I hope you’ll all forgive me if I don’t jump on the Great Anti-Bullying Bandwagon just yet.
But it seems darned near everybody else has. Dr. Phil devoted an entire show to bullying last Thursday, complete with distraught teens and weeping audience members.
The headline on the cover of the Oct. 18 edition of People magazine reads, “Deadly Bullying.” It has a photo of Tyler Clementi and two 13-year-olds.
Seth Walsh and Asher Brown were bullied for being gay, so the editors of People have a legitimate case in claiming those two as victims of bullying.
Clementi? Not so much. He was the victim of a cruel, despicable prank. That does not rise – or perhaps the more appropriate word is “descend” – to the level of bullying. But that won’t stop the editors of People magazine – and others – from launching their crusade against anti-gay bullying, as if bullying only happens to gays.
It doesn’t. It happens to all sorts of people. And it doesn’t just happen to kids.
Margaret Matthews of Chicago was bullied for a year before she fired a bullet into the shoulder of that 12-year-old who was her tormentor.
Bullying isn’t new; American kids of bygone eras just coped with it on their own. That was before we became wuss nation. When that happened isn’t clear, but I suspect it was when we started listening to people like Dr. Phil.
Three anecdotes illustrate how bullying was handled in the past.
1. Washington, D.C., early 1970s: I often visited a college buddy whose younger brother shot hoops near the family garage with some of his friends. One of them was a very light-skinned African American whom one particular guy tormented often, sneeringly calling him “white boy.”
One day the light-skinned kid had enough and lit into the other guy with fists flailing. They fought a few minutes until others broke up the fracas. The light-skinned kid actually got the worst of the physical encounter, but he’d made his point.
The other kid never called him “white boy” again.
2. Baltimore, Md., early 1960s: I don’t know what beef my older sister Carolyn had with her tormentors, but it led to both of us being attacked in the halls of the housing project where we lived one night. The girls promised to finish the job the next time they saw my sister.
She decided to handle the problem by walking home from school the next day openly brandishing a nine-inch butcher knife. The bilious bunch of bullying bimbos must have heard that one Carolyn Kane was cruising the ‘hood with a blade and didn’t aim to please, because they left her alone after that.
3. Baltimore, Md. mid-1960s: The group of ruffians didn’t like that I walked home with Vivian Mason and Lily McElveen, two gorgeous girls, every day from summer enrichment school. They made cracks about me being gay and/or effeminate. I responded with what is probably the best method to combat bullies and tormentors.
I ignored them. This drove them absolutely bonkers.
They finally had to resort to threatening physical violence. Ms. Mason, Ms. McElveen and I just found another route home from school.
The problem was solved; no one was hurt; no violence was used. And, most importantly, no one ended up committing suicide.
The three cases cited above have one thing in common, although the method of resolving the first two left a bit to be desired.
The bottom line: we had to take a stand. That’s the only way to handle bullies. Today’s youth don’t need Dr. Phil and People magazine to tell them that.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
