Observe and report

I rarely read for fun anymore because I don’t have time. People, Newsweek and Entertainment Weekly are my only sources of reading enjoyment. Sad, I know.

While I was in Barnes & Noble buying a book for research, I decided to buy “Columbine” by Dave Cullen because I had heard so many good things about it. I devoured it in less than 24 hours (kind of a long time for me, actually, but I had two vocal distractions and a “Survivor” finale to watch).

It is an impressively researched and incredibly interesting book. I remember the shootings, but was, like most, misled by erroneous and perpetuated media accounts into believing Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were outcasts who were being bullied. Instead, Cullen makes clear, they often did the bullying, and they had few close friends by choice. At least that was Eric’s choice. He was a true psychopath, the clinical definition. Dylan was depressed, lonely and incredibly shy.

One of the concepts I teach is crisis communication. The Jefferson County sheriff and his office did almost everything wrong. Repeatedly. But, if nothing else, communicators can learn from their mistakes.

The overall feeling I have after reading the book is sadness — sadness for the victims and their families, of course, but they have long had support in their recovery and grief. I feel the most sadness for Tom and Sue Klebold and Wayne and Kathy Harris. It is easy to point the finger of “bad parenting” at them, but there is no “if/then” manual for parents. You have to do the best you can. It is hard to distinguish the difference between warning signs and normal teenage angst. And no one wants to think his/her child is a psychopath. They also lost their children on April 20, 1999, but their children were killers, which adds another layer of pain. They also lost community support and relationships. They were vilified unjustly.

In general, the book is a solid piece of reporting. I do wonder why he chose to focus on the stories of a few of the victims, but not all. Some are not even mentioned. Also, Cullen could have used a diagram of the building and images of the people he discusses, but perhaps he thought the images would sensationalize the story even more than it has been. But I wanted to be able to visualize whom he was discussing. I turned to the Internet, of course. The bullying myth is still rampant in the comments on the videos. I wanted to respond to all of them. Sigh. Maybe word will get around thanks to Cullen.

Now I’m off to play with the kids, and hope that one of them does not grow up to be infamous.

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