Lieberation

The Honorable
Joseph Lieberman
706 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Lieberman:

Congratulations on your recent bid for the U.S. Presidential nomination. I have long been a supporter of your efforts to combat the gratuitous violence and unchecked sexuality of Hollywood. The recent case in which two California boys murdered their mother after being inspired by an episode of The Sopranos indicates that your tireless efforts are needed now more than ever.

While you have been effective in your anti-violence campaign, I feel there is one area which demands more attention. It may be shocking, but there is one place where our children are exposed to sex and violence every day that often goes unnoticed: their schools!

By way of example, I'd like to describe a few questionable selections from the reading lists of my 13-year-old and 15-year-old's English classes. Earlier this year my daughter described to me a so-called "classic" in which every single main character is ultimately murdered or dies by suicide. What kind of message does that send to our children? My son read another story by the same author which is simply brimming with bloodshed and, worse yet, withcraft!!! At one point the so-called hero muses idly about wading through a river of blood! How are my children supposed to become responsible, well-rounded adults when their schools make them read filth like Hamlet and Macbeth?

But that's not the worst of it. In another story read by my daughter's class, a man murders his own father, has sex with and IMPREGNANTES his own mother, and ends up stabbing out his own eyes! Is this what passes for literature these days? I fully support the notion of a diverse reading list, but I'm sure there are more wholesome representatives of Greek literature than this garbage.

And the violence doesn't end with books. My son's history teacher showed her class a movie which featured every kind of violent content: heads exploding, limbs being hacked off, bullets flying every which way... The final scene features nothing more than a huge pile of rotting corpses! Glory? More like Gory!

I hope you see the need to address this problem, Senator. Our children are under attack every day in classrooms across the country by pornographic reading lists. I suppose that we, as parents, could, theoretically, sit down with our children and explain to them the difference between real life and entertainment, and actually take an active and personal interest in their lives rather than blaming the media for all of there problems, but why should we? We have better things to do! What's the point of having schools and television if they can't raise our kids for us? What are you people doing with my taxes?

I'm cc-ing a copy of this letter to my children's schools, and plan on informing other parents of this problem. I'm confident that you can eradicate these antisocial books from our classrooms once you become President, and if you promise to address this problem, you've got my vote.

Very truly yours,
Martha Langdon
Riverside, CA