Share the blame for McInerney's shame
By Michael Sullivan 08/14/2008
At the university level, journalism students are taught about a theory called “adult discount.” Adult discount is the idea that juveniles have a difficult time discerning between reality and what they see on television and in movies or what they hear on the radio — never mind that the reality within the confines of their homes differs from home to home.
A juvenile’s perception of the world — according to adult discount — is exactly what he or she sees and what others say it is, whether it is true or not. Until they are adults, the minds of young people are immature and, in some cases, working only on an instinctual level. In the case of Brandon McInerney, the teenager accused of a hate crime and the murder of Oxnard eighth-grader Larry King, this theory has been thrown out the window.
Sadly, McInerney’s case has been turned over to the adult courts, and he will be prosecuted with the possibility of going to prison for the next 51 years of his life. This move disregards the fact that this boy is just barely tapping into adulthood and most likely has a very limited understanding of the world around him.
With that said, the unfortunate state of affairs should not rest solely on McInerney’s shoulders for the pointless loss of life but on ours as well. Understanding adult discount does not mean this teenager shouldn’t be accountable for his actions, but we need to think of how we are raising our children. Somehow, we as a society have managed to breed such hatred that our children are willing to destroy lives because of something they don’t understand, i.e. a young man dressing up in women’s garb and being homosexual.
And to make matters worse, now comes the game of who’s to blame.
This week defense attorney William “Willy” Quest will build his defense case on the underlying idea that, somehow, King deserved it. Quest said he wanted McInerney tried for manslaughter and then would build McInerney’s defense on King harassing McInerney and argue that the school officials did nothing to intervene.
It’s too bad McInerney’s parents aren’t standing trial, or the media or people who have guns in places where 14-year-olds can get to them.
So this is the situation at hand: The defense attorney is grasping at straws, pointing at everyone else to blame for McInerney’s actions; the courts are trying to make an example of one of the very few students, if not the only student, who remained alive after a violent school shooting by trying him as an adult; and the community is split on how to handle such an extreme situation: put the kid away forever or remember he is just a kid.
But all of this boils down to McInerney’s actions. The axiom “if I knew then what I know now” comes to mind.
It’s too bad for McInerney. It’s sad that he thought the best solution to dealing with King was to kill the object, the person that annoyed him.
If McInerney could have fast-forwarded time and had a mind cultured and a full understanding of how the world works rather than just the limited views held by today’s media, maybe things would have been different.
To think we promote violence on television, whether we are watching it or playing video games that condone blowing up others who are in our way. In some households, the only R-rated films that are tolerated have graphic violence, while movies containing explicit sexual scenes are left sitting on the shelves, due to the sensitive nature of sex.
Isn’t the controversy surrounding McInerney’s alleged homicide that it was a hate crime based on the fact that King dressed in a feminine manner and was forthcoming about his homosexuality?
It seems as though society has things terribly mixed up.
It’s hard to say whether the way prosecutors, defense teams, the courts or even the community is handling the McInerney trial is right or wrong, but one thing’s for sure: Our society is getting out of hand.
Society should be in a state of progress and becoming more civilized and more sensitive to others’ rights to life and liberty. But alas, that is not the case. How could we be moving backward socially after so much progress to move forward?
Let’s think about our children more and stop thinking about ourselves. We should encourage our kids to learn about and embrace diversity instead of cultivating hatred. We should become more accepting and refuse violence as a solution. We should learn to love and forgive and teach our children to be more civilized than we are. Our children don’t know more than what we teach them and allow them to watch.
Before we go trying teenagers as adults, we should look to the influences that created a juvenile murderer; and before we lock a child up for several decades, we should turn off our televisions and start paying more attention to how our kids are behaving.
McInerney should not stand trial alone; we should be standing with him. We should hope the court has sympathy on this severely confused boy and not just throw him away into prison system. One day this child can hopefully, somehow, grow up to become a contributing member of society. And 51 years in prison isn’t the way.
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I applaud you for a well-written article that avoids the emotional trap that this matter inspires from both ends and analyzes a very difficult situation with rationality and compassion.
Of course, we won't be tried as a society by a court of law. This type of social adjudication has no basis in reality. Our trials will come in the form of real life experiences as we either do or do not apply to life the lessons we learn on a daily basis.
We might ask ourselves, What are we willing to do to make sure our families never suffer from this type of violence, as victims or perpetrators?
And the overwhelming answer will be: Love. By tapping into the essence of peace and universal harmony that exists as our natural state of being, we are tapping into a life immersed in peace and love.
Love is an energy field. And we need to first learn how to tap into it, how to become love, and then we need to learn how to condition our children on the same principle. Show them how to make every decision in their youthful lives, based not from a place of fear or anger or hatred, like most of us do, but from the security of high-vibrating love.
We can change our own realities right now if we want to by teaching our children how to do this. And then we can begin to change the collective-reality we are experiencing on a global level. We do have the abilities to make this world a better place. But first, we need to learn how to achieve this state of bliss within ourselves.
Peace and love is the verdict.
Who's to blame? The adult who put a gun in the hands of a child.
Sad, sad state... The boy did something horrendous, but let's get him some help. He obviously came from a bad home. He needs punishment sure, but he needs psych help too. Youth can't just be given up on.
Casa Pacifica is where King lived. It is a "rehabilitation" facility which is paid ( in the thousands per month ) to keep this kid off the street and to provide education for him in-house. He had a history which placed him there. He was not supposed to be traipsing around a public school. It has an impressive group of board members, including local lawyers and councilpeople, and its name has been kept out of the papers. School officials, Casa Pacifica officials, the DA's office ( for pushing this to be an "adult" case based primarily on the fact that a few Nazi emblems were found in McInerny's home qualified him , in their alleged minds, to be tried as an adult ), the Sheila Khuel gay crowd (for getting this on the cover of Newsweek - making the defendant into a poster child for gay bashing - he's 14 for crying out loud ) are all to blame here - not the public.