On today’s episode, Michael Show discuses the first President and VP debates, the “Bullying Generation”, Amanda Todd and….making out with his hot sister?!?!?! Plus, Michael adds to his iTunes a new song, “I’ll Be Taxing You” by…Barrack Obama?!?!?! Be sure to click the Like / Tweet buttons to help promote The Michael Show!
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Her YouTube video started out innocently enough. The Canadian teen, her face obscured from the camera, held a stack of cards each filled with messages in black marker.
“I’ve decided to tell you about my never ending story,” the card in Amanda Todd’s hands read.
At this point the viewer may have no idea that they are about to be led on the most agonizing journey, one that pushed the premier of British Columbia to issue a stern warning against bullying, a journey that has birthed a Facebook page with thousands of people commenting many offering condolences.
In the soundless, black and white video, the teen showed one card after another. Each card painfully sinking the viewer deeper into the anguish too many teens have experienced.
“In 7th grade I would go with friends on webcam,” the card in the teen’s hand read.
The next few cards reveal that the teen began to get attention on the Internet from people that she did not know. People who told her she was beautiful, stunning, perfect.
“They wanted me to flash. So I did one year later,” the cards said.
The teen then got a message on Facebook from a stranger who said she needed to show more of herself or he would publish the topless pictures he had taken of her.
“He knew my address, school, relatives, friends, family, names …”
On Christmas break, the police came to her home to tell her that photos of her were sent to “everyone.”
She pushed the next card very close to the camera.
“I then got really sick anxiety major depression and panic disorder. I then moved and got into alcohol and drugs.”
She says she struggled with anxiety, rarely went out for a year. And then the same man appeared again with a Facebook page that displayed her topless as his profile picture.
“Cried every night, lost all my friends and respect people had for me … again …”
She was teased and felt as if she could never erase that photo. She started cutting, a form of self-injuring act that psychologists say is an impulse-control behavior that sometimes accompanies a variety of mental illnesses.
At school, she ate lunch alone until she moved to another new school.
“Everything was better even though I sat still alone,” the next card read. “After a month later I started talking to an old guy friend.”
She thought the guy liked her even though she knew he had a girlfriend. One day he asked her to come over because his girlfriend was on vacation.
“So I did … huge mistake … I thought he liked me,” she held the cards in one shaky hand now, using the other to brush under her eye as if wiping away a tear.
A week later the guy’s girlfriend showed up at her school with a posse of 15 others. A crowd gathered. The girlfriend berated her screaming that nobody liked her.
“A guy than (sic) yelled just punch her already …”
She was punched. Thrown on the ground.
“I felt like a joke in this world I thought nobody deserves this,” the next card reads. “Teachers ran over but I just went and layed in a ditch and my dad found me.”
When she got home she drank bleach.
“It killed me inside and I thought I actually was going to die.”
She was rushed to a hospital to flush the chemical out of her.
She put the next card almost flush with camera so that the viewer can no longer see her and only sees “After I got home all I saw on Facebook- She deserved it and did you wash the mud out of your hair? I hope she is dead.”
She moved in with her mother in another city, to another school. But her past followed her.
“6 months has gone by … people are pasting pics of bleach, clorex (sic) and ditches … Everyday I think why am I still here,”
Her struggles with anxiety and cutting had gotten worse and even despite counseling and antidepressants she still was rushed to hospital again after an overdose.
The last cards say simply: “I have nobody. I need someone. My name is Amanda Todd.”
The video has garnered the attention of many including the premier of British Colombia, Christy Clark.
“No one deserves to be bullied. No one earns it. No one asks for it. It is not a rite of passage. Bullying has to stop. Every child has to feel safe at school,” Clark said in a YouTube video posted Thursday.
On Wednesday, Amanda Todd’s body was found in her home, police in the Vancouver-area city of Coquitlam said. She took her own life.
Arizona state’s House and Senate have passed a bill that would make it illegal to post messages online “with the intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy, or offend,” HLN reports.
The bill is descended from old phone laws targeting prank callers and stalkers, but it’s been drastically broadened. It’s not, for example, restricted to one-on-one communication, so any online post that could potentially be considered annoying or offensive could theoretically be prosecuted.
The bill has, naturally, sparked an outcry, with critics saying it tramples on the First Amendment. The bill’s supporters say they hear the concerns, and say there’s time to change the bill before it hits Governor Jan Brewer’s desk. “I think there’s an easy fix to it,” Rep. Chad Campbell told Arizona 12 News, saying that if there was anyone who didn’t want online speech restricted, it was elected officials. “I’m sure many people would be annoyed by the things I send out.”
With the documentary Bully coming out and stories of online bullying increasingly common, we must be in the midst of a “bullying crisis”—right? “I don’t see it,” Nick Gillespie writes in the Wall Street Journal.
“I also suspect that our fears about the ubiquity of bullying are just the latest in a long line of well-intentioned yet hyperbolic alarms about how awful it is to be a kid today.” In fact, kids have it almost too good, he says—so overactive parents need something new to stress about.
But the fallout could be serious if laws like New Jersey’s “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights” impose new costs on schools and drain hundreds of hours of staff time, as some educators are saying.
“Which isn’t to say that there aren’t kids who face terrible cases of bullying,” Gillespie writes—but teasing and name-calling are a far cry from threats and physical violence. “We should make an effort to distinguish between the serious abuse suffered by the kids in ‘Bully’ and the sort of lower-level harassment” that can convince too many children they are “powerless victims.”
Demi Lovato took to Twitter on Sunday night to vent her frustrations about cyberbulling and started off a rant against mean-spirited people everywhere by tweeting: ”It really surprises me the hateful things people say on the internet.. After all the awareness of cyber-bullying… I mean wow. So sad.”
She continued: ”Praying for all the people in the world who feel it’s okay to bully people over the internet because if you are one of those people, then … You must have had something really terrible happen to your childhood or you’re really sick in the head. Must suck to be born without a heart.”
A 7-year-old boy in Boston has been accused of sexual harassment, but his mother says he was just defending himself from a bully, reports the Boston Globe.
The boy’s mother says the incident happened on the school bus last month, when a bully choked her son, Mark, and stole his gloves. Mark, while trying to defend himself, kicked the bully in the testicles. “I think my kid was right to fight back,’’ says Tasha Lynch. “He wasn’t doing anything except protecting himself.”
But when when Lynch tried to follow up on the incident, she found the school accusing her son of sexual assault. “He said he felt totally alone,’’ Lynch says. “Nobody believed him. Nobody was there for him.”
School officials refuse to comment on their investigation, but said that “any kind of inappropriate touching” was considered sexual assault and would be investigated. A hearing is expected at the school tomorrow.
Bullying is the most talked about non-issue out there. If we focused this energy on topics that really mattered, I feel our society would be better off. Here we go again…
The Republican-led Michigan Senate passed a new bill requiring state school districts to implement anti-bullying policies, but one Democratic senator believes specifics of the legislation don’t go far enough.
Known as Matt’s Safe School Law, the bill effectively bans harassment in schools and requires every district to have an anti-bullying policy. The law was inspired by Matt Epling, a Michigan teen who committed suicide shortly after an anti-gay hazing incident.
In a floor speech, Senator Gretchen Whitmer expressed her dissatisfaction with the new law, which is said to create a special exception for bullies who have “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction,” as well as neglecting to protect to bullying against students based on sexual orientation or gender identity,
“You may be able to pat yourselves on the back today and say that you did something, but in actuality you are explicitly outlining how to get away with bullying,” said Senator Gretchen Whitmer. “As passed today, bullying kids is okay if a student, parent, teacher or school employee can come up with a moral or religious reason for doing it.”
Also expressing distate with the new law is Epling’s father Kevin. “This is government-sanctioned bigotry,” Kevin is quoted by the Detroit Free Press as saying, who said he is “ashamed” that lawmakers added the special language at the last minute.
It appears we have ran out of problems in this country that now our biggest concern is bullying. I consider it one of the biggest non-issues in the existence of non-issues.
12-year-old Savannah Robinson and her friends made a anti-bulling PSA! Savannah wrote on her You Tube page: ”I’m 12 and have been a victim of bullying. Thought I’d shoot this video for all of my friends who have experienced the same, and all the other underdogs out there. let’s stand up!”
More big names added to this non-issue that people, for some reason, like to make an issue.
Anderson Cooper, Jane Lynch, Kelly Ripa, Rosalind Wiseman and Dr. Phil are all teaming up to host a town hall in seek of an answer to bullying.
In an official statement launched on Facebook, it was announced: ”On October 9th, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 will team up with Facebook and Cartoon Network to host a town hall called,Bullying: It Stops Here. The discussion is aimed at exploring ways to prevent bullying. Host Anderson Cooper will be joined by actress Jane Lynch, author Rosalind Wiseman, Dr. Phil McGraw, and talk show host Kelly Ripa. Tune in at 8pm ET on Sunday!”
Bullying is a NON-major issue. There are huge differences between bullying and hate crimes. Let’s stop raising a generation of pussies who cry about their problems instead of facing them head on.
Lady Gaga attended a $35,800-per-couple fundraiser for President Barack Obama in Northern California over the weekend. Gaga didn’t sing but she reportedly asked Obama a question during the Q&A, thanked him for all he’s done for the country and read a letter about her late fan Jamey Rodemeyer.
“[Lady Gaga] thanked Obama for hosting his anti-bullying conference with Michelle Obama, and then made a general plea to everyone in the room, including the president, to do what they can to prevent bullying,” a source told ABC.
Obama reportedly talked about “his administration’s anti-bullying campaign, and then more generally about the importance of values and who we are as Americans.”
If she and the president didn’t talk, she broke her word. Last week, Lady Gaga tweeted that she would meet with Obama to discuss the bullying issue.
“I am meeting with our President,” Gaga tweeted following the suicide of bullied fan Rodemeyer. “I will not stop fighting. This must end. Our generation has the power to end it. Trend it #MakeALawForJamey.”
After Rodemeyer’s suicide, Lady Gaga wrote that she believes bullying should become a federal offense.
“Jamey Rodemeyer, 14 yrs old, took his life because of bullying,” Lady Gaga tweeted Wednesday. “Bullying must become be [sic] illegal. It is a hate crime.”
Rodemeyer, a 14-year-old gay male from Buffalo, made an “It Gets Better” YouTube video earlier this summer to urge outcasts and the bullied to keep going and brush off the mean kids.
“It gets better,” Rodemeyer advised YouTube users in May. “Look at me, I’m doing fine. I went to the Monster ball and now I’m liberated, so it gets better.”
Rodemeyer took his life a little more than a week ago. In his last blog posts he wrote about wanting to see his late great-grandmother, and thanked Lady Gaga.
