The Denver Post

September 26, 1999 Sunday 2D EDITION

SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A-23

Killing 'cool' to some teens
Experts blame culture of violence

By Howard Pankratz, Denver Post Legal Affairs Writer,

VAIL - American society has so desensitized its children to violence that some kids thought the Columbine High School massacre was 'cool' and felt they could have done the same thing even better, Colorado lawyers were told here Saturday.

In a sobering look at Columbine and other school shootings, agroup of educators, lawyers and mental-health professionals agreedthat schools are still physically safe environments.

But some of the panelists said the mental well-being of students has been strongly affected by the repeated portrayals of violence on television and in the movies and by schools where kids feel 'lost' because of enrollments that soar beyond 1,000.

Unexpected reactions

Dr. Hildegard Messenbaugh, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center who has spent 30 years treating juvenile delinquents, said the reaction of some of her clients to the shootings at Columbine is not what many people would have expected.

She said that teenagers the age of her clients and Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are often 'raw bundles of psychological hell' adversely affected by a seemingly uncaring society that is not child-oriented.

With that mental makeup, some of her clients found the actions by Harris and Klebold fascinating.

'My adolescents thought it (Columbine) was cool,' said Messenbaugh, speaking at the annual Colorado Bar Association convention. 'They thought they could do the same thing.'

She said that as they talked about Columbine, 'their violence became palpable. Their eyes sparkled as they talked about (Klebold's and Harris') guns, the number who died, how many more could have been shot and how many people they would like to shoot.'

'It was scary,' said Messenbaugh, a concentration camp survivor.

She said that she called for 30 seconds of silence and asked the youths to consider what they had just said. On reflection they, too, found their comments unnerving, she said.

Not 'that big a deal'

Panelist Jane Nicolet, a middle school teacher in Fort Collins, said that violence in society has become so pervasive that many of the kids in her school thought Columbine 'wasn't that big a deal.'

She said one student told her that Columbine-type shootings'had been happening for years' and that the only reason it becamea 'big deal' is because newspapers decided to report about the Columbine massacre.

Tonya Aultman-Bettridge, of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado, said youth violence is disturbing not because it has increased but because it has become lethal. What once may have resulted in a fistfight now may end in a shooting, she said.

She said the increase in fatal violence is attributable to the availability of technology - guns - and the willingness of the participants to inflict deadly violence on their targets.

But Aultman-Bettridge stressed that Columbine-type shootings are still rare events.

Parental factors

Don Quick, an assistant attorney general in the state AG's office who helped put together the recent Summit on School Safety, said that the dominant theme from the summit was that many of today's children feel they have no positive relationship with adults.

He said that some adults today not only don't want to be responsible for other people's children, they won't take responsibility for their own.

Quick said it is imperative that parenting skills be taught throughout society and that adults find out what their children are watching on TV and in

the movies.

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DENVER ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

August 11, 1999, Wednesday

SECTION: Entertainment/Weekend/Spotlight; Ed. FINAL; Pg. 2D

COLUMBINE STIRS HARD LOOK AT TV VIOLENCE

By Dusty Saunders, Denver Rocky Mountain News Broadcasting Critic

If the recent Hollywood meeting between network executives and TV critics had been held in mid-May rather than in mid-July, there's no doubt TV violence, sparked by the Columbine tragedy, would have been the hot-button topic.

But topics, like television schedules, change quickly in the mercurial broadcasting industry. By the time mid-July rolled around, violence had been pre-empted by the diversity debate following accusations by the NAACP that the networks were ignoring people of color in the casting of fall TV series.

TV violence was discussed but not with the intensity the subject deserved.

Thus, it's difficult to get a definitive reading on how television will react in upcoming months.

No one, of course, is standing up and shouting, ''Hey, I'm for all the violence I can put on the screen. It's great for audience ratings.'' Still, there have not been flat out comments that television alone should bear the brunt of criticism about what happened at Columbine and other locales.

You may recall that CBS President Les Moonves yanked Falcone, a series dealing with a young cop going undercover to battle the Mafia, as a contender for the fall schedule immediately after the Columbine shootings. Moonves was widely quoted as saying, in the light of Columbine, putting Falcone on the fall schedule would be ''inappropriate.'' However, Falcone remains in production and could join the CBS lineup in January. Is this an example of network television responding to the moment while not really altering its course?

Moonves claims not. ''Falcone, based on the film Donnie Brasco, was a project I liked,'' Moonves told critics. ''We screened the pilot about a week before the events in Littleon. I did have a visceral response to the violence out there. ''But we also decided we didn't have enough time to determine where Falcone was going dramatically and where it fit into our schedule for the fall. At no point did I ever say it was eliminated from the schedule.'' ''We feel Falcone will be done responsibly.'' However, events at Columbine at least have altered the pilot episode of the series, according to producer Mark Johnson. A graphic ice-pick murder has been edited out of a scene. Instead, the focus will be on the reaction of witnesses rather than on the stabbing.

''I don't think we lose anything by not actually seeing the ice pick stabs, '' Johnson said.

The WB Network, which caters mainly to teen-agers, is taking ''hard looks'' at story lines that deal with relationships and conflicts, according to President Jamie Kellner.

''We're also going to be careful in exploring such Columbine-linked themes as teen alienation,'' says Kellner, who took a lot of media heat for delaying the season-ending episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer because of what he believed was its relevance to Columbine. ''Did Columbine wake us up a bit? Yes,'' says Kellner, who claims the network has always treated violence responsibly. Some actors, such as Christine Lahti, a regular on Chicago Hope for five years, is hopeful the anti-violence message is gaining legs throughout the industry. ''I think everyone involved in the business - writers, actors, producers and directors - agree things have to change. They feel accountable. They don't want violence on tv for violence sake.'' Still not everybody is changing course.

Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, has Harsh Realm, a new Fox series considered by many critics as too violent based on the premiere episode.

Carter claims he has not been influenced creatively by what happened at Columbine.

''Of course I reacted to the tragedy. It was a terrible event on many levels,'' he says. ''But my standards are the same, which means I'm trying to be a responsible storyteller and use the elements and conventions of storytelling that provide the best story.'' Carter says he's ''not watering anything down'' in his efforts to deliver ''the most powerful message and to entertain and to edify whenever possible.'' One of the more emotional reactions comes from Arsenio Hall, co-star of CBS' action-oriented series, Martial Law.

According to a Boston Globe critic, Hall recently asked his director to change a scene so his cop character would stop the villain with a single shot rather than with a fusillade of bullets.

Earlier, Hall had been upset when shown publicity photos displaying his character in several gun-wielding poses.

He ordered his publicist to toss them, noting, ''A lot of times we get requests from kids for photos. I can't send these pictures with me holding guns.'' Today's nostalgia: On Aug. 12, 1995, George Carlin hosted a retrospective special, 20 Years of Comedy, on HBO.
 

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DENVER ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

July 8, 1999, Thursday

SECTION: Sports; Ed. FINAL; Pg. 1C

THAT EXTRA YARD

BRONCOS' MCCAFFREY ATTEMPTS TO REACH OUT WITH UNITED WAY TV AD AGAINST ACTS OF VIOLENCE

By Sam Adams, News Staff Writer

Ed McCaffrey's smile has filled the airwaves the past couple of years, but the popular Denver Broncos receiver struggled Wednesday to put on a happy face.

McCaffrey was sequestered in a hot Denver South High classroom to film a public service announcement for the United Way in which he encourages children and adults to guard against violent acts.

Between takes, the director urged McCaffrey to smile toward the end of his speaking part.

But with thoughts of the Columbine shootings still in his mind, McCaffrey was a bit reluctant to follow the directions.

''I had a tough time keeping composed during the reading,'' McCaffrey said. ''I know it's probably better for the commercial to look happy and smile at the end, but I couldn't do it.

''I've had a chance to see a lot of the kids that were shot and injured (at Columbine). I couldn't help thinking in the back of my mind how tragic that event really was.

''The message that hopefully will come across from (the commercial) really hits home because of all the recent events, the recent tragedies that have happened in Colorado - especially at Columbine.

''Hopefully, the commercial will reach out to a lot of people, not just kids. '' The commercials - filmed at South High, East High and City Park - will air during the 1999 NFL season. The children who appear in the

commercials represent the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Denver, Big Brothers and Big Sisters and Curtis Park Community Center.

''One thing really nice about this is the United Way sponsors quite a bit of our funding and programming,'' said Paula Brown, assistant program director for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Denver. She filled the role of teacher in the classroom segments. ''It's wonderful that they allowed the young people to represent our community.'' When the commercial filming ended at South High, McCaffrey talked with the kids during an impromptu photo session, quizzing them about such things as their schooling and hobbies.

''It's a huge honor to be able to represent the United Way,'' McCaffrey said. ''They pick a select number of athletes throughout the NFL each year. So it's a big honor.'' Even so, Wednesday was just another busy day in what has become a busy life for McCaffrey, who was looking for nothing more than a spot on the roster when he signed with Denver in 1995.

In four seasons, he has worked his way into a Pro Bowl-caliber receiver on the field and a marketing magnet off it.

He has launched his own lines of cereal, mustard, horseradish sauce and, recently, soft drinks. McCaffrey also expects to add a new commercial to his string of ads for McDonald's.

McCaffrey has crossed over to fashion, too. He and Broncos teammates Rod Smith, Ray Crockett and Bill Romanowski have become active in the production of Flip The Switch sports apparel. ''It's just been a lot of fun, to shoot commercials and see your face on cereal boxes,'' McCaffrey said. ''My kids get a kick out of it, and I have fun doing it.

''But, you know, I've also been able to tie it all in to organizations that mean a lot to me. Proceeds from the cereal and mustard sales benefit the Grass Roots Experience, which is a charity I'm closely affiliated with that helps kids in at-risk situations with counseling, as well as physical and mental challenges.

''It's fun to be involved in the food products and commercials and all, but it's so much more when you can use that leverage to help out organizations that mean a lot to you. I feel blessed, very fortunate and very lucky. I try to take advantage of some of the opportunities I've been given.

''I haven't lost sight of my main purpose on the Denver Broncos, which is to be the best football player I can be. But it sure makes it fun to be able to reach out into the community.''
 

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The Ottawa Citizen

June 19, 1999, FINAL

SECTION: Arts; E12

Television

Vampire Rescheduled

The season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, yanked last month because of scenes of high school violence, will air July 13. The decision to delay the episode, the conclusion of a two-part finale, was both praised and condemned, said Jamie Kellner, the WB TV network's chief executive. ''If we erred, it was on the side of caution,'' Kellner said. The episode was to have been shown May 25, a month after the shootings at Colorado's Columbine High School that left 15 people dead. The Buffy finale also would have coincided with thousands of U.S. high school graduations, WB noted. In the fantasy drama, a solar eclipse turns a town's mayor into a serpent who attacks students during graduation. The youngsters defend themselves with stakes, bows, arrows and other implements. Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as Buffy, a teenager who teams with vampire Angel (David Boreanaz) to fight the forces of evil.

Locklear Joins Spin City

Heather Locklear returns to TV this fall as the mayor's campaign manager on Spin City. ''I already feel fortunate to work with the finest ensemble cast in television comedy,'' Michael J. Fox, the show's star and executive producer, said in a statement. ''With the addition of Heather, the best just got better. This is going to be a blast!'' Locklear, 37, will be introduced in the ABC sitcom's fall season opener. She previously starred on Melrose Place as the scheming vixen Amanda. Spin City will air Tuesdays at 8 p.m.

Show for the Elderly

Who says all TV series are about people in their 20s? Veteran producer Norman Lear, creator of All in the Family, is developing an animated series about old age. Til The Fat Lady Sings will focus on a group of elderly people who meet each day in a senior citizens' recreation facility. ''Death and dying, infirmity and old age -- there is as much cutting-edge humour and potential for outrage in this subject matter as in anything television has dealt with before,'' Lear said. He also said his show -- which has not been scheduled for air anywhere yet -- will be a celebration of people who make the most of their later years.

Picks of the Week

American Masters: The Lives of Lillian Hellman and American Masters: Dashiell Hammett. Detective.Writer. (9 p.m. and 10 p.m. Wednesday on PBS) A&E gave us dish and dirt with recent biopic Dash and Lilly. Now PBS takes a deeper look at legendary literary couple Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett in two arresting American Masters specials premiering Wednesday. Of these two seminal writers, famed playwright Hellman (The Little Foxes, The Children's Hour) makes the most compelling portrait. The Lives of Lillian Hellman is an intensely engaging look at her extraordinary career -- 1930s through 1980s -- and her complex, contentious life with Dash. Dashiell Hammett.Detective. Writer. feels less passionate, more rote. Yet the portrait of the hard- boozing womanizer who gave us The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man still illuminates.
 

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The Guardian (London)

June 10, 1999

SECTION: The Guardian Online Page; Pg. 11

Games watch

By Jack Schofield

Taking away temptation In response to the Littleton school shootings in Colorado, US president Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary made speeches last week about the brutalising effects of violence in films, TV programmes and video games. The president also wrote to his attorney general and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to initiate a $ 1m investigation into the problem. But he is not looking for a

straightforward condemnation of the portrayal of violence, which would lead to free-speech protests. Instead he wants the marketing of adult-rated products to be examined 'to determine whether and to what extent these industries market such material to children. Among other matters, the study should examine whether such violent material rated for adults is advertised or promoted in media outlets in which minors

comprise a substantial percentage of the audience.' Clinton did make a point in his White House speech, when he said: 'Don't make young people want what your own rating systems say they shouldn't have.' Some US retailers are already refusing to sell games to children they suspect are under age. However, Doug Lowenstein, president of America's Inter- active Digital Software Association, was quick to reply in defence of the games industry. IDSA surveys show that more than half (54%) of console game players are over 18, and almost a quarter are over 36. PC gamers are even older: 70% are over 18 and 40% are over 36. 'The fact is that this is not an industry dominated by kids any more,' he said.

Yes Yes Homeworld is on the home stretch, and Sierra Studios has announced a global launch date of September 1 for the long-awaited real-time strategy (RTS) game being developed by Relic Entertainment. This has also reminded us that ageing 70s rock group Yes has written a song for the game, while legendary cover artist Roger Dean is working on the packaging. The Yes website (http: /yesworld.com/) has kindly

provided a link to an interview with Jon (Anderson), Alan (White), and Billy (Sherwood) at C/net's Gamecenter site.

More Lara? Rumours suggest that the next Lara Croft game will be called Tomb Raider 4: Last Revelation, and will ship on November 22. Core Design, which is developing the program, says this is 'just one of the names on the table' and it's not going to give a ship date that might be subject to slippage. However, it does hope to have Tomb Raider 4 out for Christmas.

Pokeplane You may not be able to buy Nintendo's hugely popular Pokemon (Pocket Monster) games yet, but you can fly them. All-Nippon Airways has painted three of its Boeing 747s and one 767 with Pokemon characters and from July 3 will use one on its San Francisco route. The airline says that 'cabin attendants wearing Pokemon aprons welcome passengers aboard the Pokemon 747, and original Pokemon goods are

available through ANA duty-free sales in-flight'.

Noises off Creative Labs plans to start advertising its Environmental Audio technology, announced in September, now it reckons it is supported by enough games. The Singaporean company says 46 games now support Environmental Audio, including Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Baldur's Gate, Half-Life, Quake II, SimCity 3000, Wild Metal Country and Unreal (www.soundblaster.com/eaudio/ games/). Another 37 compatible games are on the way, including Lionhead's Black & White, Shiny Entertainment's Messiah,

Appeal's Outcast and what could be the ultimate first-person shooter, Ion Storm's Daikatana.

Top slots Star Wars has taken over the top of the American games charts, with Phantom Menace in first place and Racer second, according to US research firm PC Data. The UK charts will probably follow suit, partly because there aren't many big titles coming out except Hasbro's MechWarrior III and PBH's Guardian II (no relation). It looks as though the games industry is already winding down for the summer. At least PlayStation users can fill any gaps in their games collections with a string of blockbusters in the pounds 99.99 Platinum range. Budget re-issues of Gran Turismo and Final Fantasy VII are high in the charts and EA/Westwood's classic Command & Conquer: Red Alert (due tomorrow) could join them. Those who missed Colin McRae Rally, last year, should look out for the Platinum version on July 9.
 

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The Denver Post

June 4, 1999 Friday 2D EDITION

SECTION: DENVER & THE WEST; Pg. B-08

Catholic bishops target the media Violence, pornography condemned

By Virginia Culver, Denver Post Religion Writer

Pornography and excessive violence in the media and on the Internet are "gravely harming the moral and psychological health" of Americans, according to the nation's Catholic bishops.

In a recent booklet called "Renewing the Mind of the Media" the bishops target creators of pornography and violence, asking for self-censorship and enforcement of current laws against obscenity.

Work on the report began well before the Columbine High School massacre but the document now appears "prophetic and apropos" said Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput.

Chaput officiated at the funerals of Columbine students Kelly Fleming and Daniel Mauser and was at the home of a third, Matthew Kechter, when the youth's parents learned he had died.

"Kids today think we're old-fashioned for criticizing sex and violence. But art can raise us up or degrade us. We have to have our antenna up about what kids are seeing and hearing," Chaput said.

"The media, whether it's TV, newspapers, radio, movies, CDs, reveals who we are," the archbishop said.

"It's easy to blame the producers and the people who make money from sex and violent movies and television, but we are all co-conspirators. If there were no market, these things would not be produced."

The booklet, which also announces a video on "overcoming the exploitation of sex and violence," takes a verse from the biblical book of Romans, which states, "Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may judge what is God's will, what is good, pleasing and perfect."

Government censorship "isn't feasible or desirable," the bishops say, but government should act as a "catalyst" for industry self-regulation.

The bishops also called on families, churches and Catholic educators to guard against harmful influences of the media on the nation's children.

The Internet, which is a "gateway to a vast world of learning and information" is also a way to access obscenity, violence and prejudice," the

statement says. "Adult and hate-provoking Web sites appear on the Internet as do the equivalents of adult bookstores."

The bishops also targeted talk radio because it often "assaults listeners with angry or indecent remarks" and the music industry for selling tapes

and CD's with "obscene and violent messages that suggest bizarre behavior. Brutal video games make violent, lawless and sadistic worlds seem

something glamorous and heroic," the prelates said.

Even magazines are criticized when they "reduce people to mere sexual objects or exalt aggressive and violent activities."

Soap operas, trash talk shows and infotainment programs are often filled with portrayals of sex "in a frivolous and titillating manner."

Obscenity and violence can become addictive, they undermine family life, the value of the human person and "sometimes incite people to rape,

child abuse and even murder," the bishops say, quoting several studies that substantiate their beliefs.

"The grounds of our concern are found in a faith-filled conviction about the dignity of the body and sexuality," they said.

Several religious leaders of various faiths are quoted on the bishops' video.

The constant presence of sex and violence leads people to become "accustomed to vile language, angry talk and demeaning terms that no longer

have the capacity to shock us," said Dr. Eileen Linder, an official of the National Council of Churches, one of those on the video.
 

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The Guardian (London)

May 24, 1999

SECTION: Guardian Art Pages; Pg. 16

Mel Gibson;
He's against abortion, believes in the death penalty and isn't afraid to upset gays. But he's prepared to stand up for sex and violence on the big screen

He loves guns. The Columbine High School massacre hasn't shaken his hostility to gun control, or his willingness to defend the carnage in his latest vehicle, Payback. Asked at Cannes about Bill Clinton's fingering of film violence for the massacre, moral Mel said 'the school shootings were tragic but I think it's a bum rap that they always point to movies and TV. In Hamlet there is mental cruelty and murder. If you don't have some sin, you have no story.'

From a family of 10 himself, Gibson has seven children (his wife Robyn gave birth to their sixth son last month) and shows no sign of stopping before he gets a football team. Not surprisingly, he's against birth control. Fine for him, but not everyone can trouser fees of $20m for a few weeks' work killing baddies.

Mel G derives his Catholic faith from his father, a fundamentalist who thinks that services said in English are heretical. And Mel is ultra-conservative: he is anti-abortion, pro-capital punishment, dismissive of feminism, unafraid of offending gays (see the 'push the poof out of the window' scene in Braveheart) and says he tries to live by the Ten Commandments. Quite how they square with the moral universe of the Lethal Weapon series is not immediately apparent.

Gibson's sole known vice, now renounced after sessions at the Malibu branch of AA. The early 80s hell-raiser ('I was mad as a coot. Fit to be tied') was on four beers before breakfast and once went on a long binge with three blondes in California during which he sucked one girl's fingers and hugged her knees.

With Braveheart, he made a major contribution as director to boosting Scottish self-esteem telling the nation of Robert Carlyle, John Hannah, Ewan MacGregor and Douglas Henshall that an Australian with a US passport (himself) was the only possible choice to play nationalist icon William Wallace and then shooting the film in Ireland.

Lethal Weapon buddy Danny Glover easily ranks as Gibson's closest and most convincing on-screen partner if you leave aside Mel's worryingly intense fascination with such penis substitutes as fast cars, motorbikes and handguns. And, with the gonzo white cop displaying Eddie Murphy-like recklessness and volatility while Glover's Roger Murtaugh is reliable and professional, the cop caper series looks like a big step forward for black stars in Hollywood. Until you compare the pay-cheques.

Gibson's celluloid girlfriends have included Michelle Pfeiffer, Sophie Marceau, Jodie Foster and, erm, Patsy Kensit, but the last trace of any on -screen sexual electricity was with Sigourney Weaver in The Year of Living Dangerously, 16 years ago. In Conspiracy Theory apparently at his wife's request he refused to film love scenes with Julia Roberts.

With his production company setting up an outpost in Soho, Gibson is said to be looking for a barn-size London pad to house his family and entourage while he works here. He'll be a welcome visitor, not least for the evident affection for the host nation displayed in such films as Gallipoli (English dolts insouciantly send thousands of Australians to their deaths), Braveheart (ruthless English oppressors crush heroic liberation struggle), Mutiny on the Bounty (all English toffs are barking) and Hamlet (deranged English deb infects noble Danish hero with her madness).

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

May 12, 1999 Wednesday All

SECTION: Cue Pg. 3 Mike Drew

 Did network television contribute to Littleton?

By MIKE DREW

What is network television's responsibility for producing America's high school assassins? Overrated, in my view, and I'm no apologist for the tube.

Except for Jerry Springer, CBS' Saturday evenings and those ghastly clips shows -- "TV's Bloodiest Police Chases," etc. -- network television probably is less violent than in the era of "The Untouchables" and horse operas.

Network TV is far less gory than premium cable, movies, video games, music and the Internet. Violence on tv news probably encourages some "copycat" killers, but that shouldn't restrict legitimate reportage. (It's likely that over-coverage of the high school horrors helps prompt crank bomb threats.)

Most TV news seen here doesn't glorify gore and nearly always shows negative consequences. But the school shootings should not have been reported in sensational "Live! Breaking News!" from the scene as on Colorado channels that talked to students inside Columbine High. The two big risks there are aiding killers who might be watching in mid-crime, and telecasting murders live.

The Littleton killers apparently spent far more time on movies, video games and the Internet than watching the tube. Most adults have no idea how bloody that stuff is. For a clue, rent the video "Natural Born Killers" -- a Harris/Klebold favorite. Within five minutes, the wholesale slaughter of innocents will send you rushing it back to Blockbuster.

The tube in general deserves its share of blame. Cable brings violence for profit into our homes, including pro wrestling's fake variety, and raunchy movies. A curious 8-year-old of my acquaintance lost his innocence big time when sneaking peeks into graphic sex films on his family's pay-cable channels. Parental inattention? Yes. Warner Cable greed? You bet.

Network television is trashing our kids in other ways. Commercials and many programs preach that acquiring products will make you happy. This reinforces messages children get from watching their materialistic parents work too many hours away from home. What greets latchkey kids at 4 p.m.? The sexy, violent and despicable "Jerry Springer."

Increasingly, prime-time series are as saturated in sex as soap operas, offering attractive rebuttals to parental preaching. In the old 7 to 8 p.m. "family hour," the tube loudly shouts "sex sells!"

Television's long-awaited V-chip, giving parents more control of kids' viewing, has uncertain potential. Most parents aren't using the present ratings system.

Television's biggest role in the school shootings may be indirect. Nasty put-downs, a staple of most situation comedies, teach children how to get laughs at others' expense. Children are naturally cliquish and, alas, often cruel to perceived inferiors. Television has helped produce an adolescent world of heavy duty denigration.

One teen told me that parents wouldn't believe the number of rough street put-downs used by well-raised kids in the best schools. That behavior by "superior" teens has pushed the unstable over the edge. Add the disgusting availability of guns and bang!: Littleton.

Some surveys show that half of U.S. children have a television in their bedroom. That's parental neglect, contributing to a situation where kids spend more time in front of the tube than in a classroom. In light of what we're learning about the Internet, I'd also install firm controls on children's computer use.

Free enterprise has blessed most Americans. I don't often agree with William Bennett, but I like his term blasting the entertainment industry: "predatory capitalism." Incidentally, most critics seeking scapegoats are blasting "the media." Media means news-gatherers, who are -- I hope -- part of the solution.

The enemy is the entertainment industry. Unlimited consumerism has created a youth culture that sees kids as "we" and parents as "them." "We" have the funds to overindulge that philosophy in unregulated video games, CDs and movies without parental supervision.

In my childhood, kids admired the same performers who appealed to their parents. Rock 'n' roll changed that, and other entertainment forms got the message. Today, the chasm between youth and adult culture, stimulated by Hollywood, is increasingly dangerous.

As a writing coach volunteer at Shorewood High School, I work with ace teacher and English chair Dianne Messar. She says, "Being an adolescent has always been hard. The kids who survive today have parents who care and enforce the rules although their kids don't like it."

Even if it means unplugging the TV and the computer

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THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR

May 7, 1999 Friday CITY FINAL EDITION

SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A19; LETTERS; FRIDAY FORUM

Could such shootings happen in Carmel too?

So many people, myself included, believed that nothing like the Colorado shootings could ever happen here. Yet, Littleton was as close as you could get to Carmel. It could easily happen here, and that scares me.

While my heart goes out to the victims, I am also disgusted by things I heard in school in the days following the shooting. Jokes and cruel, arrogant comments greeted me on the bus and followed me throughout the school day.

What disgusts me most are the media. I can still close my eyes and remember a time when the media abhorred school violence, but in recent years they have greeted it with a fascination. Day after

day, the front pages of newspapers nationwide are devoted to news of the latest violent incident in a school. The next time such an act is committed, it will likely be a teen who wants attention and

has been convinced, not necessarily falsely, that he will get the fame and attention he longs for.

I am just as much disgusted by the areas people have found to place the fault for this crime. Adults have blamed a widespread amount of sources, including The Matrix, Doom, violent TV shows,

"relaxed" gun laws and Marilyn Manson. I place the blame on the parents of those who committed the crime.

High schoolers typically do not watch TV or listen to music and decide to kill people. There had to be something very wrong with those kids; that's why the blame lies with a parent. A child's

parents should be involved, concerned and responsible enough to notice when something is wrong.

I know many people who love Manson and violent games and shows and yet are some of the nicest friends I have. A parent's lack of attention can be the root of isolation. Stricter laws and less violence will do nothing if children lack an established, caring, concerned authority figure in their lives.

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Los Angeles Times

April 25, 1999, Sunday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part A; Page 8; National Desk

AFTER WAVE OF SHOOTINGS, TRAGEDY PUT ON STAGE;
THEATER: WRITER SAYS TALK WITH HIS SON LED TO WORK. PRODUCTION HAS PROVOKED DISCUSSION ON SCHOOL VIOLENCE AND REOPENED OLD WOUNDS.

By KIM MURPHY, TIMES STAFF WRITER
 

A few days after the Springfield, Ore., high school shootings last year, award-winning playwright William Mastrosimone sat down to dinner with his son and, in response to the usual question--"How was your day at school?"--got an answer that felt like a kick in the stomach.

"We walked into school today and somebody had written on the blackboard, 'I'm going to kill everybody in this class and the teacher too,' " his eighth-grader told him.

After dinner, Mastrosimone went to his desk, and a play started to take shape. All night he kept writing. "It just poured out of me like vomit. That's the way it was." By morning, he had the draft of a one-act play, "Bang Bang You're Dead," a painful, poignant account of a 15-year-old school killer and the frail, hopeful lives he ended.

The play had its debut earlier this month in Eugene, Ore., a few miles from Springfield, and was followed up with a performance at the junior high Mastrosimone's son attends in Enumclaw, Wash., south of Seattle. With the shootings in Littleton, Colo., reopening the wounds yet again, performances have been scheduled next week before state legislators in Washington and in the coming months in at least six other states.

The play bears a disturbing resemblance to news headlines in recent years, following a wave of school shootings in Colorado, Oregon, Kentucky and Arkansas. It opens in a jail cell, where a 15-year-old inmate startles out of his repose at the sight of another youth. "Why'd you kill me?" the boy asks. "It was more fun than droppin' dudes in a video game," the prisoner replies.

"It's a kid's perspective. . . . The idea that kids do for the moment, and don't worry about what happens later. It tells you what happens later," said Gayle Atteberry, who went to the premiere in Eugene a little less than a year after her 16-year-old son, Ryan, was shot in the face at Springfield's Thurston High School. He has recovered.

For Mastrosimone--who has offered his play free of charge on the Internet (www.bangbangyouredead.com) for production--the work was an attempt to begin assuming responsibility for what he sees as the entertainment industry's role in anesthetizing children to violence. "I am a person who has written violent movies, and I'm a person who makes a living in Hollywood," said Mastrosimone, author of the play "Extremities" and the TV miniseries "Sinatra," in addition to a new play about media-inspired youth violence, "Like Totally Weird," that's bound for Broadway this fall.

"But I have four kids. I live in Enumclaw, Wash., which is like the 1950s, you know. And I think I'm probably speaking for every parent in America when I say I feel like my house is the Alamo, and that I know I'm not going to win, and I'm determined to go down with my boots on to fight the pernicious influences that come through my television, that come through videos and video games and movies."

Thurston High drama teacher Mike Fisher said he received dozens of TV movie pitches after the shootings and threw most of them away in disgust. He picked up Mastrosimone's note and realized it had come from a writer who had explored, in "Extremities," the subject of rape and reprisal in a way he had never forgotten. "All of a sudden it hit me, if there was a guy that had any background in turning tragedy into a meaningful discussion, this was the guy," Fisher said.

Mastrosimone sent a draft of the play, and Fisher consulted his top acting students--some of whom had been touched personally by the tragedy. Most of them wanted to proceed. "Nobody had a 100% buy-in. I didn't. But we were willing to talk to him. We talked for hours, that first call, and subsequently during the next few weeks, we talked every day. The play began to take its form that way," Fisher said. "He had the

framework, the ideas, and we sort of provided the emotional content."

Mastrosimone sent the play to student workshops in Florida, and it was there that students injected some of the most poignant lines in the production, scenes where the dead students confronting the young killer talk about the things they miss in their lost lives.

"I miss lying on my bed in the dark, falling asleep to a CD."

"I miss seeing Jody when she has that look on her face that she's got another stupid joke to tell me."

"I miss making my mom laugh so hard she can't hardly breathe."

As the lights fade, the young captive is overcome. "I didn't know it would be forever," he says. "I thought I could just hit the reset button and start over."

School administrators and city officials were guarded at first, Fisher said. "No one wanted to put our pain on display, and none of us ever wanted to be seen marching around on stage in some sort of mawkish assault on our pain. The whole point was to get the message out there. If we help put the show together, we give it emotional validity. Because we were there."

"I at first kind of went, 'No way . . . how dare they?' " recalled Springfield Fire Chief Dennis Murphy, who heads Ribbons of Promise, a national group against school violence that was organized after the Springfield shootings. Eventually, the group sponsored the play, rented a hall in Eugene to produce it and put the script out for national distribution.

"We saw it, and we were just awe-struck with the communication, the powerful message about the consequences of youth violence," Murphy said. "I thought, 'Holy mackerel, what a tool.' "

A day after its April 7 debut in Eugene, the play was performed at Enumclaw Junior High, where drama teacher Jay Thornton said even the young seventh- and eighth-graders responded strongly.

"Junior high school kids, they don't always feel the magnitude of everything. And they sat really quietly through the whole production, and there was a lot of serious conversation about it," Thornton said. "It moved them."

Mastrosimone, 51, said he wrote the play "as a parent, not as a playwright." It came in part, he said, out of a growing conviction that his own generation had failed its children.

"The baby boomers, we have failed our kids, generally speaking. We have failed to transmit the values our parents gave us. Our parents suffered through a Depression, fought at least two world wars and raised their kids in prosperous times, and we benefited from all that prosperity.

"But what happened is that perhaps it came too easy to us, as a generation. And that we were very lax in the way that we raised our kids. We did not transmit those values, the core values, the basic belief in life, the basic belief in positive forces like love and cooperation and tolerance.

We took it for granted, that those things were handed down to us, but we didn't realize how our parents suffered to have those values. They're not gifts, they're things you need to work on."

Mastrosimone said the entertainment industry must accept a share of the blame, for the "steady diet of nihilistic entertainment" that youths are subjected to by way of movies, television and video games.

"Now I'm searching my own soul, the way I wish everyone in Hollywood would, because we are blessed," he said. "It's a very lucrative profession, but with that should come a higher obligation, because we influence so many people."

Parents have their own obligations, he said. "This thing in Littleton happens, and everybody's wondering, 'Why did they do it?' They're asking the questions now that, if somebody had asked them before, this wouldn't have happened. If some parent had said, 'Why are you unhappy today? Why do you want a Web site? What are you going to put on it? And what are these weird drawings over here?' If somebody had been interested enough in his life, this might not have happened."

Nichole Buckholtz, an 18-year-old Thurston student who was shot in the leg, signed up to play a mother who is shot by her son. When it went into rehearsals, she couldn't do it. "I know it's theater, and you're not really supposed to have the actors' true emotions on stage. But certain things you can't get away from. It just hit a little too close."

Another student took over the mother role, and Buckholtz took a less emotionally demanding part.

For her, it was all worth it in a single day in Pendleton, Ore., where the production was entered in a regional student drama competition. After the performance, Buckholtz said, she was approached by one of the cast members. "She goes, 'I wanted to thank you guys. I had actually been thinking of committing suicide, but I never thought how it would affect the people that I knew. Now after seeing this, I just can't.' We were just like, 'Wow.' That was just truly great to hear."

Sabrina Steger, whose 15-year-old daughter, Kayce, was killed in a school shooting in West Paducah, Ky., flew to Eugene with her other two children to see the play. At a news conference with other parents, she said she had to take a box of tissues along with her.

But that, she said, was the point. "The more powerful it is, hopefully the stronger the message."

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The New York Times

April 22, 1999, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Page 30; Column 1; Editorial Desk

The Colorado School Slayings

On the screen, the images are too familiar -- emergency personnel bent double in concentration, anguished parents, weeping, puzzled and wounded students, the ordinary buildings of a school that is no longer ordinary. With the first reports of a shooting like the one that occurred in Littleton, Colo., on Tuesday morning, a mental accounting begins, an effort to tally the reasons, or the absence of reason, that lie behind such a pitiless event. Reporters ask questions about motive, scarcely differing from students and parents in this respect, and those questions contain the unstated hope that a predominant motive will emerge, a cause that somehow encapsulates the tragedy and allows it to be set apart from everyday life.

One young mother, whose son stood unharmed beside her, talked on television yesterday morning about having moved to Littleton in the hope that she and her family would find safety there. What her words imply is the common faith that a kind of town exists where violence is unheard of, a place so nice, so ordinary, that children are inherently safe. But the American faith in exceptionalism -- that it can't happen here, not in this kind of town, not in this country -- is a misplaced faith.

Once, it was urban schools that seemed uniquely dangerous, for reasons that appeared untrans portable to middle-class Rocky Mountain suburbs like Littleton. But whatever was local in the motives of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold is offset by an array of contributory causes that are not local, that are universal in modern America. One of the boys maintained a personal Web site, since removed by America Online, espousing an addled philosophy of violence and containing pipe-bomb-building instructions. Both boys appear to have been fond of violent computer games and the music of Marilyn Manson. And both found guns all too easy to come by. The cultural fragments out of which Mr. Harris and Mr. Klebold

invented themselves, and their deaths, are now ubiquitous in every community, urban, suburban and rural. What matters is not the fragments but how they were combined.

Most of us remember all too vividly the way high school felt. It is a rare teen-ager who has never experienced a sense of alienation or dislocation at school. But the cultural map of high school has changed. The domain of fantasy has been enormously enlarged because the tools to gratify a life of fantasy -- the Internet and computer games, in particular -- have been spectacularly enhanced. Whether or not hate-sites and visually violent games actually induce violence, they do offer a place to hide that often makes it harder to tell just where an imperiled student, like Mr. Harris or Mr. Klebold, actually keeps his head. It is always hard for people with a clear grasp of reality to see the ways that reality bends in minds as evidently muddled and self-isolating as theirs were.

It will be tempting to explain this tragedy through one of a number of lenses, to argue that the problem here is guns or Hollywood or the Internet or music. It will be tempting to think that the proscription or control of one or another of these elements will make the difference in preventing another tragedy like the one at Littleton. When it comes to guns, a strong and morally persuasive argument for control can be made. But it is not what you keep from a child that will save him, nor what town you move him to. It is what you put into him in the first place.

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