Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?
by Marilyn Manson
It is sad to think that the first few people on earth needed no books, movies, games or
music to inspire cold-blooded murder. The day that Cain bashed his brother Abel's brains
in, the only motivation he needed was his own human disposition to violence. Whether
you interpret the Bible as literature or as the final word of whatever God may be,
Christianity has given us an image of death and sexuality that we have based our culture
around. A half-naked dead man hangs in most homes and around our necks, and we
have just taken that for granted all our lives. Is it a symbol of hope or hopelessness?
The world's most famous murder-suicide was also the birth of the death icon -- the
blueprint for celebrity. Unfortunately, for all of their inspiring morality, nowhere in the
Gospels is intelligence praised as a virtue.
A lot of people forget or never realize that I started
my band as a criticism of these very issues of
despair and hypocrisy. The name Marilyn Manson
has never celebrated the sad fact that America puts
killers on the cover of Time magazine, giving them
as much notoriety as our favorite movie stars. From
Jesse James to Charles Manson, the media, since
their inception, have turned criminals into folk
heroes. They just created two new ones when they
plastered those dipshits Dylan Klebold and Eric
Harris' pictures on the front of every newspaper.
Don't be surprised if every kid who gets pushed
around has two new idols.
We applaud the creation of a bomb whose sole
purpose is to destroy all of mankind, and we grow
up watching our president's brains splattered all over
Texas. Times have not become more violent. They
have just become more televised. Does anyone
think the Civil War was the least bit civil? If
television had existed, you could be sure they would
have been there to cover it, or maybe even
participate in it, like their violent car chase of
Princess Di. Disgusting vultures looking for corpses,
exploiting, fucking, filming and serving it up for our
hungry appetites in a gluttonous display of endless
human stupidity.
When it comes down to who's to blame for the high
school murders in Littleton, Colorado, throw a rock and you'll hit someone who's guilty.
We're the people who sit back and tolerate children owning guns, and we're the ones who
tune in and watch the up-to-the-minute details of what they do with them. I think it's
terrible when anyone dies, especially if it is someone you know and love. But what is
more offensive is that when these tragedies happen, most people don't really care any
more than they would about the season finale of Friends or The Real World. I was
dumbfounded as I watched the media snake right in, not missing a teardrop,
interviewing the parents of dead children, televising the funerals. Then came the witch
hunt.
Man's greatest fear is chaos. It was
unthinkable that these kids did not have a
simple black-and-white reason for their
actions. And so a scapegoat was needed. I
remember hearing the initial reports from
Littleton, that Harris and Klebold were
wearing makeup and were dressed like
Marilyn Manson, whom they obviously must
worship, since they were dressed in black.
Of course, speculation snowballed into
making me the poster boy for everything
that is bad in the world. These two idiots
weren't wearing makeup, and they weren't
dressed like me or like goths. Since Middle
America has not heard of the music they
did listen to (KMFDM and Rammstein,
among others), the media picked
something they thought was similar.
Responsible journalists have reported with
less publicity that Harris and Klebold were
not Marilyn Manson fans -- that they even
disliked my music. Even if they were fans,
that gives them no excuse, nor does it
mean that music is to blame. Did we look
for James Huberty's inspiration when he gunned down people at McDonald's? What did
Timothy McVeigh like to watch? What about David Koresh, Jim Jones? Do you think
entertainment inspired Kip Kinkel, or should we blame the fact that his father bought him
the guns he used in the Springfield, Oregon, murders? What inspires Bill Clinton to blow
people up in Kosovo? Was it something that Monica Lewinsky said to him? Isn't killing
just killing, regardless if it's in Vietnam or Jonesboro, Arkansas? Why do we justify one,
just because it seems to be for the right reasons? Should there ever be a right reason? If
a kid is old enough to drive a car or buy a gun, isn't he old enough to be held personally
responsible for what he does with his car or gun? Or if he's a teenager, should someone
else be blamed because he isn't as enlightened as an eighteen-year-old?
America loves to find an icon to hang its guilt on. But, admittedly, I have assumed the
role of Antichrist; I am the Nineties voice of individuality, and people tend to associate
anyone who looks and behaves differently with illegal or immoral activity. Deep down,
most adults hate people who go against the grain. It's comical that people are naive
enough to have forgotten Elvis, Jim Morrison and Ozzy so quickly. All of them were
subjected to the same age-old arguments, scrutiny and prejudice. I wrote a song called
"Lunchbox," and some journalists have interpreted it as a song about guns. Ironically,
the song is about being picked on and fighting back with my Kiss lunch box, which I used
as a weapon on the playground. In 1979, metal lunch boxes were banned because they
were considered dangerous weapons in the hands of delinquents. I also wrote a song
called "Get Your Gunn." The title is spelled with two n's because the song was a reaction
to the murder of Dr. David Gunn, who was killed in Florida by pro-life activists while I was
living there. That was the ultimate hypocrisy I witnessed growing up: that these people
killed someone in the name of being "pro-life."
The somewhat positive messages of these songs are usually the ones that
sensationalists misinterpret as promoting the very things I am decrying. Right now,
everyone is thinking of how they can prevent things like Littleton. How do you prevent
AIDS, world war, depression, car crashes? We live in a free country, but with that freedom
there is a burden of personal responsibility. Rather than teaching a child what is moral
and immoral, right and wrong, we first and foremost can establish what the laws that
govern us are. You can always escape hell by not believing in it, but you cannot escape
death and you cannot escape prison.
It is no wonder that kids are growing up more cynical; they have a lot of information in
front of them. They can see that they are living in a world that's made of bullshit. In the
past, there was always the idea that you could turn and run and start something better.
But now America has become one big mall, and because of the Internet and all of the
technology we have, there's nowhere to run. People are the same everywhere.
Sometimes music, movies and books are the only things that let us feel like someone
else feels like we do. I've always tried to let people know it's OK, or better, if you don't fit
into the program. Use your imagination -- if some geek from Ohio can become
something, why can't anyone else with the willpower and creativity?
I chose not to jump into the media frenzy and defend myself, though I was begged to
be on every single TV show in existence. I didn't want to contribute to these
fame-seeking journalists and opportunists looking to fill their churches or to get elected
because of their self-righteous finger-pointing. They want to blame entertainment? Isn't
religion the first real entertainment? People dress up in costumes, sing songs and
dedicate themselves in eternal fandom. Everyone will agree that nothing was more
entertaining than Clinton shooting off his prick and then his bombs in true political form.
And the news -- that's obvious. So is entertainment to blame? I'd like media
commentators to ask themselves, because their coverage of the event was some of the
most gruesome entertainment any of us have seen.
I think that the National Rifle Association is far too powerful to take on, so most people
choose Doom, The Basketball Diaries or yours truly. This kind of controversy does not help
me sell records or tickets, and I wouldn't want it to. I'm a controversial artist, one who
dares to have an opinion and bothers to create music and videos that challenge people's
ideas in a world that is watered-down and hollow. In my work I examine the America we
live in, and I've always tried to show people that the devil we blame our atrocities on is
really just each one of us. So don't expect the end of the world to come one day out of
the blue -- it's been happening every day for a long time.
MARILYN MANSON
(May 28, 1999)