What Media Inspires Violent Threats?

Glenn Beck is getting complaints because he's saying on his program that some 78-year-old college professor is one of the 10 most dangerous women in America.

And now some folks are apparently threatening this woman, Frances Fox Piven with death.

Now of course the vast majority of the people making death threats against this woman are just blowing hot air, much like the people on the internet who have flame wars and say, "Meet me in person and let's get it on." No one ever agrees to meet and you know that they wouldn't have the guts to do so. (Well...grownups. Kids, not so much so.)

Why all the death threats?

Is it because of what Glenn Beck is saying (and why in hell is this communist woman teaching our youth at University? No wonder the US is in the toilet), or is it because the people listening to him have watched too many Hollywood movies and TV shows in which violence is glorified and individuals who battle back - violently - against authority are also glorified.

(Take OJ Simpson, for example. Currently in jail because he went to an antique show with a gun to try to take back his own memorabilia. In the movies this would have made a great movie and the "hero" would have been glorified. In real life ,he goes to jail for several years.)

A couple of years ago, there was an episode of Big Bang Theory in which the main character and his three friends are sent to Antarctica - something that would cost millions of dollars - to conduct research. This show is a comedy, and the main character is an egocentric guy - Sheldon, and his three colleagues get tired of him so they deliberately falsify his results in order to get him to shut up.

At the end of the episode Sheldon forgives his friends, and continues on with his life. In real life, whoever had been sponsoring his research would have told those three guys to repay ever red cent of the money they'd spent on them in Antarctica, and their reputations and careers would be in shreds.

But in the TV there are no consequences, life just goes on...