Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review April 10, 2001 / 17 Nissan, 5761

Bob Greene

Bob Greene
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


An ugly game you're destined never to win


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- HAVING had some wisdom teeth yanked recently, and faced with a few days of painkiller-induced fog, I decided to revisit the one game I have ever invented: Find the Gun.

I hadn't played Find the Gun in quite a while, because it had become too tedious: You always find the gun. But with time on my hands and holes in my mouth, I vowed to see if anything had changed.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Find the Gun -- either you didn't see the column where I introduced it, or you drifted off to sleep before you finished reading the riveting prose -- anyone can play, and it's absolutely free, except for the fact that you have to have cable TV to participate.

Here's how it works:

Say you have 60 cable channels (although Find the Gun works regardless of how many channels you have).

Turn your TV set on. Start at Channel 00 or Channel 01 -- whatever is the lowest one your TV allows you to see.

Start zapping upward through the channels. Spend one second on each channel before moving on to the next.

Find the gun.

That's it -- find the gun. Look at what is on your screen, and see if there's a gun in the picture. If there is, the game is over.

The challenge is to get all the way through all the channels without seeing a gun. If you are able to do that -- if you don't find a gun -- you win.

It's possible to win -- there are times when you can get all the way from 01 to 60 (or 80, or whatever your highest channel is), and not find a single gun.

But it doesn't happen often. And usually, if you have somehow not found a gun and you replay the game immediately, starting at the beginning again, you will find one.

I devised Find the Gun during a dreary weekend in Kansas one year, when I had long hours to wait for the event I had come to write about. The weather was lousy, I was supposed to stay by the phone, I didn't have a book with me, so Find the Gun was invented.

Here's what Find the Gun tells you:

We are constantly being lectured about how violent our society is -- how filled with gunfire and mayhem our world has become.

And that is true, in a sense. You can't pick up the newspaper on a given day without reading terrible stories of people doing cruel things to each other.

But think about it: On a typical day, how many guns do you actually see? Yesterday, for example -- how many guns did you see with your own eyes?

Perhaps none. In the real world, it is entirely possible, even likely, to get through a day without setting eyes on a real gun.

But on TV -- which purports to show us our world -- guns are so common that they might as well be table lamps.

They're a cheap way to get the audience's attention -- a garish and ugly method to attract eyes. As commonplace as guns are in our society, they're much more common on television and in the movies. And television is a teacher -- television provides us with expectations about what life is.

Thus: Find the Gun.

It can be a pretty depressing game. Once you start to do it -- once you begin to play Find the Gun and really pay attention to what's on your TV screen -- it can put you into a somewhat dismal mood. You can probably walk to the corner mailbox right now, turn around, come back home, and you won't see a gun. But play Find the Gun, and you most likely will.

To repeat: There are occasions when you will get through all the channels without seeing a gun in someone's hand, a gun on a desk, a gun in a holster, a gun on someone's hip, a gun being fired by a criminal or a police officer or a soldier or an angry teenager. Your best bet if you want to give yourself an edge at winning the game -- at making it through the channels without seeing a gun -- is to play on a Sunday morning, traditionally the time for religious programming. Although you will be surprised at how many guns you find even on Sunday mornings.

The point of all this? The point is that, as unpleasant as the world we live in can be, the world that television chooses to bring to us is so much more unpleasant, on a constant basis. It has become almost visual background music -- the guns that are always there. We stop noticing.

Anyway, Find the Gun is how I spent my time while the places where the wisdom teeth used to be started to heal. The teeth are gone, but the guns are still there.



JWR contributor Bob Greene is a novelist and columnist. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

Up

04/06/01: Who do you really think you work for?
04/05/01: Two torturers of children back in prison
04/03/01: Welcome home -- especially if you didn't go
03/29/01: 'Why wouldn't she believe she can get out?'
03/27/01: Judge Weinke, child torturer to meet again
03/22/01: What they did to her at her own front door
03/21/01: "I'm not proud to say that I witnessed this"
03/19/01: "WHY WEREN'T YOU HIS FRIENDS?"
03/13/01: When will there be zero tolerance for bullying?
03/09/01: She wouldn't dance with another ... well, yes, she would
03/06/01: Our lasting legacy will turn out to be a four-letter word
03/01/01: The things we've won, and those we've thrown away
02/27/01: Civilians on subs: A civics lesson that's well worth keeping
02/23/01: Well, he did sing: 'This time you gave me a mountain ...'
02/21/01: The world's insanity can fit into a parking space
02/16/01: The words and ideas in this column are unauthorized
02/13/01: He has a family now: 'He just wants to be a boy'
02/12/01: Child torturer grad is walking free -- and using an alias
02/09/01: They didn't even know how to find the children
02/08/01: 'The little boy's face had been burned with cigarettes'
02/07/01: Child-protection chief in grad case ousted
01/30/01: There is something wrong when we begin to assume that all death penalty cases are flawed
01/29/01: Sometimes a police story begins with a poem
01/24/01: It's a dog-eat-dog world -- unless you're the only dog
01/23/01: Can we be civil and bombproof at the same time?
01/19/01: First came Saints, next came Sinners, then came Bronson
01/18/01: Of Saints and Sinners, and the nearness of faraway dreams
01/15/01: Does anyone care that Germany owns the Jeep?
01/11/01: The day that America heard the locks click shut
12/28/00: The talk of 2000? It's right there in your hand
12/27/00: There actually is a lesson for us in all of this
12/26/00: 'You weren't supposed to love me; that wasn't the program'
12/21/00: The words from this election year that may echo the longest
12/19/00: The most impressive things are the ones strategists can't shape
12/14/00: There is a word for what the country is going through
12/13/00: Courtroom moments that never make the front page
12/07/00: Does Justice Scalia really believe Americans can't take the truth?
12/07/00: Al Gore slept here -- and there goes the neighborhood
12/06/00: In the midst of all the noise, the truth will be heard
12/05/00: If you think the election has been weird up until now ...
11/30/00: If two men applying for a job were treated like this ...
11/29/00: Will all of this turn people away from politics? Dream on
11/28/00: Send Bush and Gore to their rooms -- bring in the pros
11/23/00: Three little words-- and two strange weeks in Florida
11/22/00: Did you hear the one about the farmer's daughter in Florida?
11/21/00: The shocking saga of the incredible shrinking men
11/15/00: The glorious mess that has come our way
11/09/00: How do you cross the line when the line has vanished?
11/08/00: The wave of the future
11/06/00: The crime that hides behind a wall of silence
11/02/00: If you have been asking yourself what you can do ...
11/01/00: 'He will never know what it is like to ride a bicycle'
10/31/00: 'It makes you feel that you are absolutely powerless'
10/30/00: THE KILLER LEARNS 'ANGER MANAGEMENT' AND IS FREED
10/26/00: `I'm not going to go up there and yell and scream'
10/25/00: With prosecutors silent, the other killer is released
10/24/00: The boy's killer: 'I've served my time, and I'm out'
10/23/00: Blaming the boy for bringing on his own killing
10/20/00: The child's killer is released -- to care for other children
10/19/00: Words that the judge would not allow to be spoken
10/18/00: A courthouse game in which the boy was not included
10/17/00: The killers get 7 to 25 years ... with a wink
10/13/00: While the killers maneuver, the boy goes unburied
10/13/00: The killers demand a concession -- and they get it
10/12/00: The prosecutors decide it doesn't qualify as murder
10/11/00: 'He wouldn't eat his eggs, and we put him to bed'
10/10/00: The autopsy leaves no questions: 'It was a homicide'
10/06/00: 'Had they shot him in the head, he would have suffered less'
10/05/00: 'I remember the moment that I first saw the human bite marks'
10/04/00: They killed a 3-year-old boy -- and they are free
09/29/00: This just in, sort of: How the news can make you calm
09/27/00: Like being with old friends in places you don't remember
09/21/00: If the Olympics banished television . . .
09/19/00: As summer ends, have the executives learned any lessons?
09/14/00: The new stardom that doesn't require paying any dues
09/12/00: Leave a light on for us children of the pioneers
09/09/00: River banks? How to turn water into an endless cash flow
09/06/00:Oh, give me a home, where the megabytes roam . . .
09/01/00: If this works, it can literally change young lives
08/30/00: From inside all those screen porches, one more cheer
08/24/00: Who will make your life better by August of 2004?
08/24/00: Four men running -- Why do we have to throw out two?
08/16/00:The certain way to measure the Lieberman factor
08/10/00: Can a library be a library without books?
08/08/00: Can't they spare eight nights every four years?
08/04/00: Cheney, Abe Lincoln and Ricky Martin -- do they add up?
08/02/00: Convention aside, you might want to tune in
07/27/00: How to make a killing
07/25/00: 'If we didn't do it, no one else would'
07/24/00: The executioners who walk among us
07/20/00: On Main Street, signs of the times tell two stories
07/18/00: Have the choices changed, or have we?
07/14/00: Gable, Hepburn, Zanuck--you wouldn't find them at HOJO's
07/13/00: The Great Lie about political conventions
07/06/00: If this is victory, what would defeat feel like?
06/29/00: A bright moon and a missing person on Orange Ave.
06/26/00: They're not singing our song
06/22/00: The name game
06/07/00: It's like knocking on a revolving door
06/06/00: Steven who? A close encounter of mistaken identity
06/02/00: Of summer days, summer nights and pebbles in a jar
05/31/00: The best laughter, the truest voices, will never fade
05/25/00: Of distant visions, close views, and Bobby Knight
05/24/00: 'The luckiest thing that ever happened to me'
05/23/00: 'It's funny how you remember the little things'
05/22/00: 'The whisper of a generation saying goodbye to its children'
05/19/00: The place to find life is not a keyboard
05/18/00: A problem of suds but no duds
05/17/00: Are those lazy, hazy dot-com days fading?
05/16/00: The truest things in life require not a single word
05/15/00: 'Evidently he didn't like the way she dusted the house'
05/12/00: Why news executives are hoping this 'woman' is a hit
05/11/00: Ted Koppel, Hitler, Mellencamp . . . and words of love
05/10/00: Maybe it's time for the right people to hear our cheers
05/09/00: The lesson that they always learn late
05/05/00: 'Excuse me, but there seems to be something in my water'
05/05/00: When your first dream turns out to be your best dream
05/04/00: Even baseball couldn't make light of this superstition
05/03/00: The ringmaster who looks back from your mirror
05/02/00: There they go, just a-yappin' down the street . . .
05/01/00: You must remember this (Unless you don't)
04/24/00: Now that casino ads are allowed to tell the truth . . .
04/13/00: The man in the seat across the airplane aisle
04/11/00: A star is born, but do you know where it's @?
04/06/00: Through the eyes of Norman Rockwell
03/21/00: 10 good reasons to avoid making this list
03/21/00: 'I tell myself that they've gone on vacation'
03/21/00: Monday Night Football memories
03/02/00: This report card deserves an 'A' in every subject
02/29/00: What really happened on New Year's eve
02/23/00: Of paste pots, Denver sandwiches and finding Dr. Sam
02/17/00: What would you like to stay exactly the same?
02/04/00: Politics: When did the stagehands step onto the stage?
02/01/00: An awesome idea to make you sound better
01/26/00: Y3K already? We haven't yet recovered from Y2K
01/21/00: Watching the pot that always boils
01/19/00:The story behind the men on the museum steps
01/13/00: Here's to the students who never hear a cheer
01/11/00: The oh-so-sweet sound of modems in the morning
01/04/00: The person in your mirror just got wiser
12/31/99: A lesson -- and a memory -- to last a millennium
12/29/99: Racing the clock, even when it's running backwards
12/13/99: The right to bear coffee
12/08/99: From teen idol to ink-stained wretch: Can you Dig it?
12/02/99: Human 'search engines'
11/30/99: Here's looking at you -- now hand over the cash
11/23/99: Who'll say 'I'm sorry' to the other Decatur students?
11/18/99: "From bad things, good can come"
11/16/99: The man who didn't know the meaning of 'whatever'
11/12/99: Is this progress? We have made the weekend obsolete
11/09/99: Today he would probably be called Kyle Kramden
11/04/99: And you thought the IRS was heartless
11/02/99: When it's free, what will the real price be?
10/29/99: The tissue-thin decisions that define who we are
10/26/99: One way to cut road rage down to size
10/22/99: Asking all the right questions takes a special pitch
10/18/99: The signs are talking to you; Are you listening?
10/12/99: Even Capone would be disgusted
10/08/99: Don't ever look your neighborhood bear in the eye
10/06/99: Land of the free and marketplace of the brave
10/04/99: German warplanes in American skies
09/30/99: While you fret, something is sneaking up on you
09/28/99: In these busy times, why not bring back a certain buzz?
09/24/99: The storms whose paths no one can track
09/21/99: Who's minding the store? Oh . . . never mind
09/17/99:Here's another place where you can't smoke
09/14/99: As certainly as `lovely Rita' follows `when I'm 64' . . .
09/09/99: Why is patience no longer a virtue?
09/07/99: Once upon a time, in an airport close to you . . .
09/03/99: The answers? They are right in front of us
09/01/99: Up the creek with a paddle--and cussing up a storm
08/30/99: $1 Million Question: How'd we get to be so stup-d?
08/27/99: Fun and games at Camp Umbilical Cord
08/25/99: How life has been changed by the woodpecker effect
08/23/99: If you don't like this story, blame the robot who wrote it
08/20/99: A four-letter word that has helped both Bob and Rhonda
08/18/99: They have picked the wrong country
08/16/99: From paperboy to stalker--how the news has changed
08/12/99: Why wasn't anyone watching his brothers?
08/10/99: Come to think of it, stars seldom are the retiring type
08/05/99: The national gaper's block is always jammed
07/29/99: 'Can you imagine the gift you gave me?'
07/27/99: A view to a kill -- but is this really necessary?
07/23/99: Some cream and sugar with your turbulence?
07/21/99: When your name is JFK jr., how do you choose to use it?
07/19/99: The real world is declared not real enough
07/15/99: The real victims of cruel and unusual punishment
07/13/99: A 21st Century idea for schools: log off and learn
07/09/99: Are life's sweetest mysteries still around the bend?
07/07/99: Of great minds, cream cheese and Freddy Cannon
07/02/99: The perfect spokesman for the American way
06/30/99: 'He's 9 years old . . . he trusts people'
06/28/99: A $581 million jackpot in the courthouse casino
06/25/99: A nighttime walk to a House that feels like a cage
06/23/99: At least give men credit for being more morose
06/18/99: On Father's Day, a few words about mothers
06/16/99: If work is a dance, how's your partner doing?
06/14/99: Should a dictionary ever tell you to keep quiet?
06/10/99: A story of Sex, the SuperBowl and your wife
06/07/99: Take a guess where "California Sun" is from
06/03/99: Of summer days, summer nights and pebbles in a jar
06/01/99: Putting your money where their mouths are
05/27/99: Pressed between wooden covers, the summer of her life
05/25/99:The lingering song of a certain summer
05/24/99:We could all use a return to the Buddy system
05/20/99: Now, this is enough to make James Bond double-0 depressed 05/17/99: It's midnight -- do you know where your parents are?
05/13/99: And now even saying "thank you" creates a problem
05/11/99: The answer was standing at the front door

©1999, Tribune Media Services