Way off topic

["Ken Hitchcox" <kenlipo@domain.elided>]

This was sent to me. I trust the source but haven't verified it myself. 
Worth reading. Very sorry about the bandwidth waste, but I could identify 
with the writer. Note there is "r" rated language.

-----Original Message-----

>I found the reference to "the note" in the Rocky Mountain News archives... 
>"the note" does exist... but I do not believe that the authorship has been 
>confirmed as Harris'...

FEAR THE GEEK

Littleton's Silver Lining

by Dan Savage

The tenth or eleventh time DanCBS/PeterABC/TomNBC told me the massacre
in Littleton, Colorado was especially horrific because it happened in
a high school, "somewhere children feel safe," I started screaming at
the television. What high school were they talking about? I went to
three, and in none of my high schools did I for a moment feel
safe. High school was terrifying, and it was the casual cruelty of the
popular kids -- the jocks and the princesses -- that made it hell.

"Once upon a time," People wrote in a manipulative and dishonest cover
story, "the most that kids had to worry about at school was a looming
test or a deadline for a paper." What fairy-tale time was that,
exactly? In high school, I had much more to worry about than tests and
papers. Like most students, I lived in fear of the small slights and
public humiliations used to reinforce the rigid high school caste
system: poor girls were sluts, soft boys were fags. And at each of my
schools, there were students who lived in daily fear of physical
violence.

There was a boy named Marty at my second school, Saint Gregory the
Great, who was beaten up daily for four years. Jocks would rip his
clothes knowing his parents couldn't afford to buy him a new uniform,
and he would piss his pants rather than risk being caught alone in the
bathroom. He couldn't walk the halls without being called a fag, and
freshmen would beat him up to impress the older kids. Teachers,
presumably the caretakers in this so-called safe environment, knew
what was going on -- some even witnessed the abuse -- and did nothing
to stop it.

Another kid I know was thrown through a plate-glass window by a jock
when he was a sophomore. When his mother complained to the principal,
she was told that if her son insisted on dressing the way he did --
like a new-waver -- he'd have to get used to being thrown through
plate-glass windows. A jock jumped another friend, beating the shit
out of him and breaking his nose. My friend never threw a punch, but
he was suspended for fighting along with the jock.

"The motivations of the two killers," People continued, "were hard to
fathom."

Actually, I had no problem fathoming Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's
motives. While I didn't suffer the extreme abuse some of my friends
did, I was fucked with enough to spend four years fantasizing about
blowing up my high school and everyone in it.  I can only imagine the
scenarios that must have rolled through Marty's head on a daily basis.
Watching SWAT teams inch their way toward Columbine High, I wasn't
shocked that something like this could happen in a high school. I was
shocked that something like this hadn't happened at any of mine.

Klebold and Harris aren't heroes; they were hateful, twisted racists
who, in addition to going after jocks, hunted down and murdered one of
Columbine's six black students. But they didn't go guns blazing into a
vacuum. Harris left a suicide note, discovered by police and reprinted
in one of Denver's daily papers, The Rocky Mountain News. I haven't
seen the note printed anywhere else, which strikes me as odd.

The note reads: "By now, it's over. If you are reading this, my
mission is complete.... Your children who have ridiculed me, who have
chosen not to accept me, who have treated me like I am not worth their
time are dead. THEY ARE FUCKING DEAD....

"Surely you will try to blame it on the clothes I wear, the music I
listen to, or the way I choose to present myself, but no. Do not hide
behind my choices. You need to face the fact that this comes as a
result of YOUR CHOICES.

"Parents and teachers, you fucked up. You have taught these kids to
not accept what is different.  YOU ARE IN THE WRONG. I have taken
their lives and my own -- but it was your doing.  Teachers, parents,
LET THIS MASSACRE BE ON YOUR SHOULDERS UNTIL THE DAY YOU DIE."

The power cliques that rule American high schools are every bit as
murderous as Harris and Klebold, only their damage is done in slow
motion, over a period of many years, and fails to draw the attention
of parents or teachers -- let alone news anchors, SWAT teams, and
presidents. How many kids ostracized, humiliated, and assaulted in
American high schools, like the survivors of Columbine High, are left
scarred for life? How many commit suicide every year?

Watching traumatized students at Columbine rush TV cameras to share
their stories with a national audience (traumatized, yes, but composed
enough to take a few questions from the media pack), I heard more than
one describe Harris and Klebold and the rest of the Trenchcoat Mafia
as "freaks" and "fags," and some boasted about having picked on the
two.  In our rush to make martyrs of the victims and demons of the
murderers (the cover of Time magazine screamed, "The Monsters Next
Door!"), the culpability of the other kids at Columbine has been
glossed over. So long as some kids go out of their way to make high
school hell for others, there are going to be kids who crack, and not
all of the kids who crack are going to quietly off themselves.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, Dan and Peter and Tom went in search
of lessons we could learn from Columbine High. The most important,
judging from TV, is how to spot and further stigmatize already
miserable kids (bad clothes, bad music, bad attitudes). But there's
another lesson we might want to learn. If nothing else can restrain
the equally -- if less dramatically -- violent behavior of high school
royalty, perhaps the murders at Columbine will.  Before the jocks
beats the shit out of the skinny freak in black, or humiliate the geek
from the French Club, maybe they'll remember what happened in Colorado
and think twice. What if the kid I pick on today shows up tomorrow
with a gun?

"There can be few students who feel entirely confident that they won't
one day encounter a fellow student with a gun in his hand and madness
in his eyes," wrote People.

Call it a silver lining.





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