Reviewed - Dave Cullen's "Columbine"

I don't normally write a book review this long, and, I don't normally post them on my blog (see my "Amazon reviews" link in my link list, but, if you go to Amazon and see some of the bogus reasons people are trashing Dave Cullen's "Columbine" there, you'll understand.

On storytelling, in case you've not read anything about the book yet, Cullen uses a movie director's "flashback" style, interspersing chapters from after the shooting with chapters from before, focused on Eric Harris's and Dylan Klebold's psychological development, criminal development, and planning for the attack.

The style works well here, in fair part because of Cullen's skill with it. Cullen is clearly a good journalist, in doing good research, as well as a good author, in gripping the reader, and at "moving," as separate story lines as well as interwoven, the "before" and the "after" sides of his narrative.

As I noted, he's a good journalist, too, and with a true crime story, and one as gut-wrenching and heart-breaking as this, the investigative side comes into play, too.

And, Cullen does that through his myth-busting.

Three main myths, he busts, and then gives more background on a sidebar myth busted elsewhere.

1. Harris and Klebold were NOT strongly bullied, and any such bullying they did suffer did NOT serve as a "trigger" or major contributory factor.

The fact is, the duo were themselves big-time **bulliers,** not victims.

Beyond that, a couple of people who have dissed this book here have particular reason to do so, related to this myth.

Randy Brown is the father of Columbine student Brooks Brown, who could best be described as a "frenemy" of Harris, perhaps? Harris made more than one terroristic threat toward Brown in the last year-plus before the attack, but literally saved Brooks' life minutes before starting to shoot by telling him to leave the school.

Because of what could well be described as Harris' bullying of his son, and the fact that Brooks wrote a book about Columbine himself, Randy Brown could have an ax to grind, and he sure looks that way. Cullen interviewed both Randy and Brooks, but, because he refused to buy the "bully" myth, apparently Randy Brown loathes him.

That said, I would have liked to see Cullen talk more about the "frenemy" angle between Brooks and Eric Harris, but, apparently, neither Brown was willing to talk about the friendship side of that.

Second ax-grinder on this issue is Ralph Larkin, a Ph.D. sociologist and college sociology professor, as well as the authof of a Columbine book of two years ago. Larkin apparently has his Ph.D. professional shingle at stake. Not only is he heavily invested in the bullying myth, he's also a big peddler of Myth No. 2, that Harris/Klebold targeted specific groups. Indeed, Larkin not only perpetuates the "jocks as targets" myth, he also claims the pair were targeting evangelical Christians. That's the first major push of that angle I've heard, which makes me wonder if Larkin isn't bringing personal beliefs to the table, too.

Anyway, feel free to read both these persons' reviews, or even Larkin's and Brooks Brown's books.

Randy Brown comes off as the No. 1 parent of a Columbine survivor to want to "control" the post-Columbine impressions of the outside world. Perhaps that's why neither he nor his son wanted to talk about the "frenemy" angle.

Larkin is just full of illogical holes, which leads to Myth No. 2.

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2. Harris and Klebold did NOT target jocks. Or other groups. Cullen easily refutes this by saying, why didn't they attack the gym? Or take their guns and bombs to a Columbine football game. Rather, Harris raised the "target jocks" comment once in a failed attempt to recruit a third shooter.

As for evangelical Christians, that one doesn't even make Cullen's radar screen. But, along the same thought lines, it too is easily refutable by noting the pair could have attacked a church, instead of Columbine High, and didn't. They didn't even vandalize a church in their petty crime phase, in fact.
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3. Harris was NOT a virgin. Tis true that once in his diary, he moans about "NOT getting any," but that's not the same as "NEVER getting any." He's dead, so we can't ask him, but you either accept alleged female companion testimony at face value, or you don't. That's not to say that Cullen doesn't perhaps overstate Harris' prowess, but, remember, he was a psychopath. I have no doubt he could mount charm offenses on women.

And, on to the sidebar myth.

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4. Cassie Bernall was NOT a martyr. She didn't give a last-minute profession of faith before Harris shot her. In fact, she said nothing. And her mom, Misti, not one of the more tragic, but one of the more off-putting, figures of Columbine, was directly told that by another student, at a dinner with that student, her mom, another student and mom, and Misti Bernall's editor from Plough, her book publisher. She was also semi-directly told this by the Rocky Mountain news, also before her book went into print. Yet, she ran the lie, ran the lie in follow-up editions of the book, and on her website. As did evangelical pastors around the area, as Cullen notes.

I'll have more on dramatis personae in a second, but let's get to the core.

Eric Harris was a psychopath. Most 1- and 2- star reviewers don't like that because, like Larkin and Brown, it doesn't fit into their preconceptions.

First, they can't blame liberal Hollywood media, computer games, etc. (Psychopath Charles Manson killed before any of that, anyway.)

Second, they can't blame permissive liberal parenting. (Harris's career Air Force officer dad and Klebold's parents who booted his older brother from the house for drug use refute that, anyway.)

Third, they can't blame bullying.

The second can be made "isolated." The first and third, on paper, at least, can be "worked on" with an eye toward a fix.

But, the dark mental world of psychopathy can't be fixed. With one hint at the possibility of partial amelioration, which Cullen mentions near the end, not only can't psychopathy be "fixed," psychopathy is actually hugely resistant to treatment. There's no psychotropic medication for it, and, as for talk therapy, good psychopaths learn to become better ones by the challenge of manipulating and reading a putative emotional expert, their counselor.

And that's why Cullen can't give a "neat" story to us. There isn't one.

As for Klebold, his is the tragedy. With a different friend, he might have committed suicide, but not shot others. With better analysis, and like Harris, getting antidepressants and/or counseling as part of his juvenile probation diversion, his depression might actually have been touched.

Cullen briefly discusses psychopath + depressive dyads in the book.

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Pictures of other key characters.

Dissers of Cullen score him for relying too much on the FBI's Dwayne Fuselier, above all over the psychopath analysis — one repeated by MANY other psychologists, though.

Well, that's just too bad, because the man knew, and knows, his business.

Misti Bernall: I picture her as being daughter Cassie's big sister wannabe before Columbine, and I suspect she's held on to the myth of martyrdom to hold onto that, too.

Frank DeAngelis: A tragedy in not finding his own emotional release before divorce. Ditto for Linda Lou Sanders, widow of Dave Sanders. And kudos to Cullen for addressing this, not just parents of the children, or child survivors.

Sheriff John Stone and various members of the JeffCo Sherrif's Dept: I've argued on my blog it's ridiculous to elect sheriffs when we don't elect police chiefs or state directors of public safety and Stone is a poster child for that point of view. It's too bad state judges gave such narrow rulings on various points of county liability. Stone, as likely leader of not just censorship but a cover-up, deserved a couple of years of jail time, as did top assistant, Division Chief John Kiekbusch.

Brian Rohrbaugh: Beyond perhaps still dealing with his own anger over son Danny's death in an unhealthy way, he too is a poster child — a poster child for LONG overstaying one's 15 minutes of fame. Add in that the death brought out a lot of far-right political thought, and he is totally unsympathetic by now, with the exception of his lawsuit flushing much of the JeffCo coverup into daylight.

Evangelical ministers of the area: Their degree of exploitation of the shooting is disgusting, as well described by Cullen. It's disgusting enough that, if the Hell they love graphically portraying did exist, then, per Dante, they would deserve ninth-level reserved seats.

Don Marxhausen: The Lutheran pastor shows that, for people looking for religious comfort, not religious condemnation, mainline Protestant churches still have something to offer.

PTSD: Yes, I call it a "dramatis personae." Little about it was known in 1999; it's unfortunate it took this tragedy to bring more about it to light, but Columbine spurred new work into counseling and otherwise assisting surviving victims of tragedy.