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About the Episode

An Irvine, Texas student was arrested for bringing a clock to school on Monday. He was also suspended. Why? Because his teacher thought it was a bomb.

We should clarify: this was a homemade clock, one that used parts stripped from other electronic devices and reassembled in the form of a clock. The student brought the clock to his science teacher to show off, potentially get feedback, and learn.

Instead, the teacher took the presentation of the clock, which was in a brief case, as a threat.

Oh – and the student’s name was Ahmed Mohamed.

Now of course, there is a big to-do in the media about racial and religious profiling. Let me be clear: both of those things are wrong, and it could very well have happened in this instance. I can’t and won’t say for sure, because I’m not close to the situation.

What I can say is this: if we’re so concerned about school safety, and if we’re so worried about violence, then wasn’t this teacher right to err on the side of caution?

Everybody, from Joe Schmo on up to the President himself chimed in on social media and through other platforms. Everyone got on the media bandwagon because there was a story, and by golly we were going to have to say something about it. We love a story about victims, so much so that sometimes we create victims where there aren’t very many to be had. We love to sound self-righteous and politically correct, but we don’t strive for real change in the world. We talk about a nationally known victim, far removed from our lives, but the social injustices that happen right next to us are shunned and ignored.

We’ve become so wrapped up in telling the story and talking about the story that we don’t do anything to change the story. Hell, we don’t even stop to think if the story is worth telling. And I can say – after reviewing the facts above, and considering Ahmed was released without any charges – I can say that this story was a non-story. This story created a victim where there wasn’t one. This story was an excuse to get publicly mad about racial and religious insensitivity, but covered up the fact that almost everyone following and creating the story would go on to do nothing about the very problem they were so up in arms over.

I think it’s time we all turn our TV’s off. Big media wants this. They want us running around in circles, finding victims to pity and perpetrators to blame so that we don’t notice that we’ve been had, that the same big media is making millions off of our stupid obsession.

Want real change? Turn off the TV, get off Facebook, read a book, and think critically. Most importantly: More guns equals less crime! Go out and buy yourself a gun! You’ve been listening to Come and Talk It with Michael Cargill.