I am deeply shocked and saddened by these senseless deaths. I also am concerned for the physical wellbeing of true gothic people everywhere, due to irresponsible media coverage, fingerpointing, and mislaid blame. Already I am hearing stories of gothic children being harassed at school and on the streets, and being sent home from school to change their clothes. I implore journalists and reporters to exercise more fact finding and more careful research in the future, and to refrain from generalizations regarding goths or any other subculture of people.
Marcel MELIN
|
I.Clique Savored Death Fantasy
Gunmen Recalled as Outcasts Who Menaced Other Students By Marc Fisher Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 21, 1999; Page A1 The shooters who turned Columbine High School into an unspeakable landscape of carnage yesterday were members of a small clique of outcasts who always wore black trench coats and spent their entire adolescence deep inside the morose subculture of Gothic fantasy, their fellow students said. Students at the Colorado school said the gunmen, whom police say may have turned their weapons on themselves after killing as many as 25 of their schoolmates and teachers, were a constant target of derision for at least four years. "They're basically outcasts, Gothic people," said Peter Maher, a junior who had a confrontation last July 4 with the shooters and several of their fellow members of the "Trench Coat Mafia," the black-clad teenagers' name for their clique. "They're into anarchy. They're white supremacists and they're into Nostradamus stuff and Doomsday." Several students said the shooters – whose names were withheld by police but who are believed to have graduated from Columbine last year – were deeply into death – talking, reading and dreaming about it. Black trench coats are a consistent theme in the Gothic subculture that has attracted many teenagers to the poetry, music and costumes of a scene that ranges from benign fantasy to violent reality. Inspired by fantasy games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Gothic has become a fascination of many American high schoolers, some of whom simply dress and paint their fingernails black while others immerse themselves in a pseudo-medieval world of dark images. On Web sites featuring poetry called "The Written Work of the Trenchcoat" and in political tracts and other elements of the conspiratorial imagination, trench coats serve as a symbol for things from Hitler and the Nazis to mass murder to suicidal fantasies. Yesterday was Hitler's birthday, an occasion for demonstrations, mock funerals and other macabre commemorations among both neo-Nazis and parts of the Gothic scene. When the young men started shooting yesterday, tenth-grader Mindy Pollock was in the school parking lot. She saw two shooters firing their guns repeatedly, and she watched as her fellow students dropped to the pavement. She said she couldn't believe it was real, especially since she had once before seen this same boy pull a gun on some of her friends. "The one with the handgun today pulled a shotgun on my friends once. He said he was sick of being made fun of," she said. "He said, 'I'll shoot you, I'll shoot you.' " Pollock said her friends tried to calm the boy and then ran from him. Maher and two of his friends were at a fireworks stand in Littleton July 4 when the Trench Coat Mafia boys approached them and said they had a shotgun. Maher and his friends saw no gun, but the trench coat boys did pull knives and tried to fight with the others. Maher said he and his friends had had no previous contact with the boys in black. "We didn't want to fight, so we talked to them for a while and then we just got out of there," Maher said. Several students described the Trench Coat Mafia members in similar terms: They wore their trench coats every day, no matter the weather, even in class. Under the coats, they dressed in black from head to toe – military berets, T-shirts, jeans, combat boots. Red shoelaces and the occasional Confederate flag patch were the only departure from the dark theme. "They were kind of the freaks of the school," said Kendra Curry, a senior. Pollock and other students described the Trench Coat Mafia as a group of perhaps six to ten students who were constantly being ribbed by the school's athletes and other, more popular cliques. "The athletes and stuff are really popular," Pollock said. "They make fun of me all the time because I wear bell-bottoms and I'm a little hippy girl. And they'd make fun of the Trench Coat Mafia. They'd say, 'White trash,' and 'Why don't you comb your hair?' and 'Are you Gothic, man?' and 'You need some new clothes.' Just stupid teenage stuff." Maher, too, said athletes at Columbine routinely teased the trench-coated students, muttering "Goth" every time they passed one another in the hallways. Students said the Gothic look appeals only to a tiny minority of young people in the Denver suburb. "They kind of stay by themselves," said junior Evan Vitale. "They always have the neo-Nazi look, so we were talking about them and Hitler's birthday even before the shooting started. Everybody knew it was Hitler's birthday." On one such Web site, a skeleton dances over a raging inferno and the words "The Trenchcoat." Below, a poem called "Death of a Jester" includes these lines: "There will be no performance today/There will be no curtain call/He can no longer perform for you/So witness the grandest spectacle of all/It's a one night engagement/So make your way to the front row/It's the death of a jester/It's one dead man's show. "There are no mourners today/Only spectators at the scene/Relishing in this bizarre event ... /He died from no acclaim/I heard his dying words/As his final breath he gave/He wanted to be taken seriously/Now he's taken to the grave." © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company II.Teens revelled in nazism and hatred Deadly attack mounted on Hitler's birthday
Thursday, April 22, 1999
Another grisly chapter in the annals of the U.S. fascination with neo-Nazism has been written. Among other things, the perpetrators of the Littleton, Colo., massacre are said to have had an avid interest in Germany, guns, gothic rock music, the Second World War and Adolf Hitler -- on whose birthday their attack was mounted. They regularly wore black boots and Gestapo-like trenchcoats, sported swastikas and spouted German slogans. And, on the evidence of several students, they hated blacks and Hispanics. And so Littleton will soon take its place, after Waco, Tex., and Oklahoma City, in the growing mythology of the hard right. All three events took place in April. The bloody end of the siege of David Koresh's Branch Davidians in Waco in 1993 killed 76 people on April 19. The still largely unexplained blast that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City also occurred on April 19, 1995; it claimed 167 lives. The Davidians were widely portrayed as a gun-obsessed, child-abusing cult that needed to be disarmed. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the two men officially blamed for the Oklahoma bombing, were depicted as members of right-wing paramilitary organizations intent on atoning for the government's handling of the Waco incident. For the U.S. super-patriotic right, of course, April 19 is a date that carries a certain resonance. On that day in 1775, colonial militiamen attacked British redcoats en route to an arms depot. The Civil War effectively began on that day as well, in 1861. It is not clear what echoes of the past were heard by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two teens who killed 13 fellow students and staff at Columbine and then took their own lives. Media analyst Nelson Thall says the violence witnessed in Littleton and in other recent school shootings in the United States may have less to do with right-wing hatemongers than with the mass erosion of identity taking place in society. "Rampant technological innovation has scrubbed off our individual identities," said Mr. Thall, director of the Toronto-based Centre for Media Sciences. "So kids who can't handle it are lost, and violence becomes the expression of their quest for identity. I think we're going to see more and more of it." But the two young men had apparently developed a liking for gothic rock, a genre that includes many groups with overt neo-Nazi sympathies. Indeed, many such organizations are said to use the heavy-metal music to recruit disaffected youth. Much of it is promoted and sold via the Internet, along with posters, T-shirts and other Neo-Nazi accoutrements. Skrewdriver, Brutal Attack, Razors Edge, Nordic Thunder and Aggravated Assault are, or have been, among the most prominent of these skinhead groups. The names are telling, but the message is no less transparent in their lyrics, which openly preach white supremacy, violence, race war and the hatred of non-Caucasians, including Jews. In one Skrewdriver song, for example, the late Ian Stewart Donaldson sang: "Nigger, nigger, get on that boat/ Nigger, nigger, row/ Nigger, nigger, get out of here/ Nigger, nigger, go, go, go." Another group, Berserkr, has a song that includes the following lyrics: "I go to battle with no fear in my heart/ Anxiously waiting to tear you apart/ Ready to smash, ready to fight/ I'm gonna kill everyone in sight." Neo-Nazi Websites proliferate on the Internet. The British group Hammerskins, for example, has adopted the slogan: Blood, Soil, Honour & Folk. Its site tells "Non Whites, S.H.A.R.P's [skinheads against racial prejudice], Reds, Homosexuals, Jews and IRA sympathizers" to "KEEP OUT." III. Classmates Describe Shooters As Obsessed With Goth World ``Trench Coat Mafia'' members treated as social outcasts Staff and Wire Reports Wednesday, April 21, 1999 The schoolyard assassins in Colorado were part of a small clique of outcast youths obsessed with the Gothic world and known as the ``Trench Coat Mafia,'' according to their fellow students. Students at Columbine High, near Denver, said the group was made up of six to 10 students who were constantly being ribbed by the school's athletes and other, more popular cliques. ``They were kind of the freaks of the school,'' Kendra Curry, a senior, told the Washington Post. ``They're basically outcasts, Gothic people,'' said Peter Maher, a junior who said he had a confrontation last July 4 with the shooting suspects and several other members of the group. ``They're into anarchy. They're white supremacists, and they're into Nostradamus stuff and Doomsday.'' Several students said the shooters were deeply into death -- talking, reading and dreaming about it. They said the Trench Coat Mafia members wore their trench coats every day, no matter the weather, even in class. Black trench coats are a consistent theme in the Gothic subculture that has attracted many teenagers to the poetry, music and costumes of a scene that ranges from benign fantasy to violent reality. Many American high schoolers have become fascinated by all things Gothic. Some simply dress and paint their fingernails black while others immerse themselves in a pseudo-medieval world of dark images. On Web sites featuring poetry called ``The Written Work of the Trenchcoat'' and in political tracts and other elements of the conspiratorial imagination, trench coats have served as a symbol for everything from Hitler and the Nazis to mass murder to suicidal fantasies. Yesterday was Hitler's birthday, an occasion for demonstrations, mock funerals and other macabre commemorations among both neo- Nazis and some subsets of the Gothic scene. Sheriff's spokesman Steve Davis said investigators were intrigued by the possibility that the carnage was timed ``in conjunction with'' Hitler's birthday. Dave Williams, a police expert who has been studying the Goths for six years, told The Chronicle that by and large, they are nonviolent. But occasionally some who claim to be Goth have harmed people, such as individual acts of violence in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Still, until yesterday there had been nothing like mass murder in the Goth experience. ``I was always afraid something like this might happen,'' said Williams, a sergeant in the Dayton, Ohio, Police Department. There had been signs of tension earlier between the Goth group and fellow students at the Colorado high school. ``The athletes and stuff are really popular,'' one student said. ``They make fun of me all the time because I wear bell-bottoms and I'm a little hippie girl. And they'd make fun of the Trench Coat Mafia. They'd say, `White trash,' and `Why don't you comb your hair?' and `Are you Gothic, man?' and `You need some new clothes.' Just stupid teenage stuff.'' Maher said he and two of his friends were at a fireworks stand in Littleton on July 4 when the Trench Coat Mafia boys approached them and said they had a shotgun. Maher and his friends saw no gun, but the trench-coated boys did pull knives and tried to fight with the others. Maher said he and his friends had had no previous contact with the boys in black. ``We didn't want to fight,'' Maher said, ``so we talked to them for a while, and then we just got out of there.'' Sergeant Williams says some Goths act out a bizarre and elaborate role-playing game, ``Vampire, the masquerade.'' He said one particularly dark aspect of the Gothic is when role playing is carried to extreme. `'The game -- Vampire, the masquerade -- I call it Dungeons and Dragons on steroids,'' he said, adding that players assume the persona of vampires and act out attacks. ``There are people who I have seen who lose touch, who think the gaming system and mythos are real. They have gone off and done some very strange things. Basing things on my experience, is there a propensity for this? It's possible.'' Trench coats, like those worn by the Colorado gunmen, are the modern equivalent of vampire capes in the symbology of the game, Williams said. As part of the game, Williams said, participants join one of seven ``clans'' associated with vampirism. ``The seven clans compete for power in the vampire world -- the idea of the game is to essentially to control the world,'' he said. One clan, known as the ``Brujah,'' is the most violent among the game's participants. Another group, which is outside the clan system, is known as ``Sabbat'' and makes random simulated violent attacks on opponents in the game. Typically, the game is played by everyone from kids to business executives, and clashes in the game are resolved with the old-fashioned method of the child's game known as ``scissors, paper, rock,'' he said. But, Williams said, the game requires players to totally immerse themselves in the study of the occult. ``Any belief system taken to the extreme is dangerous,'' he said. ``In this one, ultimately, the fanaticism causes the problem,'' Williams said. ``You are steeped in the occult, you are reading about the occult. You are sucking so much of this in, it's a huge indoctrination. That has a tendency of messing with the mind.'' Williams said he became interested in the game himself while involved in a homicide investigation. ``I had to walk away from it,'' he said. Chronicle staff writer Jaxon Vanderbeken reported from San Francisco, and the Washington Post reported from Denver. |
I.GANGING UP ON GOTHS? School Shooting Coverage Criticized as Unfair April 21, 1999 By Diane Snyder NEW YORK (APBNews.com) -- As investigators struggle to determine why two Colorado teenagers attacked their classmates with guns and bombs, members of the Gothic music community charge that news coverage of the event has misrepresented their beliefs and activities.Widespread reports about Tuesday's deadly assault in the Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., connected the gunmen -- Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17 -- with the Gothic music subculture. This has angered many members of the "Goths" or Gothic community, who have been vigorously airing their concerns online. Posts on an online New York City Gothic mailing list demonstrated the fear some members of the community are feeling. One subscriber wrote: "[A] girl walked up to me today, a girl whom I have never spoken to before in my life, and said to me 'Did you hear about what happened in Colorado?' She spoke in a tone as if I was going to kill her!" "Black trench coats are a consistent theme in the Gothic subculture that has attracted many teenagers to the poetry, music and costumes of a scene that ranges from benign fantasy to violent reality," proclaimed an article in today's Washington Post, which added that it "was inspired by fantasy games such as Dungeons and Dragons." Dressed in black The student gunmen, who wore long, black trench coats, were said to be members of a high school coterie known as the "Trenchcoat Mafia." "'Dressed in black' was the main description used to describe the shooters in Columbine," wrote Ron Garcia-Vidal, a producer at the Web site of the Editor & Publisher Company in New York City and frequent contributor to the Gothic discussion board, www.NYCgoth.com. "The leap to 'Gothics' came shortly thereafter. ... The following packages on 'Goth' that most [TV] stations put together told of a subculture based on Satanism and characterized by wearing black," he said. "Picking out 'Goths' as villains in this case is as asinine as the immediate jump to blame Arabic people in the Oklahoma City bombing," he continued. "Didn't we learn our lesson then?" Marilyn Manson not considered 'Goth' Classmates of Harris and Klebold have said the students listened to shock rocker Marilyn Manson, were fascinated by Adolf Hitler and had made derogatory remarks about minorities, things that Cliff Low, creator of NYCgoth.com, an extensive directory to Gothic resources in New York, says his community doesn't embrace. "The fact is the majority of the Goth scene is extremely liberal," Low told APBNews.com. "There are some individual exceptions, but even they tend to be very tolerant conservatives or moderates. Some Goths do like Marilyn Manson ... but the vast majority of Goths do not consider his music to be Goth. They consider it heavy metal." According to Low, Gothic music has its roots in punk and is more about imagery than a particular musical style. "The imagery that it is embracing tends to be exotic, romantic and often morbid," added Low, who says he's worried about folks in the Gothic community being portrayed as violent, emotionally disturbed racists. Goths not a threat "It's the nature of fear," he continued. "People tend to overreact, people will assume that anybody dressed in black potentially is a threat or is mentally ill and is a threat." A 14-year-old student who went on a shooting frenzy at a high school in West Paducah, Ky., has said that the 1995 Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Basketball Diaries in part influenced him to open fire at his school. The movie features a dream sequence in which DiCaprio, clad in a long, black trench coat, goes on a rampage against teachers and classmates at school. So far no connection has emerged between the Columbine killings and the movie.
Diane Snyder is APBNews.com's acting entertainment editor (dianes@apbnews.com). II. Gothic Subculture Not to Blame for Violence, Its Adherents Say By MATEA GOLD, HEIDI SIEGMUND CUDA, Special to The Times Times staff writers Matthew Ebnet, Jeffrey Gettleman, Kurt Streeter and Kastle Waserman and correspondent Harrison Sheppard contributed to this report. Thursday, April 22, 1999
The deadly school rampage by two black-clothed Colorado students
Tuesday has drawn attention to the Gothic subculture, a scene
characterized by a macabre fascination with all things dark and dramatic.
III. COLORADO SCHOOL MASSACRE When rebellion mutates to disaster
By Bo Emerson The American teenager. Yearning to stand out, and desperate to fit in. Struggling to be a rebel, yet terrified of losing status with the cool group. It is an age of alienation. A sense of being on the outside looking in is "typical in adolescence, from 12 to 18," says Dr. Michael Popkin, an Atlanta psychologist who deals with teens. Such alienation breeds feelings of rejection, he says, which is why movies such as "Carrie" are so popular. The 1976 classic film tells of the fiery revenge of an outcast girl, and has just been updated with a 1999 sequel. But movies don't kill teenagers. On Tuesday a pair of Colorado high school students described by their peers as "freaks" and "outcasts," kids who wore black and fancied themselves as rebels, turned their anxiety into a bloodbath. What makes a troubled kid cross the line into real anger, and real violence? We look for facile answers: In this case, the members of the Trenchcoat Mafia, thought to be responsible for the Colorado massacre, dressed in black trench coats and posted morbid poetry on a Web site. They were called "Goths" by fellow students. (A subculture that grew out of the punk movement, Goths affect black clothing, a gloomy attitude and a fascination with such champions of the morose as Edgar Allan Poe and Anne Rice.) But clothes don't necessarily provide a clue to the wearer, and plenty of other folks also dress in black, as defensive Goths are quick to point out. "Everyone is very offended at the Gothic term being brought up in relation to this crime," says Carissa Craig, who helps organize Goth nights at the Masquerade performance space in Midtown. The Trench Coat Mafia apparently borrowed not only Gothic affectations but elements of white supremacy and Nazism, which have nothing to do with the Goth ethos. So if that culture's not to blame, what is? We're left to speculate. Those who work with troubled children say the modern milieu of single-parent homes, latchkey kids and a lack of guidance creates a setting ripe for problems. Unsupervised access to the Internet is another explosive ingredient in this mix. Those who adopt and romanticize antisocial behavior of any stripe can easily find like-minded colleagues on the Net. The boys in Colorado, teased and rejected by their schoolmates, celebrated their own outsider status with each other online, when they weren't playing violent interactive games. Isolated kids often gather to create their own group, a place to belong, which can also be a hotbed for violent action, says Popkin. "You might get goaded by other members of the gang, or be dared to take action," says Popkin. "My hunch is when they get to the bottom of this [Colorado] investigation, there will be other people implicated in this, who might have been pushing them." Still not all alienated kids or groups turn to violence. Even their peers say it's hard to tell the harmful from the benign. "Our relationships are superficial," says Dara Gocheski, 18, a senior at Marietta High School. "We never pay attention to see what makes people tick." Quentin Thompson, 18, is a senior on the Marietta High School track team. "I was wondering if any of the kids I know would flip out like that, because I know some kids like that who get teased a lot. "I never know who at Marietta is carrying a gun." Truly, appearances are deceiving. Linda Cornelius had two sons. One was a punk rocker who shaved his head and broke his nose stage diving. The other was a Sunday school honor student and an acolyte in the Episcopal church. "Which one of those took his own life?" asks Cornelius. Five years ago, Ryan Cornelius, the "good" kid, stole his father's pistol, found the key to a locked box of bullets, and shot himself. Her son, it turns out, had been tormented most of his school life by bullies, and was severely depressed. And his mother never knew it. Her tragedy spurred Cornelius to become involved with the Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network, and her experiences there convince her that a screening for depression could help many potentially troubled high school kids. But, unlike the shootings in Colorado, much youth violence is impulsive, says Dr. Rodney Hammond, director of the Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and difficult to predict. He wonders whether the Littleton shooters planned to kill themselves. Risk factors such as violent attitudes, a history of threats and access to firearms increase an adolescent's chances of committing violence against himself or others, says Hammond. While youth violence in general is dropping, incidence of multiple homicides are on the rise, says Hammond, a trend that worries CDC officials. Yet the attention on violence in schools disguises the fact that fewer than 1 percent of violent deaths of those 18 or younger occur at or around school. Most occur at home. It seems, however, that teenagers bent on mass killings choose school as the stage for their mayhem. Why? Says Cornelius, "The people who they admire the most, or hate the most are at school. That's where it's all at." Because most teens are actually well-adjusted, there is a lack of discussion about alienation and depression, says Iris Bolton, executive director of the LINK Counselling Center, a nonprofit center that focuses on suicide prevention and children in crisis. Students who are warned regularly about drugs and alcohol need to be trained just as vigorously in recognizing depression and dealing with anger. "Instead of focusing on what can the President say to console us, and what can we put into the schools to protect this from happening, lets talk about why does it happen in the first place," says Cornelius. "It's a taboo subject." Judging from her own experience, Cornelius says the events in Colorado will have one positive result. "Once a suicide occurs, then people learn the warning signs of depression," she says, adding , "don't ignore them. Don't think it's a joke if someone says 'if I don't pass this test I'm going to kill myself.'" "This community can survive this and make meaning out of it."
|
|
Sam Rosenthal reaction to these bad articles The author is the webmaster of one of the best site about Goth : The Projekt Site
Over the last five days, Goth has grown up. In what began as a very negative light, our little sub-culture of Alternative Music was suddenly thrust into the national spotlight. Fortunately, Goths across the country have been quick to say "wait a minute, that is NOT what we are about." Although we all know it to be true, it bears repeating: Goths are not racist killers. We are not a gang of deviants who pray to a dark lord and fantasize about killing others. This media scapegoating based on misinformation and hysteria has been robustly struck down by members of the Goth community, as it should be.
|
Local goths blame bias : Intolerance, ostracism at root of most problems Thursday, April 22, 1999 By John Hayes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Even while police SWAT teams were leading frightened students from the Littleton school Tuesday, TV reporters were already picking up on the story's colorful catch-phrases: "trench coat Mafia," "gothic underground" and "ostracized minority." Numerous high school athletes interviewed by Denver TV stations referred to the shooters' social group as "scum," "trash" and people who "nobody ever talked to." Then they asked, "Why does this kind of thing have to happen?" In Pittsburgh's underground communities, no one is advocating the violence that tore through Columbine High School, where two students killed 12 schoolmates and a teacher before turning their weapons on themselves, but they understand how it happens and goths say they are outraged that their subculture has suddenly, and inaccurately, been associated with the tragedy. "All the mailing lists and news groups are going crazy," said Jeff Brick, a promoter with Night Sky Productions, which brings independent gothic bands into the city. "The whole gothic thing is tolerance and acceptance of alternative ideas. These guys seem more like neo-Nazis. The only thing they had in common was that they were wearing black." Darby O'Daly, a 23-year-old assistant manager at Slacker, a shop on the South Side, said she screamed at the television set. "I said, 'What? Why are they calling these kids gothic?' " she said. "The media was focusing on what they wore and mislabeling the music they supposedly listened to instead of trying to understand how their feelings of alienation finally exploded." With multiple facial and body tattoos and pierced ears, nose and lips, O'Daly said she understands how it feels to be different. Now a punker, she says she went through a "goth period" and began embracing alternative cultures when she was an impoverished 14-year-old attending an affluent public school in Michigan. "I was always lonely," she said. "I went to a suburban school where all the kids wore name-brand clothing. They teased me, called me a freak and slapped my books out of my hands."Instead of talking about the "trench coat Mafia," O'Daly said reporters should be asking the mainstream jocks why they harassed and ostracized the outcasts from the alternative clique. "Schools don't stress enough that you should tolerate other cultures," she said. A few doors down East Carson Street, the Eye of Horus bookstore sells "alternative" literature ranging from herbalist manuals to the occultist works of Aleister Crowley. "Everyone's responsible for themselves," said owner Greg Eide. "One of the problems with society today is we're trying to put responsibility on someone else whenever something goes wrong. Blaming it on the music they listen to is absurd." Joan Vondra works a world away from the black-clad cultural underground as an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh Child Development Center. But she agrees that upbringing, not music and fashion, is usually at the root of tragedies such as the Littleton shooting. "I haven't heard anything about the kids' parents, but I would guess that the kids have been having trouble for years," she said. Recent studies, she said, show a correlation between the number of alienated students and the size of their schools. Columbine High School, with a student population of about 2,000, is considered a large school. Vondra said it would be wrong to blame Columbine teachers and guidance counselors for the tragedy, but school administrators in general should begin to rethink the concept of large schools. "They build big schools for economic reasons, but they're not thinking about the children," she said. "When you have a caring school with smaller classes and lots of teacher-children contact, you still have ostracism, but it's not so painful. "In big schools where they emphasize achievement and passing the kids on to the next grade, the kids are meaner to each other. And peer rejection, even early on, is one of the best indicators of child maladjustment, and later maladjustment in adulthood."
Misconceptions (anonymous) Some people says that :
A couple things occur to me reading about this latest senseless tragedy. 1 - These particular lid-flippers may well be of the goth set and are undoubtedly influenced by their music, their games and their lifestyle. But weren't most of the other incidents related to hunting afficianados or just random folks? In any case, these are the fringes anyway. The far outlying 0.01% of a population. It's easy and attractive to categorize according to these outliers, but saying that D&D players are prone to gunning down jocks and cheerleaders is like saying that Christians are prone to speaking in tongues. I dare say I've seen many a role player speak in tongues myself... 2 - In the words of Utah Phillips "Why are teenage kids so conservative? Do we do that to them?" I'm sure we all remember middle/high school fondly as a time of incredible social pressure and emotional turmoil. Is it any wonder that anyone who doesn't fit in starts to feel very very unhappy? My point in bringing up these issues is not to excuse the actions of anyone who kills innocent teachers and children. These acts are inexcusable. The solution is not arming teachers (can you imagine the nightmares that will occur if that ever comes to pass?) or installing more metal detectors. This is just escallation. The easier and better solution is to shut off the problem at the source. Interestingly, the NRA national conference is coming up in Denver and there are quite a number of gun control bills in the Colorado state legislature this very minute. I, for one, will be very interested to see how they turn out. |
Model letter to send to anyone who speak about goth without knowing them ...
Slander: Oral defamation. The speaking of false words that injure another person's reputation, business, or property rights.
After reading the transcript Wednesday, April 21, 1999 "The Goth Phenomenon" I am thoroughly disgusted. Statements made such as the following, cast a negative light on the gothic community (not the Gothic Movement). These statements slander the otherwise good reputations of many gothic individuals as well as any person that tends to be drawn to wearing dark clothing. The following statements are defamatory:
"the boys may have been part of a dark, underground national phenomenon known as the Gothic Movement and that some of these Goths may have killed before"
"It's what's known as the Gothic Movement, violent and black"
"trying to spread the word of how the so called Gothic Movement has helped fuel a new kind of teenage gang - white suburban gangs built around a fascination with the grotesque and with death."
"Eugene Riddle barely survived an attack by his teenage son, deeply involved in the Gothic Movement."
"They were proud, self-proclaimed members of the Gothic Movement, and like the students involved in yesterday's shootings, focused on white extremism and hate."
"I think in his case, you can trace it right back to Marilyn Manson"
"In the Gothic Movement, they have what's called "the blood sports," where they're involved in self-mutilation in some cases. A lot of young females slice themselves with razor blades. Don't ask me to explain that because I can't. I know that they're, they're mixed-up kids."
"There have been a series of violent episodes around the country linked to teenagers who call themselves Goths."
Some of these statements may contain some truth, such as the fact that goths wear black; however, for the most part we are not violent, we do not worship Marilyn Manson, we do not kill people, we are not white supremacists, and we do not participate in "blood sports." You can find some people in every segment of society with negative characteristics such as the above, but as a whole you CANNOT say that goths are violent and dangerous people. No other group would stand for these disparaging comments. News media does not condemn the entire right to life movement because one psychopath blows up an abortion clinic. News media does not condemn the entire Catholic Church because one pedophilic priest molests an alter boy. News media does not attack the reputation of the entire US Army because one homophobe beats up a gay man. You cannot maintain journalistic integrity and virtually blacklist an entire segment of American culture at the same time.
The slander that occurred during the Wednesday, April 21, 1999 broadcast is worthy of a class action suit. In that light, I am requesting a formal, national, on-air apology for the comments made.
Read this comment from a reader, this revelating how this king of media job can affect life of some of us :"After reading the message at the bottom of your page that said you were attempting to recieve a public apology from the media, I can't help but wonder how this is coming along. Like most of the less-popular among the high schools around America, I've suffered from the false media from the Columbine tragedy and subsequent articles and beliefs. A public apology from the media would definitely help the position of me and the few others in my school who are in the same spot as me. Well, now that the little formal part of this message is over, I woudl just like to congratulate you on a lovely site and for being able to attend the Ressurection concert. I'm dying with envy, a true shame I don't live anywhere near Belgium. I would also like to thank you for taking the time and effort to actually attempt to get an apology out of the media, few others actually care enough to do anything other than just accept what's happening and allow fate to take its course."
Soraeynr [johnilea@airmail.net]
sun. 07/2/2000 08:44