Columbine

Columbine
© 2009 Dave Cullen
417 pages

Columbine. I remember it, of course.  I was in eighth grade when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold turned their high school into a bloody spectacle. That day on April 20th, 1999, is always referred to as a school shooting, but that label misses the point. Harris and Klebold weren't shooters, they were failed bombers.  They didn't turn the cafeteria and library red with blood because they had a score to settle with the jocks, they wanted to depart a world of inferiors in a blaze of glory.  Dave Cullen's Columbine is a disturbing history of the April attack, one which draws extensively from the corpus of material the two deliberately left behind.  Cullen's history has a target, though, as he aims to rebuke not only the media for creating and perpetuating various myths about the horror, but the sheriff's department for negligence and deception.   Most importantly, Cullen maintains that Harris and Klebold were not abused loners who 'snapped', but psychologically disturbed individuals who planned the attack for more than a year.

Columbine is a receptively easy read. Cullen is a journalist, and knows how to grease the runners to captivate readers with a story. The problem is the grisly subject -- or subjects. The graphic nature of the shootings isn't dwelt on overmuch, but through Cullen's research considerable time is spent in the head of Harris and Klebold. This is, to say the least, a toxic atmosphere. Cullen's thesis is that Harris was a clinical psychopath, one who could lead a double life. In society, he could be productive and charming, convincing adults into purchasing guns on his behalf, and even dating a twenty-something despite being a kid working at a pizza parlor.   By himself -- in his journals, with people he regarded as confederates -- Eric was full of contempt for society, for virtually everyone.  He acted out his contempt in 'missions' of petty vandalism and theft,  and when confronted by authority figures, could always manipulate them into believing he was repentant.  Eric was joined in these missions by Dylan Klebold, a depressive misfit who nontheless managed to snag a prom date; both boys had active social lives.

There is no doubt that the April attack was a methodically planned horror instead of a loner's 'snap'.  Not only did the boys ramble and rave in their bloodlust for months prior, but the equipment took time to purchase and put together --  for their bombs were homemade concoctions, based on plans from the internet.  The April 20th attack itself was a multi-stage drama of the horrific: first, a diversionary bomb in the outskirts of the city to draw police away, then several massive explosions would rock the school cafeteria at peak traffic time.  Hundreds would be killed by the inferno, and as students streamed out of the exits, Eric and Dylan would be waiting for them with intent of sweeping up survivors with gunfire  before their inevitable demise at the hands of the police. Still worse, their cars, parked in areas where emergency services would establish a perimeter, were rigged to blow after their deaths, adding still more chaos and death.  This is no impulsive revenge quest, but a premeditated campaign of war against the humanity they loathed. Fortunately for the students of Columbine,  all of the bombs failed to explode. and the murderous pair soon lost interested in shooting people after the first dozen, resigning themselves to self-slaughter.

Their campaign of death should not have been an ambush. Cullen notes that Eric's sociopathy, his contempt for the world, often displayed itself in the arrogant way he and Dylan both leaked information.  Harris' toxic website often broadcast his hatred for the world,  and numerous people were aware that they had guns and were experimenting with pipe bombs. The police, having previously arrested the pair for breaking into a van and stealing equipment from it, even had a warrant for a search of Eric's house -- one which was never executed.  Although Cullen labors to dispatch many minor myths associated with the Columbine attack -- the pair's association with a 'trench coat Mafia', the sole targeting of 'jocks', etc --   he rebukes local authorities far more seriously for their negligence in following up on Harris, and for attempting to conceal how high he had already registered as a potential threat from the public.

Cullen's case is simple: Eric Harris was a psychopath who essentially co-opted the suicidal tendencies of his manic-depressive buddy into an attempt  to depart a world they loathed in a manner that demonstrated their superiority over the zombies.  Some parts of his argument are stronger than others: for instance, the numerous heavyweight bombs, which would have killed hundreds indiscriminately, indicate that the two weren't just after jocks. (The intense planning obviously belies any impulsive snap, of course.)    The case for Eric's sociopathy strikes me as solid as well. Less convincing is the utter denial that Harris and Klebold were bullied, as Cullen points to their circles of friends and the fact that Harris was a bully as well.  A bully can be bullied; the two categories are not exclusive, and Klebold strikes me as an easily-bullied sort of personality. While Harris' journals are nothing but wrath and rage, Klebold is more relatable, alternating between wrath and idolization of a girl.  Numerous students have also testified in interviews that the two were subjects of abuse -- but who in a modern high school is not?  

It is never easy to dwell on this kind of rage, and strong stomachs are definitely required to endure constant exposure to Harris' utter lack of humanity.  Cullen's interesting approach -- alternating build-up and aftermath chapters -- kept me glued to the pages, and I'm grateful for a history that indicates how Columbine attempted to climb back to its feet after the attack, to reclaim the school and honor those who perished.  Columbine's story after the fact is also difficult, though, riven with lawsuits and slow-to-heal psychological wounds. But the school survives still, and these days much has changed: police have different active-shooter protocols now (immediate engagement, no more waiting for SWAT)  threats of violence are often met with zero-tolerance policies, and it is doubtful in the post 9/11 world that teenagers could get away with leaving mysterious dufflebags in the school cafeteria, ticking away.  Although a cry for stricter gun laws follows every shooting in the United States -- understandably -- Columbine also points to the limits of those laws, as the culprits' most potentially dangerous weapons, the bombs, were fashioned from ordinary consumer goods. Thank heavens Harris had to put them together at the last minute for want of safe storage space, otherwise his serial bombing might  have succeeded.   Those with intent to harm will find a way to try it; good security policies are needed to counter these threats. At Columbine, I couldn't help but notice that the sole guard was off at lunch during the attack. One guard for 2000 students?!  My high school had two deputy sheriffs, and we couldn't have boasted a thousand students on a good day.  (Of course, we were post-Columbine.)

Columbine is haunting, effective reading.

Related:

• The Ashes of Waco, Dick Reavis. The boys' April 20th assault was allegedly timed to 'honor' Timothy McVeigh, whose own bombing was allegedly revenge for the Waco massacre. 

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games

© 2008 Suzanne Collins
 378 pages           

 Once every year,  two teenagers are chosen at random to represent their region in a nation-wide game….the Hunger Games. But they’re not competing in track and field or spiking volleyballs to earn metals:  they’re fighting to the death. And you thought high school sucked.

The Hunger Games is the first in a science-fiction trilogy set in a dystopia future wherein the United States is gone, replaced by a country known as Panem. Its central city, Capitol, is rich beyond measure, and rules with an iron hand twelve outlying districts, all impoverished. There used to be thirteen districts, but when it rebelled against the state the insurrection was brutally put down…and to ensure that no other district bucked the reins again, Panem instituted the Hunger Games, forcing two kids from every district to compete against one another, fighting one another until only one survives.

Katniss Everdeen is a voluntary contender in the games, fighting so that her young sister Primrose doesn’t have to. She is, in effect, taking a death sentence: the odds are long that she will prevail among the 24, because other, wealthier districts train their children for the yearly games and see them as a place to earn wealth and glory.  Katniss’ home, District 12, is a poor mining area: they see the games for what they are, the murder of children for the glorification of a malevolent state. But Katniss is up to Capitol's challenge. Orphaned by her father and functionally abandoned by her mother,  she shouldered the burden of  responsibility for herself and her sister, defying the laws to hunt secretly in the woods bordering her district and bringing home food for her family . It takes courage to live outside the law, but Katniss is determined to survive. That, and the survival skills she's learned pacing the woodlands in search of prey,  are her best hope.

The Hunger Games is not a happy story. It is brutal and intense, both in terms of action and the emotional turmoil readers joining Katniss will go through. The physical challenge is daunting enough:  Katniss is not only compelled to fight against 23 other teenagers abandoned in the woods, having to provide her own shelter and food, but the Capitol authorities, the “Gamemakers”, constantly imperil the contestants,  altering the weather and sending monsters to harry the tributes. The young people create alliances to survive, but temporary physical advantages carry their price: it’s a lot more difficult to kill a friend, and a lot easier to be killed by someone you regard as an ally.

Happy it isn't, but The Hunger Games proved more compelling than I expected it to be. Katniss is an indomitable central character, feisty and self-reliant. She never whines, and though she has vulnerabilities she doesn't waste time dwelling on them.Other characters, like the mysterious Rue and the brooding Peeta, prove able additions to the cast. She's easy to root for, even when forced to make difficult decisions. And happily for a teen novel, there's not a lot of dwelling on romance -- although it does factor in, and will become more important in the sequel.  

This is essentially a story about courageous young people in harrowing circumstances, attempting to survive not only 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune', but the Capitol's attempt to destroy their own sense of humanity. It's a fast, thrilling read, peopled by strong characters whose maturity gives the lie to the conflation of adolescence and silliness. 

           

No Logo

No Logo: the Case Against the Brand Bullies 

© 1999, 2009; Naomi Klein

544 pages

The political and financial turmoil of the past few years have seen a rising tide of anger targeted against the political power of wealthy corporations. Little wonder: since the crisis erupted in 2007, millions have lost their jobs, yet the corporate officers of these failing businesses continue to award themselves extravagant bonuses, in some cases with taxpayers' money.  And there is no help to be found in the government;  anti-corporate protesters in New York and elsewhere have been set on by police, and the Supreme Court has declared corporations to be "people", whose freedom of speech in the form of campaign donations should not be limited in the least. (And those actual people who express their own freedom of speech by impeding corporate actions? If their protests are judged to have caused $10,000 in losses, they are deemed domestic terrorists and join the 10% of Americans already in prison.) No Brand  is a sharp criticism of corporations, but one from a different era. First published in 1999, she scrutinizes brand corporations first for their business model, which emphasizes style rather than substance, before examining their invasion of public space and notorious legacy of abusive labor practices.

As a child, I scoffed at my classmates’ obsession with the Nike brand. My derision was born not of any preternatural consumer consciousness; my parents simply were not the kind to pay for overpriced t-shirts. For that is what they were; a Nike t-shirt is not made of magic cotton that repels water, heals wounds, or bestows upon its wearer +2 Armor. The same is true of its synthetic products, aimed toward actual athletes: while they may wick sweat and keep users comfortable, they do it no better than those manufactured by Champion or generic brands. Nike has never advertised its gear on the basis of superiority, like washing detergent. And yet early this spring, when shopping for athletic clothes, I went to Amazon and simply typed in “Nike”. I was interested in all manner of sports apparel, and Nike…was sports.

Therein lies the basis of Klein’s criticism.  Brand companies aren’t about quality, they’re about Ideas, and consumers are not paying money for superior merchandise but are instead buying into an image of themselves, of something they want to be. It’s a formula that has given religions and political ideologies success for thousands of years, and today it is the approach of almost every major corporation. But because their products don’t advertise themselves the way quality products might, these brand corporations have to push their product aggressively, and in the section “NO SPACE”, Klein details how brands are using not just conventional media, but putting up advertisements in schools. While parents might merely resent a company taking advantage of a financially struggling school system to hawk its shoes,  this branded invasion is literally dangerous when school cafeterias become hosts to McDonalds annexes and Coca-Cola gains exclusive distribution rights. Children become a captive audience to advertising; their values are those introduced not by parents or concerned teachers, but marketing execs who are grooming the next generation of consumers.

 Because the companies chiefly concern themselves with pushing their Image, and give little attention to the manufacturing side of things, rampant labor abuses escape their notice completely. The abuses are familiar to anyone conversant with the term sweat shop:  long hours, marginal pay, no rights, and no tolerance for anyone who resists the abuse. Even in countries which have something resembling human rights laws, they are often moot where corporations are concerned. In the Philippines, for instance, there exist economic development zones, little islands of virtually zero regulation where the only rules governing corporations are those they impose upon themselves. Shockingly, with their only motivation being profit margins, exploitation is rife.

But in the United States and Europe, citizens’ groups are working to give these companies another motivation. In “NO LOGO”, Klein covers the growth of activism against these companies, showing how boycotts and government actions have forced Nike and other companies to take responsibility for the labor costs involved in their products. This activism isn’t limited to aging hippies or idealistic college students, either: certain groups have met success in stirring up anger in decaying urban areas, among young black men who dream of making a success of themselves by wearing Nike shoes.

 No Logo is as mature a critique of brand corporations as one might ask for – sharply pointed, but not a screed. She builds her arguments up slowly and steadily, allowing the facts to present the case instead of passion.  The result is disturbing and damning, yet encouraging. Definitely a work to remember. (For those who have read the original, Klein updates it with a section that declares President Obama to be the first superbrand president...with the problems therein.)

Cinderella Ate My Daughter

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture
© 2012 Peggy Orenstein
260 pages

When did every little girl become a princess to be bedecked in pink and fawned over? Such is the question posed by Peggy Orenstein, author of numerous books on issues of motherhood and raising women. The answer is at least twofold. First, advertising toward girls in general has emphasized coy, yet overt sexuality, even to the very young: and secondly, in the early 1990s, the Disney Corporation realized there was a lot of money to be had in developing a line of princess goods.  But this isn't really a book on advertising: Orenstein is more concerned about what the princess culture is doing to the minds of girls. The substance of the book is an examination of  how girls view themselves and each other in society.

 What makes a princess special? There's no answer. A princess is special just because. She exists solely to be an object of attention: her specialness is not the result of her accomplishments, her skills, her talents, her character, or anything substantial.Therein lies the problem with the princess culture, for it influences girls to aspire to be objects of appreciation. Their sense of self-worth is an external fair, subject not to what girls feel themselves capable of, but how girls feel others respond to them. If they are not regarded as Special, they feel worthless. Distracted by the quest for attention, they don't bother with the kind of self-growth that would merit attention, or  be fulfilling on its own. Substance is placed by superficiality. This is particularly troublesome in the case of sexuality: in Orenstein's words, girls learn to aspire to be desired before they have desire (of that kind) on their own. Orenstein sees this as a problem for girlhood in general, because the princess culture has utterly hijacked what it means to be a girl. If a helmet isn't pink, it isn't a girl's helmet. If a mother scorns all the fluff, her inadvertent lesson to her daughter is that it's not okay to be a girl.  This being the problem, her solution -- in addition to reversing Reagan's deregulation of children's advertising -- is for parents to focus on teaching girls how to live for themselves, and not for the approval of others; to define themselves and not try to fit Disney's definition of a girl.

Orenstein is a fun author, especially as she covers beauty pageants for four-year-olds and facebook, using phrases like "Sesame street walker".She's also one who has to practice what she preaches, for her own daughter Daisy is one of the afflicted: the account conveys her desperate frustration in trying to raise Daisy to be a strong person in an environment swamped by odious messages in the advertising. It shares themes with Consuming Kids and So Sexy, So Soon and covers similar ground. What So Sexy, So Soon referred to as "age compression", Orenstein calls "KGOY", Kids Getting Older Younger. This refers to the way kids are attracted to objects advertised to older children, hence kiddie thongs and Barbie in the toddler aisle.  Of obvious interest to the parents and guardians of young women, and quite readable. 

Books in the News

Every so often I see news articles which touch on subjects I've been reading about; I used to link to them in weekly review posts from time to time, but I may start doing it in this format.

For Consuming Kids:

Advertising offers struggling schools a lifeline (USA Today)

Financially struggling schools nationwide are increasing the volume of advertising that children see in the halls, at football games and even on their report cards.
School administrators say that with a public unwilling to adequately fund K-12 education, they’re obligated to find new ways to keep teachers in classrooms.
“We know that we can’t continue to only look at ways to cut, we also need to be innovative about the assets we have and learn how to bring in more revenue,” says Trinette Marquis, a spokeswoman for the 28,000-student Twin Rivers Unified School District in McClellan, Calif.

For Asphalt Nation  and Suburban Nation:
States eye new motorist taxes: miles you drive could cost you (USA Today)

States are looking for new ways of taxing motorists as they seek to pay for highway and bridge repair and improvements without relying on the per-gallon gasoline tax widely viewed as all but obsolete.
Among the leading ideas: Taxing drivers for how many miles they travel rather than how much gasoline they buy. Minnesota and Oregon already are testing technology to keep track of mileage. Other states, including Washington and Nevada, are preparing similar projects.
The efforts are being prompted by the fact that gasoline taxes no longer provide enough money to pay for roads and bridges — especially when Congress and many state legislatures are reluctant to increase taxes imposed on each gallon. The federal tax of 18.4 cents a gallon hasn't been raised in nearly two decades.

For The Shallows
Some caution texting is ruining art of conversation, Martha Irvine

Statistics from the Pew Internet & American Life Project show that, these days, many people with cell phones prefer texting over a phone call. It's not always young people, though the data indicate that the younger you are, the more likely you are to prefer texting.And that's creating a communication divide, of sorts - the talkers vs. the texters.Some would argue that it's no big deal. What difference should it make how we communicate, as long as we do so?But many experts say the most successful communicators will, of course, have the ability to do both, talk or text, and know the most appropriate times to use those skills. And they fear that more of us are losing our ability to have - or at least are avoiding - the traditional face-to-face conversations that are vital in the workplace and personal relationships."It is an art that's becoming as valuable as good writing," says Janet Sternberg, a professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University in New York who is also a linguist.

So Sexy So Soon

So Sexy So Soon:  the New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids
© 2008 Diane E. Levine, Jean Kilbourne
226 pages

For me, the filthiest show on television is Toddlers and Tiaras. Perhaps I'm old-fashioned: I'm generally repulsed by the stereotypical idea of 'sexiness' in western culture -- provocative clothes, made-up faces, and posed behavior. What attracts me to a woman is more an internal matter: I like character, strength, and self-respect. Perhaps I dislike the idea of sexiness because it's only about sex, missing the real substance of human relationships altogether. In any case, as objectionable as I find sexiness in general, to see children attempting to invoke it is outright horrifying. Although parents and guardians tend to be protective of their children and have always worried about the declining morality of the younger generation, since time began, surely today's problems are extreme enough to not be dismissed as the simple historical pessimism of the old.  We live in a world in which Victoria's Secret markets g-strings to little girls, where the toys are hookers, and top 40 stations play songs like "I'm Sexy and I Know It". This is a far cry from Aristotle kvetching about rebellious teenagers.  So Sexy So Soon is similar to Consuming Kids in that it examines the effects of advertising upon children. However, it is much more narrowly focused (on premature sexualization) and written with a greater emphasis on helping parents address the problem, primarily through communication.

The authors are not prudes: they acknowledge from the start that human beings are sexual creatures from the moment of our births. There is nothing the matter with sex or children being curious about the differences between men and women: has any generation of tykes not wondered where babies come from, or played the equivalent of "doctor"? The essential point of So Sexy so Soon is that advertisers are using sex to sell products. They're not interested in educating children about sex, let alone guiding them towards sexual responsibility. Their only concern is manipulating children into thinking sexy is a concept they should be concerned about, and to realize it they must buy these products or listen to this music or wear this makeup. So what if kids grow up with warped attitudes toward sex, gender roles, and their own self-worth?  So what if little  children, in the process of trying to emulate adults, start talking about oral sex and grinding against one another?  Sex sells -- even to kids.

Levine and Kilbourne both write with an eye toward helping parents. While moderating the home environment is crucial, they stress communication. At least one of the authors specializes in parent-child communication, and she advocates asking open-ended questions to find out what kids know, and letting them know that if they're confused about the barrage of messages they receive through television, music, and the Internet, that they can express that confusion with an adult without being judged. Children are the victims of premature sexuality, not its creators. Political action is also necessary: marketers and companies must take responsibility, because the tide of garbage they produce in their quest to maximize profits is overwhelming parents, setting their children against them. That tide has been building since the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan  deregulated child-targeted advertising. The same agency which allowed the problem to transpire should be held accountable for fixing it.

So Sexy So Soon is of eminent interest to parents; both it and Consuming Kids are eye-opening works that detail the problems of childhood advertising. I would read them together.

Consuming Kids

Consuming Kids: the Hostile Takeover of Childhood
© 2004 Susan Linn
288 pages

To some, children are the joy of our lives; a refreshing source of curiosity, energy, youth, and joy. To others, they are nothing but grist for the mill. In Consuming Kids, child psychologist Susan Linn reveals the scope and consequences of the increasing commercialization of childhood, which effects more than just parents. It is a profoundly disturbing book; were I a parent its revelations would horrify me. But it demands to be read.

Consuming Kids opens at a conference in which children are the focus -- or rather, the target, because this is a marketing conference, where the latest psychological insights into the minds of children are put to good use. "Teenagers are socially anxious; build on that." These marketeers are family scientists as well: they cite a study about the importance of the Nag Factor, wherein the 'pester power' of children is tapped to manipulate parents into taking the kids to a given restaurant or frequenting a particular store. (That same study featured in Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, and provoked my interest in this subject.) Linn is a psychologist by profession: she cares for children and is sickened by the way that studies done with good intentions -- to understand children's motivations -- are being perverted to use by companies which essentially profit by targeting vulnerabilities, like the aforementioned anxiety of teenagers or the fact that children cannot tell the difference between an advertisement and a factual program, let alone think critically about the content of said ads.

Linn devotes the bulk of the book to examining the consequences of child-targeting advertising: the promotion of consumerism among children, the idea that things will make them happy; the sinister way that they are conditioned to favor certain brands through cartoon figures and "role model" spokespersons like Ronald McDonald;  the rise of childhood obesity amid the expansion of advertising of candy and processed food to kids;  the use of violence and sex to capture attention; the rise of childhood addiction to alcohol and tobacco,  and the corruption of the public sphere, from PBS to the schoolroom. (The latter section makes this  work of interest to everyone, not just parents.)

I've read other works with a bone to pick with advertising of one kind or another, but I rarely enjoy them and never review them because prior reads have been so sloppily done; they consist mainly of one person idly complaining for paragraph after paragraph. This is certainly not the case with Linn, who tempers her passion with professionalism and focus. Her introduction immediately shares her sense of unease with the reader, and then she develops her many substantial criticisms. Hers is a convincing argument, not a rant, and it ends with impressive sections evaluating what our response should be. After examining advertising's relationship to free speech, she then points out that this is a particularly nonpartisan issue. It doesn't fit neatly into a party box: this kind of marketing has negative consequences for everyone save the firms targeting the kiddies. She then ends with a chapter detailing what we can do at home, in the community, in schools, in the marketplace, and as members of polities both large (the nation) and small (the city).

Consuming Kids is a magnificent piece of work; I would only fault it for being slightly dated with regards to references to advertising through the Internet and social media; most of Linn's concern is advertising through television and the schools. Otherwise, she's golden, offering a comprehensive criticism that is both passionate and moderate in tone. Highly recommended to parents and anyone concerned about the welfare of children and society.

Related:

Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser