Spanking and Abuse

There are few topics that will set people off like corporal punishment.  Commenting on how a parent raises their child never ends well.  Football player Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings was indicted for whipping his child with a switch, causing bleeding and scarring.  And once more, the practice is front and center of the public’s awareness.  Various experts pontificate on the practice of spanking but make no attempt at an honest discourse.  It is exactly what is needed. 

First of all, Mr. Peterson’s actions needs to be clearly labeled as abuse.  Any time a parent hits a child to the point where there is bleeding or long-lasting scarring or welting, a line has been crossed.  Even when people speak of the good-ole days, seldom did responsible adults carry out discipline like Mr. Peterson.  He will have his day in court and he will have to answer for his actions.  He said that he was disciplined in this way but only an isolated intellect could have matured over the last twenty years without some basic understanding that certain things are no longer tolerated. 

At the same time, discipline of this nature is not always abuse and spanking cannot always be labeled as such.  In my time as a rather rowdy, hyperactive child, I was spanked with a hand, belt, brush and a switch.  However, there were components that separate it from the type of abuse making headlines.  First, my father waited between the offenses and the meting out of punishments.  This takes any anger out of the equation.  Second, he spanked not to punish but to teach.  This approach further prevented going too far with the belt, hand or whatever.  Third, he always explained afterwards why the spanking was done and what lessons needed to be taken from it.  Lastly, it was not done often.  For spanking, like most disciplinary efforts, too much desensitizes the child to the method.   

People who are against corporal punishment never mention – or don’t recognize or understand – the nuances that make up the range of spanking.  To suggest that all spanking is abuse is the height of intellectual laziness.  It is pronounced by people more interested in making a point than defending it with logic and context.  They don’t want the argument so they avoid it by labeling all spanking as abuse.  Who is going to speak on behalf of abuse?  No sensible adult would ergo it robs people of an honest debate.   

To make matters worse are the blubbering talking heads on networks like ESPN.  This past Sunday, Chris Carter, a former NFL player who now serves the network as a football analyst, nearly broke down, yelling that the NFL is being overtaken by spousal abusers and child abusers.  He too clearly is not interested in having debate, hoping his melodramatic, teary diatribe will prevent anyone from responding.  Not to be out done, fellow ESPN anchor Hannah Storm went on a similar emotional rant.  How is an honest conversation to take place when people are interjecting such irrational emotions – an emotional appeal designed to convince people not to respond?  I don’t care what type of opinion people have but be adult enough to have a conversation about it and not an emotional lamentation.   

Mr. Peterson’s actions are abusive but the practice is not necessarily so.  Responsible corporal punishment is just as effective as other forms of discipline – in my opinion and in some cases, more so.  I’m the product of corporal punishment – from my parents, grandparents, neighbors, teachers and principals.  In some people’s effort to denigrate the practice as the last vestiges of a barbarous culture, good and responsible parents are written off as criminal.  I would love to see the debate if those opposed to corporal punishment were interested in having such a conversation.

Why We Need Radio

When I was young, I had a radio on my bed side table.  At night, I would turn it on and listen.  Sometimes, I would tune in to local DJs in the Baltimore area but on some magical nights, my little bed side radio could pull in voices from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York.  I fell asleep to voices reading the news or sports, talking to strange callers or playing music but I had to have a radio on – still do.  Predictions about the end of radio have been constant but radio persists and thrives. 

There were several things that drew me to radio.  One was the power of the voice.  The right voice can draw you in and spin a web you don’t want to leave.  I’m fascinated with voices and there are some I can listen to all day.  Dick Cavett has one of those voices.  He could be reading the ingredients from a milk carton and I would be riveted.  The voice can be a powerful tool and as a teacher, I’m conscious of my voice and how I come across to my students.   

When I worked in radio years ago, I wanted to have a signature voice – something people listened to just because it was me.  At the same time, it couldn’t be fake.  I’m speaking of both the voice and the meaning behind it.  That is what makes the Morning Zoo format that became so popular in the 1980s so appalling.  The fake congeniality and laughter distorted the most honest thing about radio – the voice.  It wasn’t just its fabrication but also the perversion of its honesty. 

The second thing that drew me to the radio was the feeling that the personalities were free – they could do as they pleased and seemed to be having a great deal of fun.  Growing up in Baltimore, I had a plethora of people I gravitated towards in the city.  WIYY or 98 Rock was a mainstay for young people, envious of the DJs who played music all day and goofed off in the process.  Chuck Thompson was the great voice of the Baltimore Orioles and he was, like Dick Cavett, possessing of a voice that could draw my hyperactive self to a stand-still.  His successor, Jon Miller, was just as magical and both projected the sense they had the perfect life and job.    

However, in something only radio can do, I could pull in stations beyond my burgh.  My immature teenage mind was taken by the Greaseman in Washington, D.C.  In other locales, Scott Ferrall in Pittsburgh and Don Imus in New York came through my radio and drew me in.  Ferrall on the Bench is and was one of the more pioneering baffling radio shows because certainly his voice had to be faked but it wasn’t.  Don Imus was the anti-Stern – irreverent but smarter.  Stern never fascinated me like the curmudgeon Imus.  As Mr. Imus’ show changed from “shock jock” antics to a more political and social satire, it fell in line with my political maturation and I was hooked.  When he landed on television, I watched but it was not the same as radio.  Of course, one of my other political teachers was the irreverent conservative radio giant, Rush Limbaugh.   

When one combines the radio qualities of the voice and the freedom of the medium, one comes to the third reason I was always drawn to radio – the use of my imagination.  As a teacher, I see that our students are not nearly as imaginative as they once were because they are not asked to be.  With radio, in trying to visualize the DJ’s antics and the broadcast of sports, imagination is key to truly understanding what is happening.  I still prefer baseball on the radio.  When they say the voice paints the picture, that picture develops in your mind.  Oriole broadcaster Chuck Thompson helped me “see” what was happening on the field.   

 

The point is that radio, often declared dead, has maintained a force in modern media and there is a reason for that tenacity.  My hope is that it is not just older people like me keeping radio alive.  It is a medium of the spoken word – not the image.  That alone places it in stark contrast with most modern media.  The spoken word requires thought – if not from the people on the radio then those listening.  It is the most intimate form of media and requires the most from the receiver.  That alone makes radio deserving of a future.