The Last Straw
There is a significant correlation between crime-comics reading and the more serious forms of juvenile delinquency
If it were the aim of adults to terrify children as persistently, as clearly and as graphically as possible, they would have to invent the comic-book industry. When I first announced my findings that these comic books are primers for crime, I was greeted with these arguments:
1) It is not true. Only the rarest comic book does that.
2) It is not true anymore, though it may have been true in the past. Now that is all changed.
3) If true, it was always thus.
4) Crime comic books have no effect at all on children's behavior.
5) Crime comic books are a major force in preventing juvenile delinquency.
6) Crime comic books are not read by children, but only by adults.
7) Comic books affect only "emotionally unstable" or "insecure" children and not the average child.
All these arguments have influenced the public. That they are self-contradictory was evidently overlooked or forgiven.
What is the relationship of crime comic books to juvenile delinquency? If they would prevent juvenile delinquency, there would be very little of it left. And if they were the outlet for children's primitive aggressions, this would be a generation of very subdued and controlled children.
Our research has proved that there is a significant correlation between crime-comics reading and the more serious forms of juvenile delinquency. Many children read only a few comics, read them for only a short time, read the better type (to the extent that there is a better type) and do not become imbued with the whole crime-comics atmosphere. Those children, on the other hand, who commit the more serious types of delinquency nowadays, read a lot of comic books, go in for the worst type of crime comics, read them for a long time and live in thought in the crime-comics world. The whole publicity-stunt claim that crime comics prevent juvenile delinquency is a hoax. I have not seen a single crime comic book that would have any such effect, nor have I ever seen a child or young adult who felt that he had been prevented from anything wrong by a comic book. Supposing you wanted to prevent promiscuous, illegitimate sexual relations, would you publish millions of books showing in detail where and how the man picks up the girl, where they go, the details of their relationships in bed and then how the next morning somebody breaks into their room and tosses them out of bed? A comic-book defender would say this teaches that "Sex does not pay.”
The role of comic books in delinquency is not the whole nor by any means the worst harm they do to children. It is just one part of it. Many children who never become delinquent or conspicuously disturbed have been adversely affected by them. Pouring sordid stories into the minds of children is not the same as pouring water over a duck's back. One would think that this would be the most elementary lesson in child guidance. But child experts have overlooked this for years without really studying children's comic-book reading.
How can a doctor discover that a man's diet is a contributing factor to his illness when he omits to ask the man what he eats, approves of what he is eating (without looking into what it really is) and does not know what these foodstuffs contain? This type of guidance has been practiced on children for years.
In 1951, Harper's magazine, in a piece attempting to refute my comic-book conclusions, quoted triumphantly the statement of a judge that he "never came across a single case where the delinquent or criminal act would be attributable to the reading of comic books."
Should not such a statement carry tremendous weight in my investigations? How could I disregard it if I wanted to be thoroughly scientific?
So I did look into it. I checked. How many juvenile delinquents had come into this judge's court, altogether?
One single case!
Could he really defend the millions of crime comic books as they are? He had this to say:
"I am firmly convinced that children should not be permitted to read the more lurid type of comic magazines, those which portray crime, violence, killing and sex situations. I am opposed to those books which are sadistic in tone. An unrelieved diet of violence and crime can do no good even to those children who are well-adjusted. Some children might readily obtain ideas of violence from comic books. Many children lack in maturity and judgment to control their actions after reading such books."
What about this judge's probation department? One of his chief probation officers was asked whether they ever inquired of any defendant about his comic-book reading. He replied:
"The subject played no part in our thinking of any great consequence, any more than the reading of the average run of publications such as Life."
Superintendents of reformatories also made the "not a single case" statement. What about them? Not only do their records show that they made no examination in this respect, but some institutions are filled to the brim with the worst kind of comic books which keep the inmates occupied and quiet.
Comic-book reading in child-care institutions and reformatories is particularly harmful because these children are so restrained otherwise. Superintendents may not take official cognizance of it or may have the illusion that only Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse are available in their particular institutions. A boy of thirteen was brought to me. He had just spent two years in a model reformatory-like institution. (Reformatories do not like the name reformatory, but they cling to reformatory methods.) This boy had got into trouble for stealing. He was a great comics reader, but in the reformatory "they would not allow the murder and mystery ones." The boy himself told me that the real practice was somewhat different from the rule. Reading crime comic books was "the only fun" he had had while in the institution.
Crime comics are certainly not the only factor, nor in many cases are they even the most important one, but there can be no doubt that they are the most unnecessary and least excusable one. In many cases, in conjunction with other factors, they are the chief one.
Edith was a delinquent girl of fourteen. Over the years the family had had contact with some twenty-five social agencies. It was a history of illness, vocational dislocation, disruption and financial difficulties. The girl, good-looking and anxious to get help, had serious aspirations to make something of her life.
Surely in such a case one cannot disregard the social conditions, nor can one ascribe delinquency directly to them. One must search for the particular in the general, the individual in the social, and vice versa. There is no such thing as abstract frustration leading to abstract aggression.
What goes on in the mind of such a girl? Where does the rationalization come from that permits her to act against her better impulses? Her ideal was Wonder Woman. Here was a morbid model in action. For years her reading had consisted of comic books. There was no question but that this girl lived under difficult social circumstances. But she was prevented from rising above them by the specific corruption of her character development by comic-book seduction. The woman in her had succumbed to Wonder Woman. By reading many comic books the decent but tempted child has the moral props taken from under him. The antisocial suggestions from comic books reach children in their leisure time, when they are alone, when their defenses are down.
An official psychiatric report on a nine-year-old delinquent had summed up the situation as follows: "It is felt that the mother is neurotic and has been unable to afford Alfred the needed depth of feeling required for him to achieve a firm personality structure." This is the typical high-sounding double-talk so widely employed these days with regard to troubled children. I saw his much-harassed mother, who had been fighting a losing battle to protect her son from bad influences on the street and in the crime comics. What had society given him to provide him with a "firm personality structure"? Crime comics in an endless stream.
Judge Jacob Panken has observed three separate cases where children got hold of lighter fluid, saturated another child with it and set him afire. He found in these three instances that these children, coming from different boroughs, favored a particular comic book which has on its cover a burning human being in flames. He felt that in each instance the comic book shared the responsibility, that "it is the straw which breaks the camel's back."
This Week In APORIA
So, way back on 11 July 2024, I posted this on Truth Social:
I have always said that, strategically, no one had any right to expect Joe to be more than a placeholder for 4 years. Although he was never reliably progressive, Biden (who has ALWAYS been a bit erratic) HAS accomplished more than I expected (in spite of constant obstruction) but the media doesn't like him because he doesn't make much (if any) money for them. Dems will HAVE to pick someone in August who will excite the living shit out of the pundits because they have to win EVERYTHING in November so they can fix crooked SCOTUS. They can no longer afford to be noble and do the right thing. No one cares if you played a good clean game. They have to follow Starmer's lead. That's how you win.
I received this comment from Shannon:
Mostly sad concurrence. I'm hoping that Biden understands reality but is only waiting for the fake Republicans to lock themselves behind the orange puppet. After the GOP convention he will withdraw from the race and possibly even resign the presidency...
But I am most concerned about Putin's election interference. If the Democratic candidate is Biden or Harris, then the blame (for not stopping the attacks or not responding effectively enough) may stick. I actually think the strongest Democratic candidate would be a "national outsider" while the current president stays focused on "flying the plane through the storm"...
As it turned out, Shannon totally nailed it… and from what I’ve been able to glean so far, Joe took EVERYBODY by surprise with his 21 July tweet. It could turn out to be a political maneuver worthy of Varys or Littlefinger. Now Agent Orange is stuck with a demagogue universally detested by all sane American women… who might even REPLACE him on the ticket should trending poll numbers frighten the GOP enough (???)
Fred’s Video Collection
Some folks didn’t like The Wertheimer’s unusual take on the John Phillips’ classic (immortalized by Scott MacKenzie) but the very short montage culled from The Summer of Love: How Hippies Changed the World is well worth watching, if I do say so myself. Yes, I was THERE in July 1967… but I was more interested in the SF “comic shops” (such as they were) than the BE-INS and LOVE-INS. Remember that giant comic book from WHAM-O? Try lugging that thing around on a hot day.
Nature Boys? Truth Seekers? Campus Radicals? A GRASS roots syncretic movement cleverly designed by some very principled progressives to self-destruct the minute the corporations took an interest in it. So really, there really were no REAL hippies left standing by 1968. Just phony baloney yippies who managed to get Nixon elected by screwing the Dems.
As it turned out, it was just performance art on a massive scale that got a lot of progressives in serious trouble.
The Summer of Love: How Hippies Changed the World (BBC, 2017)
The untold story of how a German cult, pioneering psychologists and secret LSD experiments sparked a gathering of hippie tribes in 1967 San Francisco that would change the world.