Tag: Columbine

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Exploiting a Tragedy

It might have been a wonderful story. Well, not a “wonderful” story. It’s a horrible story, actually. But part of the story would have been very appealing to a certain constituency: when one of the teenage killers at Columbine High School held a gun to the head of Cassie Bernall and asked her if she believed in God, she courageously said “yes”. Then he blew her away.

Oh wait. What do you mean “might have been a wonderful story”? Didn’t it happen?

The Christian community in the U.S. has seized upon this incident. It has a lot of appealing elements for them. First of all, Cassie was a young, attractive teenage girl. She had gone through a rebellious stage, including, allegedly, some dabbling in witchcraft, but her parents had straightened her out by sending her to a strict “program” at West Bowles Community Church. She wore a “What would Jesus do” bracelet. She carried a bible to school every day and was reading it at the moment the carnage began. She confessed her faith in words loud enough to be heard by her cowering classmates, though she knew it might mean her life.

So the story seems to provide a little of everything. Cassie was courageous because she confessed her sin. When she had rebelled, her parents no-nonsense, “tough love” measures worked. She carried a bible to school, where, of course, thanks to the godless liberals and feminists, prayer and bible study is no longer permitted. She was murdered by two young boys who were heavily immersed in video games, violent Hollywood movies, and rock’n’roll. Most importantly, she was murdered because she was a Christian. Because America turned it’s back on God when it banned prayer in school.

The latest fad among the ultra-right in the U.S. is to assert that they are now a persecuted minority. In a perverse way, this is the rationale they now use to assert their traditional privileged status in society. They claim that they are the only religion not allowed to have prayers in school (ignoring, with twisted logic, the fact that no other religion ever had a large enough constituency to even attempt to assert such a right in the first place, and ignoring the fact no other religion is or ever was allowed to lead classes or assemblies in prayer at any time).

It’s a story that plays into the social and political attitudes and platitudes of the Christian right.

The trouble is, the story is not exactly true. Well, it’s not true at all, essentially.
The report originated with one of the boys who was in the library, and who survived the assault. He was the brother of Rachel Scott who was killed outside of the school. He told the police that he heard the conversation and recognized Cassie’s voice.

The police later tried to verify the story. They took Mr. Scott through the library, as part of the process of meticulously reconstructing the sequence of events at Columbine. When Mr. Scott showed them where Cassie had been during the exchange, the police knew that the voice did not come from Cassie Bernall. Cassie’s body had been found in a different location. In fact, Cassie had been hiding under a table with Emily Wyant, quite some distance away from all of the other students. This is information that is not difficult to confirm.

This much is true. The gunman—most likely Dylan Klebold—asked a girl if she believed in God. The girl was not Cassie Bernall but Valeen Schnurr. Valeen did indeed answer yes, courageously, yes. But the gunman did not shoot her. In fact, he allowed Valeen, who was seriously wounded, to crawl away, without further harm.

What does it mean?

What does it mean?

The Christian community has adopted Cassie Bernall as a symbol of all that is forthright and courageous and virtuous in America, just as they have come to see Klebold and Harris as icons of deviance, immorality, and godlessness. Every hero needs a villain. Even Valeen Schnurr says she doesn’t mind that this spurious story circulates because it might bring someone to Jesus. Meanwhile, she has come under some abuse herself by “Christians” who are upset at her for disabusing them of their congenial myth.

So, she goes along with the silent consensus here among people who should know better: a little lie can be excused if it furthers the greater good.

I have trouble with this. So some minister is going to tell the story of Cassie Bernall at an evangelical service somewhere and fifteen young people, as a result of the story, will come to the front to pledge their lives to Jesus. No harm done? Not if they find out some day that Christian leaders knowingly perpetuated a lie? No harm done when reputable scholars and writers and journalists are aware of the deceit and draw negative conclusions about the integrity and honesty of the Christian community as a result? No harm done when a Christian congressman like Asa Hutchinson stands up in Congress and argues for a bill and some wavering delegate sits and listens and thinks, “Well, this is the guy who still goes around flogging the story of Cassie Bernall even though he should know better….”

If Christianity is true, would it’s adherents willfully lie about a thing like this?  If Christianity means something to its adherents– if it means anything– why does this happen, often?

 

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The Columbine Matrix

The Matrix, a violent sci-fi adventure film, has drawn comment by social critics who see it as uncannily representative of the type of amoral entertainment that drives kids to acts of violence like the Columbine High School shootings.

And there is a scene in the Matrix that anyone familiar with the Littleton, Colorado shootings would find disturbing: at one point, the heroes strap weapons and ammunition onto their bodies, dress in black trench coats, and then enter a building where they shoot the hell out of a bunch of bad guys. You hear the shell casings rattle to the floor, the rat-tat-tat of automatic and semi-automatic weapons fire—even a few shotguns, in the hands of the bad guys (who, in this film, are the police). In The Matrix, the shooters are heroes. They were dark glasses so they look cool as they kill. They are fighting evil. You conquer evil by outgunning them, or stylishly beating their faces to a pulp with karate blows.

There is nothing new here: Hollywood has glorified this type of adolescent fantasy for years. Hollywood is getting better at it though: the amount of computing and artistic effort put into these scenes is astounding. The sound effects batter the listener with Dolbyized wall-rattling chunky, acerbic smacks. The walls explode with spattering bullets and ricochets.

A fair number of commentators have tried to draw a link between movies like this and incidents like Padukah and Littleton. They believe that children are influenced by these movies. They watch the carnage and enjoy it. It thrills them. They want to be like the actors in the movie: cool and powerful. They derive a invigorating sense of gratification from seeing the bad guys get blown away.

There is always a conversation with the meanest, baddest, most ruthless of the bad guys, before he is dispatched. It doesn’t matter that such conversations have never taken place anywhere in history: they are a staple of the action-adventure film. Usually, the hero revels for a moment in his triumph, and we glimpse suffering, finally, on the face of the man who inflicted so much suffering on others. We feel the necessity of grudging submission, acknowledgement that we (identified with the hero) are the good guys. Just before we blow their brains out.

But there is another weird convention to these action adventure films: the hero has to suffer too. In almost all of them, the hero himself undergoes a few serious, painful trials, before undertaking his climatic mission. Why? I’ve heard this element rationalized as some kind of test of worthiness that ties into our primitive instincts for sacrificial leaders. Thus when the killer acts just as brutal and ruthless as the enemy, in the end, he appears to be justified, because he has suffered.

To put it in more prosaic terms, the audience can’t enjoy the bloodletting later if they don’t feel that the hero is entitled.   The same way they won’t enjoy the murders at the beginning of most trashy thrillers unless the victims are shown to be having sex first.  They deserve to die.

I always find these sequences a little squirmy, because they are so close to pure adolescent fantasy, and adolescent fantasy is utterly self-centred and masochistic. Adolescents don’t feel comfortable with their place in the world; they’re always being accused of not suffering enough, or of making bad decisions. So being dominated and victimized plays nicely into their sense of being very worthy individuals who are unjustly persecuted. All the better if a lovely woman, preferably about 18, feels so moved by your suffering that she pleads with you to save yourself. Adolescence. Fantasy. Myth.

Did Dylan Klybold and Eric Harris shoot their class-mates because, though they were otherwise of sound mind and body, they saw films like “The Matrix” (specifically, “Natural Born Killers”), and decided that killing people was so cool they just had to try it themselves? That’s hard to believe. These films do very well at the box office. You would think there would a veritable rash of killings after every showing. The truth is, we don’t have any evidence at all that these films influence anybody to kill. How unlikely is it, after all, that killers would not have seen the most popular films, played the most popular video games, or listened to well-known metal rockers?

As tempting as it is to ascribe a single cause to the Littleton disaster, the truth is probably more complex than that. Klebold and Harris were disaffected youths, marginalized by the nasty jock culture of Columbine High School. They were intelligent and imaginative, too intelligent to not harbor some bitterness about the putdowns they received constantly from the jocks and preppies . They were probably somewhat psychotic. Perhaps Harris, by himself, would merely have committed suicide. The two of them together formed a deadly combination of audaciousness, bitterness, and collective energy. Their uncensored fantasies of revenge and domination came to life in their conversations and acquired an energy of their own.

So how would you prevent future massacres from happening? Again, people are tempted by simple solutions: censor movies or the internet, ban violent games, restrict access to guns. The most idiotic come first: ban trench coats, which is what all high schools in the Denver area and many more nation-wide have done. Ban trench coats? What about gym bags, back packs, suitcases? What about pockets and purses and bulky ski jackets? I’m afraid I don’t have much faith in knee-jerk solutions.

No surprisingly, conservative Republicans, who constantly insist that only a free-market–without the slightest government intervention–can gratify the needs of the human soul, suddenly reverse themselves when it comes to culture and demand stricter censorship and tougher punishments for thought crimes. I don’t understand why the magic of the marketplace is so wonderful when it comes to wages and product liability, but so odious when it comes to movies and rock music. This position is frankly hypocritical. If conservatives really believe in the principles they describe so passionately as they apply to the economy is absurd to think that those same principles shouldn’t also apply to culture. If they don’t like movies like “The Matrix”, tough—the magical marketplace has decided that this is the way to go. Learn to live with it.

Liberals are at least more consistent on the general principles. They advocate a clear role for government in the economy, ensuring minimum wages and protection of the environment, for example, and they urge a role upon the government in preventing and reducing teen violence. The government should make it far, far more difficult for people to obtain guns, especially by changing the exemptions that allow people to buy powerful weapons at gun shows without even a background check or waiting period. And schools should develop programs that attack the roots of alienation and disaffection, and encourage values of tolerance and diversity, so that students like Klebold and Harris are never again as marginalized as they were at Columbine.

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The Festive Charlton Heston

In a letter, the N.R.A. president, actor Charlton Heston, said the group was canceling a gun show along with all other “festive ceremonies normally associated with our annual gathering.” The group was nevertheless going to hold its annual members meeting at the city’s convention center. From the New York Times, April 21, 1999

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“Festive ceremonies normally associated with our annual gathering”?????

This is Moses speaking. Moses also asserted that the massacre at Littleton, Colorado shows that every school should have armed guards. Governor of Minnesota and Wrestler Jesse Ventura agreed: “Had there been someone who was armed, in this particular situation, in my opinion, it may have stabilized.” But what does “stabilized” mean to a man who used to run around in tight underpants and throw chairs at people in masks?

Well, why stop at permitting concealed handguns? I think they should be obligatory. Just imagine: you’re at school. A couple of kids come in wearing black trench-coats with furtive expressions on their faces. You gonna wait to see what happens? Hell, no. Case closed. Incident ended. No more anxiety for all those parents sending their kids off to school in the morning– they can trust that everyone is well protected!

Wouldn’t you feel better knowing that your teenage daughter was at school, surrounded by a bunch of illiterate metal morons carrying concealed handguns?

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Think of how convenient that concealed hand-gun might be as well, next time you meet up with those hooligans from that rival football team across town, or that dorky teacher that failed you in Consumer Ed!

Charlton Moses Heston, interrupting his prayer breakfast (I kid you not) also said this: “If there had been even one armed guard in the school, he could have saved a lot of lives and perhaps ended the whole thing instantly.”

Errr…. according to the New York Times, Neil Gardner, of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s department, was in the school at the time, and was quite armed. In fact, sounds like he took a few shots and then cleared out as quickly as possible.

And I’m ashamed about the prayer breakfast bit. Deeply ashamed. Deeply, deeply, deeply. Everyone reading this should know that many, many Christians abhor violence and guns, and don’t consider a gun show to be a “festive” occasion, regardless of whether or not it opens with a prayer breakfast.

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School Killers

I can’t think of any sensible thing to say when two students dressed in black trench coats bundle themselves up with explosive devices and guns and set out to achieve their 15 minutes of fame by killing as many of their classmates as they can. We think the world is a pressure-cooker out there in the Stock Exchange and the Bank Towers and the Emergency Wards– it’s a pressure-cooker out here too, in our vacuous suburbs, with our mall-rat status-rated designer running shoes and gilded suburban off-road super-trucks and Hollywood heroic bionic mega-metal men with laser guided killer stilettos whipping the forces of darkness without concept, idea, abstraction, or reflection, and our moral barometric Wall-Street pressure pages of translucent stock quotes: all on a race to achieve, obtain, impress and express, communicate and digitate in the soft blue glow of television on the sideboard at dinner with whatever molecules of your nuclear family are available tonight.

So a couple of boys in their color-drained coats mull over their failures and fantasies. Those girls with the curled blonde hair, up so early to remake their faces… those studs in the Tommy Hilfiger sweats reaping their squeals and nuzzling nipples with their slam-dunks and hail marys… those geeks in the turbo pascal class hacking their uncles pims and measuring their dicks for Harvardized condoms… those fay artistes craving exclusivity through obscurantism… those achievers with the part-time jobs and daddy’s RAV on the weekends and drinking parties and future flatulent frat freaks… those fundies with their pre-school bible studies and Samaritan smiles… the fat girls leaning with desperation… those skinny girls colluding behind their compressed lips… and you just can’t get the grease off your face or the smell off your fingers or lose that dull inviscerating impression that your life is going to end in one long interminable trailer park whimper. And so you trade it all in for your 15 minutes of fame, and you’re going to be bigger than fucking Charles Whitman or Richard Speck and you’re going to know it, for who’d have thought a few hours— hours and hours — who’d have thought it’d take the police that long to find you in this gleaming chromium diaphragm of literate washfulness, here, here in the library, with the brains of your class-mates splattered around you, here among the books of which you never finished a one without thinking it was small or irrelevant, here below the sirens, and the helicopters, and the cameras, and CNN With A NEW SPECIAL LOGO AND MUSIC just for you, my sweet, now that your immortality has bled down the wires and who’d have thought it would take them four hours to find out your blood wasn’t even hot enough to face down your own killers?

And I’m curious as hell about those last moments– not even alone, like Whitman in his tower– Charles, of course, not Walt– not even alone, as if there was something you could say to each other, like Jesus, we really showed them, didn’t we– and you wouldn’t probably even be quite so obvious as to say you have their attention now, would you? What were your last words to each other? Where have they gone? Where are they now? Where are the blondes and the geeks and the jocks and the brains and those oh-so-ephemeral have everything to die for most-popular and likely to succeed barbies and kens, who formerly, obliviously, oh so vacantly, surrounded us—- yes, they noticed.

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“Our Whole School Year is Ruined”

“…our whole school year is ruined.” — student Casey Brackley

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I’m never sure what goes through the mind of Charlton Heston at a moment like this.

Charlton Heston is the president of the National Rifle Association. It is the stated aim of the NRA to prevent the slightest legal restriction from being imposed upon the ownership of almost any type of gun. I’m not exaggerating.

A naïve person might think that the NRA doesn’t know where to “draw the line”. The NRA doesn’t think automatic or semi-automatic assault rifles should be outlawed. It doesn’t think you should have to wait a day or two when you apply to get a handgun. It doesn’t think you should be held responsible if you leave a loaded gun sitting around somewhere and a child picks it up and accidentally kills another child. It is quite comfortable with the fact that you can get 30 years in prison for possession of five ounces of marijuana, but not even one day, if you happen to shoot someone who walks up your driveway one evening to ask directions, or if you happen to shoot your own daughter because she decided to hide in a closet and scare you when you came home late one evening. (Yes, both really happened.)

The NRA has a very strong presence in Colorado. Right at this very moment, the Colorado State Legislature is considering a law that would make it legal to carry a concealed handgun. Charlton Heston’s boys—I am not kidding – are already arguing that if only a teacher had had a concealed handgun, he could have put a stop the carnage immediately.

If a manufacturer made a product that was so defective that it caused injury or death, the lawyers would descend like flies and there would be billions of dollars in lawsuits. I’ve never understood why the parents of children who are killed by other children using guns that were stored carelessly or not at all don’t sue.

In the past several years, two children were killed in Pearl, Mississippi, five in Jonesboro, Arkansas, three in Moses Lake, Washington, two in Springfield, Oregon, and three in West Paducah, Kentucky. In almost all cases, they were killed by young males using weapons easily obtained from careless relatives or friends. I have not heard of a single lawsuit launched against the owners of the guns.

The law requires seatbelts in cars, pets on leashes, and litter in bags. For some bizarre reason, Americans have chosen to award special status to the gun. If you dropped it in a park, you could not be charged with littering. If you made the trigger so sensitive that a fart would set it off, you could not be subject to a safety inspection. If you sold it to a half-witted naked dwarf with a noose around his neck, you could not be held liable for anything.

I am also baffled by the police. Whenever a cop is killed in the line of duty, there is a massive funeral, with tributes to the courage, selflessness, determination, and virtue of the slain officers. But the 911 call from Columbine High School came at 11:30. Police arrived within minutes but did not enter the building until 12:30. They proceeded slowly, checking every knapsack and desk for bombs, and did not reach the library, where they found the bodies of the two killers, until 4:00 p.m. Clearly, some of the wounded teenagers died between 11:30 and 4:00 p.m. I don’t understand why they were left lying there, mortally wounded, while the police “secured” the perimeter.

Well, I do understand. The police were operating on the basis of conventional military strategy: you secure the area, quadrant by quadrant, before proceeding to the primary objective. That’s why they were in no hurry to stop the shooting. That’s why the students fleeing the building were practically arrested.

I don’t get it. Where was the courage and determination? There were hundreds of police surrounding the building, including agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Firearms, Tobacco, and Alcohol, yet two children with guns held a school of 1800 hostage. Were they thinking Waco?

When students were able to leave the building, the suddenly powerful and courageous police made them hold their hands up and chased them into a corner or lined them up against a wall so they could be frisked. Did they really think that the killers would try to escape with a gaggle of terrorized cheerleaders? It looked like Attica on television. It bothered me a lot. Some kids dress up in black and come into your school with guns and start shooting the place up. You think you’ve escaped, but then men dressed in black with guns make you put your hands on your heads and line up against a wall. Who decided that this procedure was suitable?

CNN, right after showing us the results of the carnage in Colorado, showed us some of the carnage in Kosovo. It left an indelible impression: man is a killer.

So, Charlton Heston, where are you now? How come you aren’t on CNN telling us that this is all the result of rock music or feminism or homosexual rights or declining morals or communist infiltration, and that guns have nothing to do with it?

Charlton would probably tell us that if only some of the victims had been armed…

And if you could ignore the past and the future and concentrate purely on the moment the two boys appeared in the cafeteria with their weapons and their empty grimaces, you might have a point. And then you would come to your senses and ask yourself if we are better off with everyone having a gun, or with no one having a gun.

How extreme is the NRA? They make it easy for us liberals. We don’t even have to argue that guns should be banned, to get the NRA upset. All we have to do is argue that guns should come with a child-proof lock, like aspirin containers, and that guns should be electronically disabled until the owner has entered his very own personal identification number. The NRA become apoplectic at the very suggestion!

Charlton Heston once played Moses, in the movie “The Ten Commandments”, one of the worst of the big-budget spectacles Hollywood liked to foist on us in the 1950’s and early 60’s. “The Ten Commandments” bore little resemblance to the real story in Genesis, just as the NRA’s vision of reality bears little resemblance to anything but a Hollywood spectacle.

Charlton Heston can shrug. It was just an unfortunate incident. I don’t think God shrugs.

 

“Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun
Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun
Nobody’d ever get shot
‘Cause everybody’d have a gun
Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun”

– The Arrogant Worms