Bullies, as they are wont to do, have forced their way into
everybody’s head.
In Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a distraught dad wired his autistic
son, catching educators calling him a “bastard” and laughing at
him. The father made headlines this week by demanding the district
fire the teacher as they did the aide. He wants the school to
release their names. “There are people asking me, ‘How do I wire my
kid?’”
The most talked about but least watched film of the year is
Bully, which has grossed $1.3 million in two weeks. The
Motion Picture Association of America initially bestowed an “R”
rating, but Change.org, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and celebrities
Justin Bieber, Ellen DeGeneres, and Meryl Streep hectored the
ratings board to loosen standards. “The original ruling prompted
the aggressive campaign by the Weinstein Co., which is releasing
‘Bully,’ to lower the R rating to PG-13,” ABCNews.com
reports. The new rating means it is safe for overbearing
teachers to compel captive classrooms to watch the documentary.
MTV airs “Bully Beatdown,” as if on a loop. The program provides
vicarious vengeance for victims when cage fighters beat up their
tormentors in front of a Roman gladiator-style crowd lusting for
bully blood.
Forty-nine states have submitted to pressure groups in codifying
anti-bullying legislation. The Department of Education features a
stopbullying.gov site,
singling out Montana as the sole holdout. The president has gone
beyond the bully pulpit to support federal anti-bullying
legislation, which empowers Uncle Sam to pick on local schools.
“We can’t continue to legislate everything,” Tennessee state
representative Jeremy Faison reasonably said in reference to a new
proposed anti-bullying law. He wondered if parents not instilling
self-esteem in children at home rather than bullies stripping them
of it at school were more culpable in youth suicides. The state’s
Democratic Party called him a “disgrace,” claiming that “of course
a tall and burly Faison doesn’t see any problems with bullying.”
Predictably, the browbeaten state representative apologized.
For a culture so big on irony it’s ironic that we don’t see the
irony in ourselves. Alas, bullies never recognize themselves as
bullies. They frequently imagine their victims as the bullies,
which justifies the agony they inflict. Hell hath no fury like an
adult rectifying the injustices inflicted in childhood.
Whether the bullying is real (the New Jersey teachers) or
imagined (a politician opposing legislation), those crusading
against it often descend into bullying, too. The worst bullies
rationalize their bullying as anti-bullying. People’s behavior goes
terribly wrong when they insist they are in the right.
Particularly distasteful is the use of deceased young people to
silence dissent. Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi and Hadley,
Massachusetts high school student Phoebe Prince may have been
people once but are now iconic symbols wielded by demagogues. The
post-Christian world makes saints of suicide cases. The Old Church
granted neither funerals nor burials to those who ended their lives
by ending their lives. Surely there is a happy (unhappy?) medium
between venerating one who has done something so horrible and
further victimizing one who is also, ultimately, a victim.
All witch hunts are exercises in group bullying. They not only
make it cool to terrorize the individual bucking the group, they
make it obligatory. When Hollywood, the president, and cable news
anchors gang up on bullies, it’s hard not to root for the
underdog.
It’s easy to take on bullies in the abstract. They pose no
threat to hit back. They make an easy mark.
What’s difficult is taking them on when they stare you in the
face. The promoted method, snitching — whether to a teacher or a
policeman — has traditionally been a surefire way to court, not
repel, intimidation. A culture that is litigious, force-phobic,
averse to family-sized families, and monitors children the way the
Stasi spied on writers makes taboo the most effective methods of
dealing with a ruffian: a hard punch in the face or an older
brother. Thus does our passive-aggressive culture make bullying
harder for adults to detect and for kids to combat.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he
does not become a monster,” Friedrich Nietzsche warned. “And if you
gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into
you.”
Or, guard against becoming a bully when you crusade against
them.
