What do you think? Is it everyone's fault? Who do you think god the shorter end of the stick - The killers, or the people who were shot? What went wrong?

-- Meghan (meghan@blurredlines.com), April 22, 2000

Answers

I must be getting old or lame. Probably lame but where the fault lies concerning these killings, has never entered my mind. I get sad and mushy in an earth mother kind of way whenever anyone is killed no matter who it is, unless it's one of those black and white things and some utter bastard gets killed, then I'm happy or indifferent about it. I also think the fact that I went to an all girl's private high school keeps me from empathetic because I didn't experience a normal-abnormal adolesence full of drugs, violence and angst (all that stuff happened after high school). I just had a weird but happy high school experience with the wonderful freaky nuns in our wonderful freaky little school. (I'm sorry I have nothing controversial or significant to add to this forum topic, but I feel compelled to contribute in order to keep Meghan happy)

-- Sasha (sasha@restraint.org), April 22, 2000.

Meghan, I'll pretty much agree with what you are saying about the Cuban kid. He belongs with his father. These relatives in Florida and the rest of their so-called community are outrageous in the way they are willing to screw with this poor kid's mind in order to score political points. They have the nerve to defy the law and threaten violence in order to get their way. The bunch of them should be arrested if they try that... and hey, if an immigrant breaks the law like that, shouldn't they be deported back to where they came from? How dare they abuse that child and break our laws and threaten to riot and destroy? I'm sick of them and their buddy Al Gore.

Hell, if they have such a burning desire to "save" a child, they can find thousands to save right in Miami (or are they too racist to want to look?)

I think you're a bit overboard on your Columbine rant, but then the high school years and the accompanying angst are a hell of a lot closer to you than to me. (Anyway, I guess rants are supposed to be a bit overboard.) The one key error I think you made was to imply that there was some kind of rough justice in what they did. Those two scumbags were not righting wrongs, they were killing innocent people for their own sick amusement. To find excuses for their actions is like finding excuses for a lynch mob.

And the legacy of Columbine is an aura of fear in our schools, induced not by any reality but by the babbling of the media and the idiodic zero-tolerance stupidity of education bureaucrats so that recently some early elementary grade students (in New Jersey?) were suspended from school for "shooting" each other with their fingers while playing.

[There you go, two responses to your entry... see, we do love you]

Jim

-- Jim (jimsjournal@yahoo.com), April 22, 2000.

Ahhhh... I knew there was a reason I love reading you. Then again, I'm always a sucker for a good rant, so maybe that's it... And perhaps I should wait until I finish wading through all this Elian crap on diary-l so I can provide a more coherent response... :)

-- Tim (mediabrat@hotmail.com), April 23, 2000.

No...more...Elian...coverage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm with you--I'm so sick of hearing about the entire Elian situation. And if I see that picture of him screaming in the closet while some federal agent has a gun pointed in his direction one more time, I'm going to scream. I've gotten to the point where I automatically change the channel if someone starts talking about the whle fiasco. Enough is enough.

As for Columbine...I was one of the tortured ones in high school, so I can empathize with the rage that can build up when you're relentlessly picked on and ostracized by your "peers." You're right, both sides took it too far.

Okay, I'll let you recover from the shock I gave you by posting here in the first place. And I'm going to go update my diary like a good little journalist. ;)

Jenn

-- Jenn (Hockeygirl_68@yahoo.com), April 23, 2000.

In my honest opinion I empathize with dylan and eric but i don't endorse what they did. I thought it was eerie how, when the media described Columbine the atmosphere at columbine it reminded me of my grade school and i could almost feel what dylan and eric went through. If h.s. had been like grade school i probably would have been a dylan or an eric.
It's easier not to be great

-- kelly mcg! (jacksfan30@aol.com), April 24, 2000.

Elian should be with his father. He should have been given to his father when he was picked up from the ocean. I don't understand why he wasn't. I understand that people want to live in the United States, I would want to live here if I wasn't born here as well...however, his father is in Cuba and that's where Elian should be. I'm glad that they have been reunited, now they need to buy they a one way ticket back home!

-- Nicole (Nicole@nicole2112.com), April 24, 2000.