{"id":269632,"date":"2013-07-07T17:31:46","date_gmt":"2013-07-07T17:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/07\/07\/let-me-tell-you-a-story-the-day-after-columbine\/"},"modified":"2013-07-07T17:31:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-07T17:31:46","slug":"let-me-tell-you-a-story-the-day-after-columbine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/07\/07\/let-me-tell-you-a-story-the-day-after-columbine\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking soundbites to support it. \u201cWouldn\u2019t you say,\u201d she asked, \u2018that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?\u201d No, I said, I wouldn\u2019t say that. \u201cBut what about \u2018The Basketball Diaries\u2019?\u201d she asked. \u201cDoesn\u2019t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machinegun?\u201d<\/p>\n

The obscure 1995 Leonardo DiCaprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office and it\u2019s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.<\/p>\n

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. \u201cEvents like this,\u201d I said, \u201cif they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. Kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn\u2019t have messed with me. I\u2019ll go out in a blaze of glory.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, \u201cThe NBC Nightly News\u201d and other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of \u201cexplaining\u201d them.<\/p>\n

The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

A Roger Ebert quote that sticks out in my mind<\/p>\n

From his review of Gus Van Sant\u2019s Elephant<\/em><\/p>\n

(via yeezytaughtme<\/a>),<\/p>\n

(via learnblog<\/a>)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking soundbites to support it. \u201cWouldn\u2019t you say,\u201d she asked, \u2018that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?\u201d No, I said, I wouldn\u2019t say that. \u201cBut … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[25815],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}