies? All that ultra-violence is faked. Don't try it.

Luckily I knew I wasn't in a movie. The pep squad obviously believes they're in one, but however much they lawyer up, real-life consequences will surely be theirs. By the time they emerge from prison or juvie, their YouTube video won't be worth a half-cup of warm spit.

Life trumps show-biz every damn time.