So America can enjoy it all over again

It's not even 6 AM, and already the media are wallowing in the hushed tones used to cover or commemorate carnage. In this case it's the 10th anniversary of the Columbine massacre. Unless you were exiled to Siberia ten years ago, you spent days hearing about "Trenchcoat Mafia" and heroic girls who affirmed their belief in God before being murdered.

There was something pornographic about the coverage of the massacre then, and there's something equally pornographic about the "Let's enjoy it all over again" aura to the reprise of footage from that day, coverage that shows the same lack of insight and simplistic opinions that we saw that day ten years ago.

In a new book, author Dave Cullen has debunked most of what is conventional wisdom about the Columbine massacre:

3. What are the biggest myths?

• Jocks, minorities or Christians were targeted. False.


• Columbine a hostage stand-off. The killing went on for hours. False. (Not even half an hour.)


• Eric Harris killed Dylan Klebold. False. Chapter 52, "Quiet," depicts the actual suicide, and presents the forensic evidence to back it up.


• Christian martyr Cassie Bernall's last act was a gunpoint profession of faith. False. "Martyr" describes the truth of what happened in the library, and how the confusion with another victim developed. [...]


• The Trench Coat Mafia. Nearly everything about this barely-existent band is false. [...]
• Hitler's birthday, Marilyn Manson, Goths, flying planes into New York city skyscrapers . . . All wrong. Eric did mention the planes in his journal, which lies at the heart of understanding this case: the chasms between three things: Eric's apocalyptic vision for April 20, what he set out to accomplish that morning, and what he and Dylan actually did.  

And of course the ready access that a probably psychopathic high school kid and his depressed companion had to enough guns and ammunition to pull off a massacre of this magnitude is still off-limits for discussion, even as right-wing talk show hosts and lunatic Congresswomen call for armed revolution only a few years after opining that war protesters should all be imprisoned at Gitmo.

I have a friend who lost a child. Her child wasn't murdered, but her loss is every bit as wrenching, particularly on the anniversary of her child's death. When that time comes around, what she wants more than anything else is to do her remembering in her own way. I can't imagine that any parent who lost a child that day is somehow soothed by the giant gaping maw of 24-hour news replaying their child's last moments again and again, particularly when discussion of our culture of gun rights with absolutely no responsibilities is forbidden.