A 10-year-old Houston boy hung himself yesterday, apparently in childish imitation of what he saw on TV.

For the record, while the family is Guatemalan, he wasn’t watching Univision’s Primer Impacto, which casually broadcast Saddam’s actual drop yesterday. According to the family, the boy saw a report about Saddam’s death on the competitor, Telemundo.

Just out of curiosity, I flipped Primer Impacto on just now, just to see how they’d handle it. Cut to: Univision reporter doing a stand-up outside the boy’s house. Grieving family. Talk of the “tiny body” perhaps being returned to Guatemala, milking the pathos. But the Saddam clip today was only a glimpse. No drop. So somebody seems to have learned something. Maybe we won’t wind up seeing it everywhere.

Obviously, the kid and the family are responsible for their own lives. Don’t get me wrong.

But the billion-dollar advertising business only exists because repeated viewing of any goddam thing whatsoever creates some interest. Say it with me: “HeadOn! Apply directly to the forehead! HeadOn! Apply directly to the forehead!” See?

HeadOn, incidentally, is wax, goddammit. It’s wax. They don’t tell you what it does, or how, or anything. They never even say the word “headache.” Why? Because it’s WAX. Your fellow citizens are paying $37.45/oz. for a goddam tube of freaking WAX, with no active ingredient present above one part per million. Your empty hand has trace substances all over it, too and with just as much clinical evidence of effectiveness. But people pay money. They smear wax on their heads. Then the HeadOn people buy more ads.

So far, they’ve sold over 5 million tubes of wax.

How can this effect possibly be less intense with something as vivid as a snuff film? Obviously, if you show millions of people death on TV, over and over, you’re gonna get more death.

It’s not just our culture. A 9-year-old boy did the same thing in Pakistan the other day.

Homo sapiens see, homo sapiens do.

Basic human goddam decency. Apply directly to the forehead.