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I stand corrected....good catch....ironic....savings in killing with flavor-aid....I guess is one is stuck in Guyana, it all looks good.....good thing on the Postal....I completely forgot....how many did that guy kill? Was it 11? 15? 4? I just can't remember....it was BIG news back then....a rounding error today....
Yes, Jim Jones might have been a psycho mass-murderer, but damn, he could stick to a budget!
There were several post-office killings--three or four. I will have to look that up.
Yes, Jim Jones might have been a psycho mass-murderer, but damn, he could stick to a budget!
There were several post-office killings--three or four. I will have to look that up.
May I suggest Delivered From Evil by Ron Franscell?
Also Going Postal by Marc Ames.
I suspect Columbine will always be a touchstone for our generation because of the catchy name -- innocent wildflower symbolizing a massacre -- not to mention that it grabs us where so many of our fears and our own own bad memories intersect -- unbalanced teenagers, kids whose parents have no idea what they're up to, high-school bullies, and of course the She Said Yes mythology.
Columbine intersected with the cultural imagination in a way that made it more notorious.
BINGO! The events at Columbine (and Newtown) had elements with which everyone could identify at some point in their past. Add to this that formal education is our first encounter (outside the home) with the constant interplays of authority and structure with which we will deal from here on out, filtered through a media lens in the hands of many people and groups with their own agenda(e), and the stage is set. I see absolutely no way to get the malevolent genie back onto the bottle, and would be very wary of those who claim to have one.
In the category of events we are discussing, I think Colombine will always retain some measure of "iconic" status.
There are a few reasons for this, in my opinion.
This event had mass media coverage almost as it was unfolding. All of us could watch the kids running from the building on TV. I don't know how many of the other incidents (such as Kip Kinkel in Oregon who shot up his high school - here is a good Frontline episode on him) had that type of minute-by-minute coverage.
This event was at a mostly-white suburban high school. So there is the element of "major crimes don't occur in this setting" going on in the thinking of many people, and for that reason the event stands out more in people's minds. Let's say it happened in an inner-city, mostly black high school. I honestly do not think it would have had as much of a widespread impact due to assumptions/prejudice, ie, "lots of those kids are gang-involved and carry guns."
The fact that it was a high school meant that many people think/assume "kids in school should be safe," so this event jolted many people out of that protective cocoon, and that adds to the impact the event had.
I think that Colombine represents for many people the first major incident of this type (even though that is not factually true), and for that reason alone, almost all events that come after it will always be compared to it.
I personally think the Aurora theater shooting should completely trump Colombine in terms of the sheer terror and pain inflicted by the murderer, but again, it comes many years after Colombine, so it will never hold that #1 position in most people's minds.
Columbine happened during an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Along with the enhanced media coverage (how many recall the kid hanging out the window?), the circumstances of its occurence mark it out for special mention. Post 9/11 everything's gone down the drain, with the economy leading the way. As a society, I think we've become somewhat desensitized with 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Chechnya, London and Madrid bombings, the Mumbai seige, and so on and so forth. Thus, Newtown, Boulder, Aurora, and Va. Tech don't hold the same grisly specter that Columbine once did.
I used the think the 90s were the most boring decade ever. Nothing of global significance seemed to be happening. Oh, what wouldn't I give to have that kind of boredom again
I think that Colombine represents for many people the first major incident of this type (even though that is not factually true), and for that reason alone, almost all events that come after it will always be compared to it.
The cultural "space" occupied by Columbine was previously held by the March 1998 shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas. That case got a lot of media attention due to the age of the perpetrators, and the fact that (like Columbine later on) there were two of them rather than a "lone nut." Criminal "dyads" (pairs) have been part of history and fiction for a long time (the old mastermind-follower model), but they hadn't been seen much in spree shootings before, and Jonesboro catapulted into a media frenzy.
That was completely supplanted by Columbine, though.
I aggree, but Columbine really does stand on a notoriety that isn't quite matched by other high-profile mass-shootings (not even Sandy Hook, and that's saying something).
For those of us who can recall viewing the live exterior footage of Columbine during the massacre, it's imagery that has been deeply ingrained into memory; for instance, in contrast with the Columbine media coverage, we never saw the sort of images showing frantic mass exodus from other mass-shooting locations, nor did we view images of bloodied students being pulled from the windows of Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, etc.
Yet the psyhchological aftermath of Columbine is, I believe, what makes it so unique.
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