Keller @ Large: Some People Just Don't Learn
BOSTON (CBS) - Luckily, my two boys are grown men, so I didn't have any impressionable young kids on the couch next to me Sunday watching the Celtics game when they broke away for a TV ad promoting a new Sylvester Stallone movie.
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The title, "Bullet to the Head," is cleverly drawn from a scene in the film, which, according to an online content description, contains "frequent scenes of action violence including shoot-outs and hand-to-hand fighting, sometimes with the use of knives," along with over fifty uses of extremely strong vulgarity. The ad included glimpses of our hero, Stallone, expressing satisfaction at having killed people, and his desire to continue doing so.
This particular piece of trash may have been made some time ago, but the ad campaign is being launched at a moment of heightened public sensitivity toward and concern over the cultural glorification of gun violence.
We can only assume that any remote twinge of social conscience the Hollywood creators of this garbage felt about their work after Newtown has quickly receded, to the point where a Sunday afternoon basketball game seemed a perfect spot to promote it.
Once again, we are confronted with a dismaying truth about humanity – some people just don't learn.
Consider the case of three-time former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who at age 76 is old enough to have lived through the horror of World War II and the Holocaust, but apparently learned nothing from the experience.
Berlusconi this weekend chose the occasion of a ceremony commemorating the tens of thousands of Italians murdered by the Nazis to tell reporters that Benito Mussolini, Hitler's infamous wartime ally, was really a good leader whose collaboration with mass slaughter needed to be understood in context.
This wasn't the first time Berlusconi has defended the fascist regime, and given the number of years he's had to learn about what they did to his country and humanity, probably won't be the last.
Some people – including supposedly smart business executives and experienced politicians - never learn.
Because to some people, decency and truth don't matter when there's politics to be played or money to be made.
You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.
