They may be all buddy-buddy when it comes to fundraising, but the Obama administration still thinks Hollywood is responsible for all of the violence in the United States today.
At least that’s what Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the House Ways and Means Committee during a hearing on the department’s fiscal year 2014 budget Friday morning.
“I think we have a culture of violence in this country that is alarming,” Sebelius said in response to a question by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), on gun violence as related to general mental health in teenagers. “It clearly has different impact on different people, but there’s no question that I think it does have at minimum a desensitization for a lot of developing minds about what the impact of violence is and certainly for someone who is disturbed may have even a more frightening impact.”
She does acknowledge, however, that the media’s desensitization to violence is not the only cause of disturbed behavior in American teens today.
“I think America is a violent country, and that’s acted out in neighborhoods and on street corners on a regular basis, and that has an impact on our health, on our mental health, on our communities, on our kids,” Sebelius said.
Gun violence and how it relates to the media in the U.S. never fails to become the most popular political point of conversation after a mass shooting, the most prominent of late being the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut last December. Naturally, many Hollywood celebrities are in favor of increased gun control in America, despite the fact that many of them made their millions from acting in violent movies.
Some celebrities, including Snoop Lion and Jim Carrey, wrote new songs promoting gun bans. Others came together to film a PSA video, “Demand a Plan,” encouraging Washington to act on gun control legislation.
Who knows what these crazy kids will blame for violence in America next?
