A 10-year-old Atlantic City boy allegedly made a death threat against former President George W. Bush this week, sources say. The fifth grader, who attends Dr. Martin Muther King, Jr. School in Atlantic City, called the George W. Bush Presidential Library near Dallas, Texas earlier this week. The boy left a voicemail saying that he was going to kill the former president, sources confirmed to NBC Philadelphia’s Ted Greenberg.
I dislike former President Bush as much as the next person but it is tragic that anybody - let alone such a small child - would make death threats against him. What's wrong with this boy's parents? I mean, obviously a 10-year-old child's only way of discovering that a former president is "bad" is from his parents. It isn't like such small boys would get together to discuss Bush's economic policies or the Patriot Act. Do the parents who have robbed the poor kid of his childhood realize what they have done? The boy has his entire life ahead of him to worry about politics. Shouldn't the eleventh year of his life be dedicated to worrying about whether he'll get a new bicycle for his birthday and whether his Little League team will win the season?
When I was growing up in the Soviet Union, my parents did everything they could not to rob me of my childhood by voicing their discontent with the regime in front of me. Now I know that they hated the system passionately. They abstained, however, from discussing their dissidence in my presence because they realized that this would be a burden too heavy for a child to carry. A 10-year-old doesn't understand the intricacies of our political reality. Many adults fail to comprehend them, so it's no surprise that a fifth grader would arrive at a conclusion that since Bush is bad he needs to be killed.
I hope that the kid's irresponsible parents will realize what they have done and start controlling what they say in front of him.
