Well, the media has it’s new feeding frenzy. They’re going to run the shooting in that Colorado High School down to the ground…all for the sake of ratings and newspaper circulation.

Disclaimer- For those of you with an attention-span disorder, this rant is NOT about advocating school violence. I’m eventually getting around to trashing the media for glorifying this tragedy and giving birth to copycat killings by disturbed children.

I couldn’t believe what I read in our local newspaper today. They printed a quote from a neighbor who asked one of the killers why he had all of those hardware supplies. Dylan Klebold’s only reply was “it’s for school”.
What got to me, was that they described every item he had in perfect detail. It was for the bombs that they were planting in their school.

“Great”, I think to myself, “maybe tomorrow, they’ll print a schematic diagram for the stupider kids”.

All over the country, schools dismissed early several times this week. Bomb threats are being called into school offices, and they have no choice but to dismiss, and not take a chance with our children.

Your CyberPal holds the media 100% responsible for the recent terrorism!
Just as serial killers are glorified in the media, giving birth to copycat wannabe’s, the same is going on here…feeding seriously disturbed kids and empowering them with the idea that they can do the same thing. Not only that, but they’re practically showing them how it’s done, with step by step instructions.

Now local government is doing what it does best…go to extremes.

In the Shangri-la, that is the Poconos, students caught making threats or mentioning bombs and guns are immediately arrested, expelled, and spend time in a juvenile detention center. Y’know, I’m not a bleeding-heart liberal, but isn’t that going just a little too far?

Lock the little pricks up for a few days, let the prison system scare the hell out of them. But expulsion and long prision time? Crime is going to be the only thing they know…

What the Media hasn’t done yet
Shown kids how to make "Zip Guns". Given organizations like "Stop The Violence" free commercial airtime. Point out really good bomb-making books in their local public libraries. Blame the public library for having "Catcher in the Rye" on their shelves.

This is nothing new.
As a former veteran (in the New York City public schools, you’re not an “alumnus”, you’re either a “veteran” or a “survivor”) school violence is nothing new. You learn to tune out the gunfire outside to take your regents exams.

Kids flip out, postal carriers flip out, serial killers seriously flip out. This isn’t the first time this happened (remember the kid laughing in the back of the police car in 1998, after he blew a few kids away at his prom?).

The only difference is the media is glorifying this event, and telling some lonely loser kids out there that there is a way to stand out in a crowd.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 12th, 1999 at 12:00 am and is filed under Old Skewl. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.