Don't blame the goths

[sal_amanda]

The news report this morning about the shootings in Cleveland felt the need to mention that the kid was wearing a Marilyn Manson T-shirt and usually wore a long trench coat, and then showed his very goth-looking MySpace page.  I know this is a terrible thing and people are looking for reasons why this happened, but don't go blaming it on his musical preferences and fashion sense.  Plenty of well-adjusted individuals enjoy Marilyn Manson, trench coats, and the goth lifestyle.  Perhaps they need to look at the deeper-seated problems this boy obviously had.  

Comments

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I HATE that. It's always the first thing they point to. But WORSE is that they then go off on a "Zero Tolerance of Bullying" thing about it and always point to "THOSE kids and their scary interests" as dangerous and blatantly miss that more than likely the kid had been a VICTIM of bullying by the clean-cut All-American Popular Kids whom no one ever seems to catch in the act but the countless victims, regardless of the fact that the story is played out in books movies and TV almost as often as in real life, and had snapped. And THEN, such talk in the media REINFORCES the alternative kids' "everybody hates me for no good reason" mindset and just escalates the problems! UGH!

[sal_amanda]

Exactly!!

[i-am-solid.livejournal.com]

Well, at least he isn't Asian.
I'm totally ignoring most of the coverage of this, and loving it.

[sal_amanda]

They actually didn't totally hammer this one in the media like you'd expect, thankfully.