This subject really gets beat to death, but as the conscience of my generation (or at least this blog), I feel the need to weigh in as well.

At issue is the eternal accusation that today's music is corrupting our young. Hardly a week goes by when we do not read or hear a human-interest story wherein some psychologist is going on about mindless noise, hypersexual grooves, and lyrics ranging from anti-authority to misogynistic to racist to just plain mindless and sociopathic. This is usually in response to a tragic incident involving children or young adults where a totally antisocial behavior is blamed on music, or some other multimedia phenomenon.
All right, let's hold up for just a second and consider something.
First off, despite the opinions of these TV-friendly psychoanalysts, no one has yet pointed me to an authentic, comprehensive scientific study which proves that all this media is directly responsible for these acts. I can relate myself as an example. In my boyhood days, I watched every shocking horror flick I could get into the theater to see. The bloodier, the better. I liked being scared and grossed-out...it was a rush. To a certain extent, I still enjoy a bad slasher movie. I also was firmly indoctrinated into rock music of all kinds. I listened to the campy, oversexed antics of Kiss, the over-the-top flamboyance of Elton John and Queen (although I'm not sure I understood the homosexual undercurrent at the time), and the satanic and violent music of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Ozzy, etc.,etc. Later in life, when video games made their appearance, I spent a small fortune at the arcades, and delved deep into first-person shooters when they finally arrived. The point is, apart from a dabbling in the joys of social marijuana use and being somewhat of an underachiever in school, I stayed out of trouble, and I certainly never killed anyone, blew anything up, or assaulted women.

Was this because I was a strong individual? No, I don't think so...I actually consider myself pretty normal in most regards (don't laugh, my friends). I like to think it was my mother's direct involvement in my life which had the most effect. Since my father had passed away, Mom did it on her own, and did a great job, especially of knowing what the hell I was up to 24/7. There's a lot to be said for being waist-deep in your kids' business. They may hate you for it (and they all do, at one point or another...I know I did), but they end up as better adults and better citizens in the long run. No song, video game or movie is going to get you to do something which you are totally sure is the wrong thing to do. Period. So a little more parental involvement and responsibility, and a lot less blame-mongering and passing the buck would seem to be in order here.

That's not to say that a lot of what passes for music today has little or no merit. Some of it is blatantly racist and misogynistic. Most of it is just bad music. There is plenty of good stuff out there, both old and new, to satisfy just about anyone if they're willing to look beyond the radio and MTV to find it. In my opinion, some of the best music ever written by man has no words whatsoever. You can play it backwards and get a whole new tune...not having to worry about hearing a message from the Prince of Darkness telling you to shoot up the Burger King.

Mark Vonnegut, in his book The Eden Express, a recounting of his severe schizophrenia, is quoted as saying, "Once you hear the voices, you realize that they've always been there. It's just a matter of being tuned in to them." These sick, unfortunate people that commit acts of atrocity in our world have always had their voices with them. Maybe a multimedia event brought their illness to the surface, or maybe not. But truly sick people will eventually manifest their illness in some way, whether they play Grand Theft Auto or not. In the meantime, I might want to relax with a gory flick or crank up Quake 3 and put a rocket launcher in someone's ear. Just don't worry about me, okay? And leave my music alone, too, please. Thank you. Where's my Linkin Park CD?
To end this rant, I present a few quotes from the past which prove, if nothing else, that some things never change.

"Rock 'n' roll smells phony and false. It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons, and by means of its almost imbecilic reiteration, and sly, lewd, in plain fact, dirty lyrics ... it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth." -- Frank Sinatra, 1957

"If any further proof were needed that what Elvis offers is not basically music but a sex show, it was proved last night." -- Dick Williams, Los Angeles Mirror-News, Oct. 29, 1957

"A great many psychologists, psychiatrists, psychopathologists, and other experts on the psyche have tried to define the relationship between Sinatra and young womanhood: 'A simple and familiar combination of escapism and substitution, to be expected in times of high emotional stress.'

" 'Mass frustrated love, without direction.'

" 'Mass hysteria ... Mass hypnotism.'

" 'Increased emotional sensitivity due to mammary hyperesthesia.' " -- E.J. Kahn Jr., "Slaves of Sinatra," The New Yorker, November 1946

"Swing is nothing but orchestrated sex . . . a phallic symbol set to sound . . . music that cannot shake off its origins in the lowest sporting spots of Deep South." -- Blue Barron, Music and Rhythm, August 1941

"Swing Viewed As 'Musical Hitlerism'; Professor Sees Fans Ripe for Dictator," headline, The New York Times, Nov. 2, 1938

"Nazis Ban Swing Music as Not Fit For Germans," headline, The New York Times, Nov. 27, 1938

" . . . America is facing a most serious situation regarding its popular music. Welfare workers tell us that never in the history of our land have there been such immoral conditions among our young people, and in the surveys made by many organizations regarding these conditions, the blame is laid on jazz music and its evil influence on the young people of to-day." -- Anne Shaw Faulkner, "Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?" Ladies Home Journal, August 1921

"A wave of vulgar, filthy and suggestive music has inundated the land. Nothing but ragtime prevails, and the cake-walk with its obscene posturings, its lewd gestures . . . Our children, our young men and women, are continually exposed to its contiguity, to the monotonous attrition of this vulgarizing music. It is artistically and morally depressing and should be suppressed by press and pulpit." -- Musical Courier, 1899

"I am far from looking on guilelessly while this decadent corrupts our health -- and music as well. Is Wagner a human being at all? Isn't he rather a sickness? He makes sick whatever he touches." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Case of Wagner," 1888

It is "regretted that the poet Piave and the celebrated Maestro Verdi have not been able to choose some other field in which to exhibit their talents than one of such repellent immorality and obscene triviality as is the plot of the libretto entitled La Maledizione." -- the military governor of Venice, 1850.

After some minor tinkering, composer Guiseppe Verdi and librettist Francesco Maria Piave managed to sneak their work past the censors. The opera opened in Venice's Teatro la Fenice on Nov. 3, 1851.

So, for 150 years, impressionable minds have been corrupted by "Rigoletto."