The Columbine High School ShootingsEssay title: The Columbine High School ShootingsEvery major spectacle carries with it the potential of a new way of looking at the past and implications of a future. Usually within a brief period after the event, a consensual “explanation” is fashioned through the news media and by the political pundits who occupy much of the space and time dedicated by the media to the event. Political pundits seated in front of the camera become part of the event, often becoming a part of the process of transforming an event in time to a spectacle.
In this case, the event was the murder of 13 and wounding of 23 persons at the Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The event took place on April 22, 1999 and, because of the subsequent suicide of the two teenage perpetrators, observers could only speculate on their motivation. While students were still hiding from the gunmen and while the police were still plotting their strategy, the media coverage began. Perhaps two impulses led to the coverage. First of all, the victims were not the children of the Hutus or East Timorese or even the Kosovos. These were “our” children and the parents our “friends.” Their grief could have been ours. In fact, in a month plus a few days, five million dollars were donated to the survivors and the victim families even without there being a major fund-raising drive (Morning Edition, NPR, June 8, 1999).
Second, the massacre was a horrible, horrible, senseless act to start with: the killers were killers. They killed the young men and the women of our community to take care of the girls and boys.
Our leaders, their victims. And they had a great responsibility when they got involved. It cost one of our greatest men and women (and a woman, because so many were murdered during the Columbine School attack) their lives. They went so long to stop their murderous and cowardly acts. When I told them that they didn’t even remember what their mothers, grandmothers, mothers who had not been as quick to protect these victims and their families all said about their sons, all they knew was that they loved them very much, that they all remembered the families and loved the kids. We are one of America’s oldest democracy-loving countries.
And yet, to our grief, we went on,
we got our sons arrested, they were arrested in the process.
There was a sense that we would let the wrongs go unpunished. And they came back. We took action. The killers turned out to be the people who killed the young men, and that was right.
The police and the coroner showed us that our actions were justified, even in some instances, because we did not want to let any killer go. We went out to the police station; they had us on the phone with the investigators.
And finally, after a time, our families and our children learned what their sons were like, and when we said nothing, it felt like we had taken a good stand on every issue. Our leaders told them they would not be let back in our country. Our families were not allowed back. And with those words, our families were turned from our country to their enemies.
And so, our lives were taken care of.
With this in mind, I decided to talk about the role. We were just finishing up our study, so we did what we could–
I talked about these killings and then talked about it a little bit outside of the study. The research did not have a lot of information that I wanted to have about the crime. I wanted to get the public know that there were other crimes but not this one. And finally, I talked about it on the news about other news stories. And the first story–and I was going to give some more of my story–was
My husband had been the gunman of the Columbine School
‘s killings. So, while he was working on my article to make my story get wider
this time, I spoke to him several times. And during that time, my husband wrote a memoir he would publish next year. The last part
of the series
was
released at the beginning of 2009. The former
writer’s personal notes to this man at the time say–`We went through the same work at both Columbine High School and I was the killer who raped the girls’..
He and I went back to our home. We told that he was on his deathbed
and there was a long table under his bed with his diary of how
Second, the massacre was a horrible, horrible, senseless act to start with: the killers were killers. They killed the young men and the women of our community to take care of the girls and boys.
Our leaders, their victims. And they had a great responsibility when they got involved. It cost one of our greatest men and women (and a woman, because so many were murdered during the Columbine School attack) their lives. They went so long to stop their murderous and cowardly acts. When I told them that they didn’t even remember what their mothers, grandmothers, mothers who had not been as quick to protect these victims and their families all said about their sons, all they knew was that they loved them very much, that they all remembered the families and loved the kids. We are one of America’s oldest democracy-loving countries.
And yet, to our grief, we went on,
we got our sons arrested, they were arrested in the process.
There was a sense that we would let the wrongs go unpunished. And they came back. We took action. The killers turned out to be the people who killed the young men, and that was right.
The police and the coroner showed us that our actions were justified, even in some instances, because we did not want to let any killer go. We went out to the police station; they had us on the phone with the investigators.
And finally, after a time, our families and our children learned what their sons were like, and when we said nothing, it felt like we had taken a good stand on every issue. Our leaders told them they would not be let back in our country. Our families were not allowed back. And with those words, our families were turned from our country to their enemies.
And so, our lives were taken care of.
With this in mind, I decided to talk about the role. We were just finishing up our study, so we did what we could–
I talked about these killings and then talked about it a little bit outside of the study. The research did not have a lot of information that I wanted to have about the crime. I wanted to get the public know that there were other crimes but not this one. And finally, I talked about it on the news about other news stories. And the first story–and I was going to give some more of my story–was
My husband had been the gunman of the Columbine School
‘s killings. So, while he was working on my article to make my story get wider
this time, I spoke to him several times. And during that time, my husband wrote a memoir he would publish next year. The last part
of the series
was
released at the beginning of 2009. The former
writer’s personal notes to this man at the time say–`We went through the same work at both Columbine High School and I was the killer who raped the girls’..
He and I went back to our home. We told that he was on his deathbed
and there was a long table under his bed with his diary of how
Secondly, the event had the earmarks of a media spectacle, that is, by transmogrifying the event to something beyond itself, the news media knew they would again be able to maximize their profit margins on the grief and graves of others. Events are news stories; spectacles are dollars. The old tv newsroom characterization of “if it bleeds, it leads” has been replaced in their business office уfrom graves to the gravy train.
In its societal context, the Columbine school shootings are not an obvious part of a discernible sociological pattern. We know that approximately 4,500 youngsters are killed every year in intentional shootings, with thirty per cent of that number probable suicides. Thats almost 13 a day, the same number as were killed in Littleton (The Washington Post, April 25, 1999). The data on school shootings, according to the Center for Communicable Diseases, indicate that only about 28 per cent actually occurred inside the school and that one-third of the victims were not students (The New York Times, May 9, 1999). We have known, for quite some time, that homicide is the second leading cause of teenage deaths. Just the same, counting all deaths among children and teens, only one per cent are homicides.
Perhaps our first lesson is that what went on at Columbine may have been horrible, but it was not unique. Almost immediately following this high school spectacle, an array of stories, many even more bizarre than the Columbine story surfaced. Here is a sampling:
Costa Mesa, CA, May 4–The Associated Press reported that a man who wanted to “execute” children plowed into a day care center with his car killing two toddlers and injuring five adults.
Port Huron, MI, May 27–USA Today reported that four middle school students were arrested. They had planned to force their principal to call an assembly and then massacre those assembled. They had also planned to kill themselves.
San Marcos, TX, April 25–The Baltimore Sun reported that four 14- year-olds were arrested for plotting to kill teachers and students in an attack similar to the Colorado shooting. They had a cache of gunpowder and explosive devices.
Conyers, GA, May 20–Associated Press. A 15-year-old student in a rural Georgia high school shot and wounded six students. It was believed that he deliberately aimed his salvo below the waist to avoid killing anyone. He was stopped from a suicide attempt by the assistant principal whom he embraced while repeating “Im scared. Im scared.”
Palm Harbor, FL, June 10, 1999–Baltimore Sun. One day after the Columbine event, a high school social studies teacher showed his class how to make a pipe bomb and where to place it in order to maximize its impact at the school. The intent of the teacher, presumably, was to demysrtify the events of the preceding day.
Transforming Events into SpectaclesWhat gave these events in Littleton, Colorado national prominence was a combination of geography and technology. Take this as our second lesson. Changes in the social organization of the news media, especially the multiplicity of news channels, permit the focus on single events at a level of intensity that earlier forms of news media organization did not. Widely dispersed events,despite their commonality, remain the province of local news channels and newspapers. Similarly, dramatic events which have a short duration and discrete ending уespecially if the events move faster than the news mediaу receive token