Cullen's lack of objectivity

More than one person has noted over the years that Dave Cullen always goes out of his way to make excuses for Dylan. According to Cullen's book, big bad psycho Eric was the mastermind, the driving force, the brains and brawn behind NBK; poor little emo Dylan was just a sad kid who wanted to die in peace.

Cullen has admitted that he identifies with Dylan, but not Eric:

Quote :

Pouring over the roughly 1,000 pages of manic musings of Harris and Klebold, Cullen saw parallels between Klebold and himself as teenagers who felt like fishes out of water.

Lonely and depressive, Klebold saw the world through dark-colored glasses and viewed his life as miserable. He was mostly angry at himself and highly suicidal.

"When I was a kid, I had really low self esteem and had trouble fitting in," said Cullen. "In high school, for me, it felt like no matter what I did I was still going to be that total dork. Very much like Klebold, I mostly blamed myself."

He has even gone so far as to compare Eric to a "disease":

Quote :

Researching “Eric was like examining a disease under a microscope. He didn’t get inside me,” Cullen writes in the epilogue of a new edition released this week.

“Dylan seeped in surreptitiously. His funeral scene was the second-hardest to write. I cried for his parents, and his brother… I realized later that I was grieving for Dylan, too. What a sweet, loving kid. Most of his life. That shocked me, but I didn’t grasp how it tormented me.”

So, there you have it. Dylan was a sweet, loving kid.

Quote :

Ultimately, Harris was the catalyst that led Klebold down the path to murder, Cullen said.

"Eric's cause is very easy to understand; it's hard to accept," Cullen said. "He really had two goals: self aggrandizement, (and) he was sadistic and planned to enjoy killing people brutally."

Dylan wrote about being a god in a world of zombies. That's not self-aggrandizement?

And Dylan wasn't sadistic? He didn't plan to enjoy killing people brutally? He didn't write "Have fun!" in the last entry of his journal?

Consider these quotes from the basement tapes:

Quote :

"It's humanity," Dylan Klebold says, flipping an obscene gesture toward the camera. "Look at what you made," he tells the world.

"You're fucking shit, you humans, and you need to die," he says.

...

"When you find a body of one," Klebold says, looking straight into the camera, "he's a sophomore ... Look for his jaw. It won't be on his body."

...

"I just know I want to kill the fuckers who fucked with me," Klebold says.

...

Then Harris says, "Let's talk about our parents for a minute."

Klebold begins coldly. "It's my life," he says. "They gave it to me, I can do with it what I want. ... If they don't like it, I'm sorry, but that's too bad."

Harris is gentler. "They might have made some mistakes that they weren't really aware of in their life with me, but they couldn't have helped it."

...

The two teens appear to hate everyone but themselves, hoping to kill 250 people, "the most deaths in U.S. history," Klebold said.

...

"It's humans that I hate," Klebold says.

...

Contrary to popular opinion in the Columbine community, Harris comes off in the videos as the more sympathetic character of the two. Portrayed in the days after the attack as angry and weird, he is apologetic and somewhat remorseful in the tapes. He's careful to absolve his parents of any blame and shows sympathy to his mother, Kathy, for what he is about to do, trying not to "bond" with her because he will soon die.

"It's not their fault. They had no fucking clue," Harris says. "It would not solve anything to arrest them."

But Harris shows some anger toward his father, Wayne, a military man who moved his family across the country several times. Harris talks of always being the new, "white, scrawny" kid.

"I had to go through all that shit so many times," Harris says.

Klebold is monstrous on the videotapes, openly raging about his lifelong hidden anger and all the slights he suffered at the hands of students, teachers and his family. He smiles ghoulishly into the camera, lovingly handles weapons and constantly combs his fingers through his shoulder-length red hair. He shows no contrition, only deadly aggression.

"This goes to all my family: I'm sorry I have so much rage," Klebold says. "You made me what I am. Actually, you just added to what I am."

...


"That'll take out whoever can fucking get close to it," Klebold says as he shows off a stash of three pipe bombs.

If any of this disturbs you, please keep in mind that Dylan was a sweet, loving kid.

I've always identified more with Eric. Not surprisingly, I tend to disagree with those who portray him as an irretrievable rage-filled automaton doomed to a violent end. But I'm not a best-selling author, so what do I know?

Links:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]