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| Dude, Party at Tiffany's |
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| The Columbine Community Hasn't Found the Enemy Yet: It's Them |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, August 18, 1999. You may have noticed that Columbine High School has reopened. This realization might have come from your own osmotic abilities to divine seasonal changes, or strict thinking that leads one to realize that if other high schools are opening, so would Columbine. Or perhaps the incredibly maudlin and self-congratulating bits in press and television compelled you to consider the wonder, the grandeur, the perfection that is Columbine and to weep at the courage of students and parents, both of whom in the highly original thinking and wording of the American Press were struggling to understand, to come to grips with this tragedy after the holocaust of last Spring. Hail martyrs. It was an opening marred somewhat by the discovery of Nazi swastikas painted as graffiti around the hallowed halls, the very halls redesigned and repapered so that the tender imaginations of the students would never see the horror again. Paint it green and memory fades. It works with apes, and apparently our high school students are equipped with imaginations so dull that it would work with them. Columbine is different, of course. It has video monitoring of hallways. It has police and private guards. And heroic parents, as saints deprive themselves of the early runs of Jerry Springer and soap operas to parade around the school perimeter, no doubt alertly reconnoitering between gossip and tales of medical woe and to assure each other that no, you are not too fat to wear pink shorts. Perhaps they can happily discuss their children’s recent appearances on national news shows and wonder if the audiences will realize that the serious, good looking children on TV are the products of such as they. Maybe they can get on the tube as well, posing at three-quarter angles into the lens. Heavy sigh, a wipe of the hand across the eye in case a camera is surreptitiously in hiding, and trudge on, weighed down by the responsibility of protecting Columbine: the school, and their children. Emperor Napoleon once listened to a defense plan for the nation of France which, reduced to essentials, had every inch of the border covered by the military. This reduced a standing army to units so small that at no point could an army be assembled to defeat an invader, even though Paris could immediately be notified the moment an attack was made. It was a plan that insured defeat. The Em-peror was perplexed by this stupidity and inquired, with biting sarcasm, “Whom are you defending against? Smugglers?” The plan was shelved, and dusted off for the Maginot line, which worked so well to prevent the Nazis invasion.A valid question for Columbine. All the cameras and armed guards. Who are you defending against? Armed invasion from the outside? Sneaky entry by inner city gangs? Kosovar Serbs? Chinese spies? Who? If precedent leads, they should be protecting themselves from each other. There is no invasion planned by the Crips, no army from the Balkans, no incursion by pedophiles from some nearby half-way house. You have met the enemy, Columbine. It is you. Social climbing, baselessly snobby parents and kids. Absent parents who shrivel with any conflict with their own children and take to the bottle or long hours at work. It is you, and absolutely none of the high tech innovations, none of the perky new wallpaper and green paint, no rallies preaching tolerance, cuts the mustard. The dead of last spring were killed by crappy parents and a cowardly social environment too scared to confront them, less they themselves become subject to public observation. Let’s review. Two potentially normal and high achievement kids spent two years sinking into militia mindset and eventually took up a couple of weekends making bombs in the parents’ garage. Nobody noticed. They went off the deep end because they had no happiness in their lives to offset the stupid, goon like hazing from the socially successful jocks and queens of the high school upper crust. Neither teachers nor parents previously had thought that obscene public rudeness and physical intimidation was particularly abnormal or worthy of reprimand until their own responsibility for setting the stage for murders of passion came under the gun, so to speak. This year kids, lets hold hands and sing Kumbayama at morning assembly, and let's value each other. Good, a little late, better than nothing, yet what’s keeping things in line for the immediate future is that if you treat someone else like crap for prolonged periods, try to publicly embarrass or beat them up, you yourself might pay the penalty. This is news to the children of the Reagan years, although if any of these familial hypocrites were as attuned to the Bible as they would have you believe, they might have taken the four seconds demanded and been civil, perhaps nice, perhaps made a friend. Of course, the parents of the murderers are the real horrors here, and apparently they will never get to set foot in Columbine again. Aren’t you assured, Columbine? They’ll never attack you again. Now punch that geeky dweeb behind you and shove that slut aside after you’re done with her and let’s boogie. Dude. Party at Tiffanys. Her folks are gone this week. |
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