The Information Super-Frog

Driving back to New Orleans from Florida, we listened to some old radio shows mshollie downloaded from the internet. One of the more striking to me was an episode of "The Shadow" -- a 1930s law & order series. There seemed to be an honesty about the effects of war that now seems quite rare in mainstream media. Back in town, a local story had a tragic reenforcement of the point.

The Shadow episode dealt with a serial killer who became mentally unbalanced from "shell shock" (an old term for post-traumatic stress syndrome) in the Great War (WWI). The murder says things like "Is he dead? Like all my buddies in the war? The ones that talk to me in the dark?"

Here's a sample of the script:

CRANSTON: I looked up his record. He was shell-shocked during the war in France. He's an expert marksman, a sniper. Society trained him to kill men. It told him they were enemies, that he should kill them off. Now, the shell-shocked mind is remembering what society taught him - to kill.

MARGO: Yes.

CRANSTON: And another thing . . . for people who have been through that experience, life is cheap.

MARGO: Yes, but these poor people he shot and killed, the jurors and the judge, they were only doing their duty, they're innocent.

CRANSTON: Yes, individually they're innocent, Margo. Individually we're all innocent, and yet, all guilty, because this Danny, Joe Bricker's brother, is a product of our own folly. Teaching men to kill in time of war, yet expecting them to respect life in time of peace.

Then at the end of the show after the killer is killed:

"He was a victim, a human instrument of destruction, fashioned by mankind, that teaches men to kill their enemies in time of war, yet expects them to forget their murderous art in time of peace. Danny Bricker was an enemy of society - a killer. But only because you and I and countless thousands made him one. No, Commissioner, there is no glory in this for you or the Shadow or for any man."

Hm, can you picture such lines in mainstream prime-time network shows today?

Back in New Orleans, the lurid headlines were of a murder-suicide: Boyfriend Cut Up Corpse, Cooked It

An article asked wondered if it was the result of post-Katrina trauma?

Then Times-Picayune article with more detail about the murderer came out:

Bowen often talked to DeVellas about his military experience and that "he was made to do horrible things that he couldn't reconcile in his civil life."

"There was that part of him that he couldn't bring back into normal life," DeVellas said. "There was division in him, and in that crack something evil began to fester."

The Shadow knew.

For comparison, post-Katrina PSD looks like this: Chris Rose of the Times-Picayune; depression-- not treating people like meat.