In the summertime, I work for people like this. I am a member of one of the most historically corrupt unions in America. Union 54, the hotel and casino worker's union in Atlantic City, NJ was run by Nicadimo Scarfo, one of America's biggest crime bosses, before he was caught and put in jail.

People like Scarfo are the type I normally associate with hit-men. When my grandmother worked for Union 54, we used to call her "Bubbe the Ax," but we were only joking.

Well, my grandmother closely resembles the grandmother in "I Love You to Death," and her character was the one who instigated the murder scenario in the movie.

Needless to say, these people belong at home making afghans for their grandchildren and not out hiring hit-men to kill their son-in-laws or their daughters' lovers. Snuffing out an enemy should remain the domain of organized crime. It is no world for the average American to enter.

CONTRACTED MURDER by first-time offenders has the potential to become the latest crime phenomenon of the nineties. The people who perpetrate these crimes are not the Hannibal Lechters (of "Silence of the Lambs" fame) or Jeffrey Dahmers, but it is precisely because these people are not sociopathic killers that this problem is solveable.

For one thing, these killers usually get caught without a coast-to-coast manhunt. Being inexperienced criminals, most end up tripping over their own stories. Then they spill all the sordid details to a tabloid or television program for enormous amounts of money.

If we impose stiff penalties and make examples of the indicted, we might be able to convince the American public that while killing someone you don't like may be the easiest way to avoid a problem, it is not legal, or moral, or even convenient in the end.

After Bernhard Goetz gunned down five Black youths in a New York City subway, law officers went on a major re-education campaign against vigilante justice. And it generally worked. We can do the same to stop this new type of needless murder.

Stifling the media circus would help even more. Low-budget American realism is not a productive addition to our nation's culture. We need to convince network executives to stop exploiting the unbalanced activities of a few citizens for the entertainment and inspiration of the general television audience. And we also need to convince the viewers of these programs to turn the channel.

Beth L. Pinsker '93, the assitant editorial chair of The Crimson, only watches educational programs on television.

Hit-men used to be the sole domain of shadowy, underworld Mafia-types, but not anymore...