Thee Incredible Weirdness of Being
Created | Updated Nov 18, 2004
There are a lot of myths, disinformation, misinformation, and outright lies being put around regarding this incredibly famous, very traumatic event. For those of you who somehow have not heard of it, here is the official version:
On May 20th 1999, two disaffected goths named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered their local high school and killed twelve students and a teacher before committing suicide. They had no plan and the attack was totally unprovoked. Basically, they were a pair of nuts. The problem with this story is that it has more holes than a sieve.
MYTH: The massacre was totally unprovoked, Harris and Klebold were just insane.
FACT: A recent piece of psychiatric and psychological research has shown that Harris, who seems to have been the leader, was in fact a psychopath. When I say psychopath, I'm not talking about a very volatile person, I mean psychopath in the clinical sense. He was very intelligent and rational, but in a totally different way to the mainstream. For example, Harris saw nothing wrong with stealing a car that had been left unlocked out on the road. His reasoning was that whoever left it there must have been an absolute idiot, and deserved to have it stolen. He was capable of meticulously planning a huge bombing followed by a mop-up operation with guns to prevent any survivors from leaving. Klebold, meanwhile, was quite volatile, and it seems that they complemented each other; Klebold's outbursts gave Harris a safety valve to prevent him from killing anyone prematurely. Harris' whole state of mind would have fulfilled much the same function for Klebold.
Michael Moore's famous documentary Bowling for Columbine shows us that one of the two had a pretty tragic home life. It's been a while since I saw the movie and I have forgotten which one it was1, but it seems that in at least one case, the shooter's mother had lost her job and house, and they had had to move in with the guy's uncle, in whose house he found a gun. The mother, meanwhile, had to take a three-hour bus ride every day to and from a minimum wage job, meaning that she almost never saw her son. This would have driven him to intense depression.
MYTH: Harris and Klebold were driven to the killing by the 'death culture' of Marilyn Manson.
FACT: Harris and Klebold hated Manson, full stop. They viewed him as a stupid, annoying poser, and were actually into bands such as Rammstein. The Manson connection seems to have been largely fabricated by fundamentalist Christians as a way of silencing those that they disagree with.
MYTH: Harris and Klebold were frustrated, secret homosexuals.
FACT: This myth seems to have been based on one online posting, alleging that the pair were called 'faggots' at some point. Anyone who has gone to school should know that this word is almost never used to mean homosexual; in fact, I thought it was simply a generic insult with no real meaning until I was fifteen.
MYTH: Harris and Klebold were targeting Christians/blacks/athletes/jocks/any other minorities/cliques.
FACT: The myth about targeting Christians is based on the fact that one of them pointed a gun at the head of a single girl and asked her whether she believed in God. When she said yes, they shot her. However, they also did the same to another girl and when she said yes, they tried to shoot her but had run out of ammo. They did not pursue. While it is know that they did taunt jocks and blacks, they also taunted everyone else they shot and many they did not; also, since the original intent was to bomb the school and kill a couple of hundred people, it seems unlikely that they would have merely been targeting any one group.
Also, in their online journal, they make it pretty clear that it is not OK to pick on and beat up people just because they are different from you. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if, in their school, they had a reputation as guys who helped minorities who were being beaten or harassed.
There is so much to say regarding Columbine that it will have to run into another week, perhaps even more.
Continues next week...
Until we meet again, my friend, this is Hussassan, signing off.
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