What you never knew about Columbine
As a Salon reporter, Dave Cullen exploded myths about the tragic school shooting, now the subject of his new book. He talks about what the media bungled -- and what still surprises him.By Joan Walsh
Dave Cullen's "Columbine" is a chilling page-turner, a striking accomplishment given that Cullen's likely readers almost certainly know how the tragic story ends. Twelve students and one beloved teacher died at the suburban Denver high school on April 20, 1999, the worst school shooting rampage until two years ago, when Cho Seung-Hui slaughtered 32 classmates at Virginia Tech.
I know more about the Columbine story than most of Cullen's audience: I was Cullen's editor at Salon 10 years ago, on that awful day when the cable networks told us teenagers were dying in Littleton, and he told me over the phone he'd head there immediately. Little did either of us know then that he'd still be at Columbine a decade later.
So I can't be dispassionate about this book. I will point to raves from Time and Newsweek before offering my own personal observation: I knew Cullen was a dogged reporter and a terrific writer, but even I was blown away by the pacing and story-telling he mastered in "Columbine," a disturbing, inspiring work of art.
In "Columbine," Cullen is surprisingly but appropriately modest (appropriately, because it makes the book better) about his own role in exploding trite Columbine myths. You'll read his book and learn that the smartest crime investigators were frustrated and bedeviled by national and local media jumping on specious favorite theories about the killers and their victims — theories that investigators knew from the beginning weren't true. The killers weren't part of the Trench Coat Mafia, they weren't gay, they didn't target jocks or minority students. Eric Harris was a psychopath, but Dylan Klebold was a depressive who'd shown little capacity for hatred and violence.
Maybe most explosive, against the backdrop of the strong suburban Denver evangelical culture, was the story that student Cassie Bernall was killed because of her Christian faith, after she said "yes" when Dylan Klebold asked if she believed in God. The tale simply wasn't true, despite the fact that Bernall's mother, Misty, and the girl's evangelical church launched an campaign around Cassie's martyrdom that culminated in Misty Bernall's moving memoir, "She Said Yes," which wound up on the New York Times bestseller list and won her interviews with "Larry King Live" and "The Today Show."
What you won't learn, except in the footnotes, is that it was Cullen who broke most of the crucial Columbine myth-debunking stories and expanded on others. He was an army of one against the dozens sent by large national dailies, the news magazines, and local and national television networks. But he had key advantages: He lived there, he's charming and ingratiating, he's got an instinct for bullshit, and he's got a heart bigger than most hearts I know. He suffered through the Columbine story with the locals after the national stars went away; he also had the distance from local politics that a national outlet provided him. Still, what got him the story was his passion and smarts and sensitivity — he knew how to wrangle information out of traumatized teens and families and investigators because he was traumatized, too; I'll never forget some of our conversations when he talked through his own despair at what he was seeing...
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2009/04/06/cullen/
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