Bill Clinton: “Well, what I think about the violence is--and again, I'm not an expert, which is one reason I'd like to see them review…”

“Well, what I think about the violence is--and again, I'm not an expert, which is one reason I'd like to see them review all the literature--I think the sheer volume of things to which children at an early age are exposed tends to numb their feelings about it. We do have studies on that. So maybe cutting it down is one good thing. The other thing, I think, is if--a lot of these stories require the presentation of some violence, and it is a part of life. It's a part of a lot of the stories. If a story line requires the presentation of violence, then I think it ought not to either be glorified or cartoonized, if you will. People need to understand it's a serious thing with horrible consequences, because one of the problems with children, of course, and one of the reasons we assign different levels of responsibility to people as they get older, for their actions, is they can't often fully understand the consequences of their actions. So you have to bend over backwards to make sure--we adults do--that we've done everything we can to make sure they do understand the consequences of certain actions as we present those consequences to them. Mr. Donaldson. On that point, it's said that one of these little boys is just now devastated, frightened, said to be frightened, calling for his mother. It's as if suddenly his eyes came open, and he was horrified with what he saw.”