ploto
04-20-2009, 12:57 PM
I remember this day like it was yesterday and can hardly believe it was ten years ago. I will not post the entire article, but it has some key points about the rush to judgment about what happened there and the nature of the kids involved in it.
What do you remember about April 20, 1999?
If you recall that two unpopular teenage boys from the Trench Coat Mafia sought revenge against the jocks by shooting up Columbine High School, you're wrong.
But you're not alone.
Cullen concluded that the killers weren't part of the Trench Coat Mafia, that they weren't bullied by other students and that they didn't target popular jocks, African-Americans or any other group. A school shooting wasn't their initial intent, he said. They wanted to bomb their school in an attack they hoped would make them more infamous than Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
The Trench Coat Mafia was a nonviolent school group of computer gamers established a few years before the shooting, Cullen said. They feuded with the jocks and wore black trench coats. Harris and Klebold were not members, Cullen concluded after talking to students at the school and analyzing police documents. Neither boy appeared in the Trench Coat Mafia's yearbook group photo in 1998.
The two killers were far from normal teens. Harris was a psychopath and Klebold battled depression, according to psychologists cited in the book. Even so, they also weren't the extreme social outcasts and loners depicted in the early days of media coverage.
Records released later by the Jefferson County Sheriff's office showed that Harris and Klebold had their own circle of friends. Klebold took a date to the prom, riding with a dozen friends in a limo, just days before the shooting.
Cullen, the original Columbine debunker, theorizes that the public was afraid to believe Harris and Klebold weren't total outcasts. By identifying them as goth loners who were "weird" or "oddballs," it was easier to set them apart from other students and for schools to distinguish future potential shooters, he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/20/columbine.myths/index.html
What do you remember about April 20, 1999?
If you recall that two unpopular teenage boys from the Trench Coat Mafia sought revenge against the jocks by shooting up Columbine High School, you're wrong.
But you're not alone.
Cullen concluded that the killers weren't part of the Trench Coat Mafia, that they weren't bullied by other students and that they didn't target popular jocks, African-Americans or any other group. A school shooting wasn't their initial intent, he said. They wanted to bomb their school in an attack they hoped would make them more infamous than Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
The Trench Coat Mafia was a nonviolent school group of computer gamers established a few years before the shooting, Cullen said. They feuded with the jocks and wore black trench coats. Harris and Klebold were not members, Cullen concluded after talking to students at the school and analyzing police documents. Neither boy appeared in the Trench Coat Mafia's yearbook group photo in 1998.
The two killers were far from normal teens. Harris was a psychopath and Klebold battled depression, according to psychologists cited in the book. Even so, they also weren't the extreme social outcasts and loners depicted in the early days of media coverage.
Records released later by the Jefferson County Sheriff's office showed that Harris and Klebold had their own circle of friends. Klebold took a date to the prom, riding with a dozen friends in a limo, just days before the shooting.
Cullen, the original Columbine debunker, theorizes that the public was afraid to believe Harris and Klebold weren't total outcasts. By identifying them as goth loners who were "weird" or "oddballs," it was easier to set them apart from other students and for schools to distinguish future potential shooters, he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/20/columbine.myths/index.html