Tabloid TV deals with bullying, with the queasy results you would expect

This will annoy people, I know, and it's not as if I haven't talked about it already, but I have to say it: the ACA Sunday story on the bullying video was irresponsible, tabloid TV at its cringe inducing worst.

I remain amazed at the uncritical attitude to the video that not only downplays the danger that Casey - a kid who deserves some sympathy - faced as a result of his reaction to bullying, but claims it as a "feel good" story. The interview barely mentioned that he (Casey) acknowledges that there could have been some more serious injury out of it, then quickly cuts to the obsequious interviewer asking him if he feels he went too far. An adamant "no" is the answer.

I am not surprised, given the international hero worship that has been bestowed upon him. His father's attitude to it was quite cautious: he did show quite a degree of disturbance at the violence coming from both the bully and his son, and it seemed to me that he may have felt that the attention it is getting is over-the-top. But he did pull his punches a little and emphasised more his pride in his son standing up for himself, and his sympathy that the bullying had been going on for so long.

Stupid and dishonest commentators in the blogosphere are seemingly incapable of understanding that my complaint against celebrating the video is not an attack on the boy. It is a complaint about adults celebrating school yard fighting in any circumstances, as the real message of the video is this: fights get out of control and can easily lead to permanent injury or death. This in turn leads to legal issues. For these reasons, in the interests of the bullied themselves (who -like Casey - are unlikely to be fully in control if they do respond with violence), responsible adults don't encourage violence as a resolution to bullying.

For those who doubt the danger of the throw: do they watch rugby league? Do they ever doubt that a spear tackle, on grass, is a stupidly dangerous thing to do? If so, they have no credibility in doubting the seriousness of a wrestling style throw onto concrete. It's as plain as day that it was very lucky that the bully did not hit his head with substantial force on the concrete. (And not merely as a secondary consequence of a hit, but rather as a very direct result of the way Casey handled himself.)

For those who say "yes it was dangerous, but he was acting in self defence and provocation and he's excused": don't people have enough common sense to know that these legal defences do have elements of reasonableness and questions of proportionate response built into them? Of course you're not entitled to do anything in response to violence against you, even if you have been subject to bullying for some time. I think it's because it's a bullying incident that people are downplaying the issue of proportionate response, and are overconfident that the police or lawyers would assess the situation in the same way as them. They should not have such confidence.

There has been a particularly ugly line of commentary on the internet along the lines: "I don't care if he did break the kids neck; he deserved it. In fact, I would have happy to see Casey do more to hurt him." This really does annoy me intensely - young bullies do not always maintain that attitude into adulthood, and getting hurt in a fight is not the only way people learn maturity. Those idiots wishing for more physical injury in this fight are showing the same kind of intense immaturity towards physical violence that we don't want young bullies to copy.

They may be a small, not very outspoken, part of the population (who are not very likely to
be rushing to the Casey hero worship sites to make their views known,) but there are voices out there agreeing with me - if Casey had caused death or permanent disability to the bully, it would be a very "live" issue for the police to decide if he should face criminal charges. You can guarantee that the bully's mother would have had a much harder time accepting the justice of the injury he received if he had been killed, or left as a paraplegic or a brain damaged kid who could nothing for himself for the rest of the his life.

Others seemingly take the attitude "well, that didn't happen so let's just say congratulations anyway." I can't understand this and consider it a sign of immaturity. (Granted, there are a lot more immature adults out there than I would have credited.) It is, I suppose, a bit like the attitude people have to a rugby league brawl where no one gets seriously hurt. But then again, such brawls usually are punches thrown by both sides, which doesn't raise the very issue that this video does about the proportionate nature of the response.

I think most people agree that it's a bad thing that young men in bars get into brawls, and need to learn self restraint and to avoid violence if at all possible. At what age do they think this becomes the right thing to do?

Clearly, people hate bullying: that is perfectly understandable. If they think that an incident like this shows the best way to deal with it: that is not understandable at all. The one thing that the interview did show (and I don't mean this a criticism, since we know nothing of their relationship) is that not all avenues of help had been exhausted: the father might have been involved in resolving the bullying if he had known it's extent.

We also know from the bully's mother previous interview that she was upset with her son's bullying. The parents involvement via the school, or otherwise, may therefore have helped. But instead, people are just acting as if this was a desperate act of a victim who had tried to get adults to help. It is by no means clear that this was in fact the case, although this was an aspect the tabloid style interview did not pursue. It might interfere too much with the "feel good" nature of the story, I guess.

No, all I can see is danger and an incident of escalating violence that came close to tragedy. And the praise of strangers towards Casey is unlikely to have any long term positive outcome to other victims of bullying, particularly if some other take it as an example and do accidentally seriously injure someone.

Finally: the ACA story made me very uncomfortable because it raises questions about the long term outcome for Casey himself. I can't help but feel that this praise and encouragement via the media and internet may turn out to be a false dawn of a brighter emotional future for him. No matter how good he feels at the moment, he may not yet appreciate that media fame is a temporary and fickle thing; he's certainly not going to be hearing from any of his internet fan club again over any other life crisis. Given his talk about his troubled time ever since he started at high school, including thinking about suicide, I do feel that he has issues which the "good" outcome of this incident are not going to resolve.

It may be that his father recognises this now in a way he didn't before, and that some greater involvement or attention in his son's life does really make a difference. But I suspect that all this media attention might end up being counterproductive for Casey's emotional development in the long run. Let's hope not, but it seems to me to be a real risk.

Update: I wrote that before Michael Carr-Gregg said pretty much the same things this morning. For another journalistic reaction which at least dwelt on the danger as a real issue in the story, see John Birmingham's column from last week.

Update 2: More detail in another report of an interview with Carr-Gregg:

Basically, this boy should not have responded the way that he did. Dr Carr-Gregg said there was a real danger that the bully may have been permanently injured in the revenge attack.

“My fear is that by going on TV this will normalise, sanitise and glamorise hitting back.

Dr Carr-Gregg said the lack of supervision and the fact other children were standing around filming the incident rather than trying to stop it was an indictment on anti-bullying policies in schools.

He said studies had demonstrated that children who retaliated were victimized more.

There are better ways of dealing with this such as holding the boy in a bear hug “or just walking away”.

What he did doesn’t work long term.

We have to look at bullying and harassment properly in this country.

Dr Carr-Gregg has previously warned retaliation could prove fatal.

"In some contexts it is brave when someone is invading our country or threatening our freedom, but in a school situation it's fraught with difficulty," Dr Carr-Gregg said.

"If we condone these actions we end up saying that violence is a problem-solving device.

"Spending a significant part of your formative years in prison as a result of a serious error of judgment is a heavy price to pay."

After the report, there is a stream of comments still supporting Casey, and hurling abuse at the 12 year old bully.

There do seem to be an extraordinary number of people weighing in on this who say they have been bullying victims themselves. I wonder during what decade most of these people were at school, as I don't know that bullying was a specific subject that really had such widespread attention when I was at high school back in the 1970's. Yet now that schools do talk about it clearly, it seems that all these commenters feel that the schools are failing to deal with it.

But in any event, I re-iterate: this is not a story that the media should be playing up at all. The attention on the bully, his family and the victim is not doing any of them any good in the long run, is my bet.

Update 3: Andrew Bolt on radio this morning (you can listen at his blog) noted that he was entirely sympathetic to Casey's plight, but it was a dangerous throw and if it had resulted in death, people would not be talking about heroics. He had also declined to put the video on his blog because he did not want to encourage others to react this way, given the danger involved. Steve Price agreed with him.

So what'ya know. Two pretty right wing guys seem to have an issue with the danger the video represents.

They have more common sense than the Catallaxy crowd, then. That's not hard, though.