Is our society spinning out of control?

Bad things don't just happen in New York, of course.

Earlier today, I wrote about the Kitty Genovese case that shocked the nation 45 years ago in which a woman was murdered and 37 of her neighbors didn't even call the police.

They were locked in their apartments and "didn't want to get involved." Some of them knew Genovese, but they didn't give a damn what happened to her.

The next story is worse.

A 15-year-old girl was raped recently after a homecoming dance in Richmond, Calif. Actually, she was gang raped. Actually she was gang raped while other people stood around and took pictures with their cell phone cameras.

According to police reports, as many as 20 people either took part in the rape or stood around and watched it.

What could these people possibly have been thinking? I'm not even talking about the rapists; there have always been evil people among us doing evil things and there always will be.

What bothers me much more is that a dozen people or so stood and watched. None of them ran to get help. None of them tried to stop what was happening. They took pictures.

Let me say that again. They took pictures of a 15-year-old girl being criminally assaulted, because apparently they were going to tell their friends later, "Hey, you won't believe what I saw."

I'm sure some of the shots even wound up on the Internet, although I doubt there was much of a market at America's Funniest Home Videos. Who knows, maybe they could sell them to "When Animals Attack."

Richmond High School's senior class president, Gina Saechae, has been all over the media defending her school and criticizing people who put it down.

"I still feel safe on campus," she said.

One student said it was probably peer pressure that kept anyone from intervening, and psychologists apparently see it in a similar way. They call it "plualistic ignorance" and say people are less likely to intervene if there are other people around who aren't intervening.

I don't find that comforting at all.

The sad part is, I don't think the kids in Richmond, California, are any worse than kinds in Richmond, Indiana, or Richmond, Virginia, or just about anywhere else in the country. I think we have done so much to desensitize our children to real suffering that we shouldn't be shocked by any reaction.

We have a generation growing up now that has been raised on violent television, violent movies, violent music and violent video games. When you have a choice of killing the hooker to get your money back in "Grand Theft Auto," why should we be surprised if you stand there and watch a real crime?

W.B. Yeats said it first 90 years ago.

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold ..."

You might be familiar with the poem, which is best known for its final couplet. I worry, as our society spins out of control, about what comes next.

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"