Cullen and the basement tapes

He hasn't seen them.

Let me repeat that, for emphasis: DAVE CULLEN HAS NOT SEEN THE BASEMENT TAPES.

I haven't seen them, either. But, then again, I haven't written a bestselling book purporting to be the definitive work about the Columbine massacre, now, have I?

When Dave Cullen discusses the basement tapes in his book, he has to defer to the (superior?) expertise of Dwayne Fuselier. Fuselier has, indeed, watched them. But Cullen knows that the published accounts of the tapes are at variance with Fuselier's interpretation of them, so he has to make little digs at the reporters who actually did get to see them:

Quote :

To the untrained eye, [Eric] seemed sincere. The psychologists on the case found Eric less convincing. They saw a psychopath.

Fuselier understood that the Basement Tapes had been shot for an audience. To laymen, Dylan appeared dominant. He was louder, brasher and had much more personality. Eric preferred directing. He was often behind the lens. But he was always in charge. Fuselier saw Dylan gave himself away with his eyes. He would shout like a madman, then glance at his partner for approval.

Dwayne Fuselier knows more than you do, bitches!

See, this is what I mean when I say that Cullen is arrogant. It's not enough to him to say, "Fuselier, a trained professional, detected nuances that other viewers might have missed." He has to say, "The untrained laymen jumped to conclusions and swallowed Eric's bullshit; Fuselier understood the truth."

People react to Cullen's arrogance - they read it as confidence. An awful lot of people are taken in by a smooth-talking confidence man, aren't they?

I'm in no position to say whether or not Dwayne Fuselier's take on the tapes is valid or not - I haven't seen them. But I think it's funny that key parts of Cullen's book are based, essentially, on hearsay.

How exactly is it "arrogant" or a conniving to endorse the opinion of an FBI profiler who has been vetted by the medical community?

You may disagree with Fuselier's opinion, but it is not arrogant or manipulative of a journalist to endorse an opinion with broad-based scientific backing. What a strange accusation for you to make.

Most of your criticisms of Cullen involve paraphrasing his perfectly reasonable statements into your own exaggerated quotations, which Cullen did not actually write.

lasttrain wrote:

How exactly is it "arrogant" or a conniving to endorse the opinion of an FBI profiler who has been vetted by the medical community?

You may disagree with Fuselier's opinion, but it is not arrogant or manipulative of a journalist to endorse an opinion with broad-based scientific backing.  What a strange accusation for you to make.

Most of your criticisms of Cullen involve paraphrasing his perfectly reasonable statements into your own exaggerated quotations, which Cullen did not actually write.

Dave Cullen wrote:

To the untrained eye, [Eric] seemed sincere. The psychologists on the case found Eric less convincing. They saw a psychopath.

Fuselier understood that the Basement Tapes had been shot for an audience. To laymen, Dylan appeared dominant. He was louder, brasher and had much more personality. Eric preferred directing. He was often behind the lens. But he was always in charge. Fuselier saw Dylan gave himself away with his eyes. He would shout like a madman, then glance at his partner for approval.

To the untrained eye, to laymen, Eric seemed sincere. Dylan appeared dominant.

But Fuselier understood what was really going on. Fuselier saw the boys' true personalities.

You see, only a trained psychologist is qualified to analyze people's body language. Everyone else is too stupid to understand the subtle little tics that psychologists are trained to spot.

The untrained laymen who watched the tape could not see the truth. But Fuselier could. He was a psychologist.

You might be the lasttrain, but you're always the first to step aboard the pro-Cullen bandwagon. Interesting, that.

I'm not really sure what your objecting to here. Do you want him to give equal weight to everyone's opinion?

Do you want him to write this?

"Lots of different people have lots of different opinions about the basement tapes, so just make up your own mind everybody."

That's not what people read books for. Everyone already knows they can form their own opinion. They read books because they want informed opinion, of the kind a scientist or profiler can provide.

As far as my interest in Cullen, I'll say this--I've never started a topic about him. I'm not the one who has a thing with him.

lasttrain wrote:

I'm not really sure what your objecting to here.  Do you want him to give equal weight to everyone's opinion?  

Do you want him to write this?

"Lots of different people have lots of different opinions about the basement tapes, so just make up your own mind everybody."

That's not what people read books for.  Everyone already knows they can form their own opinion.  They read books because they want informed opinion, of the kind a scientist or profiler can provide.

Yes, of course I know that.

But I would have written something like this:

"Most of the journalists who watched the basement tapes perceived that Dylan was the more monstrous of the two, Eric the more sympathetic. Some even concluded that Dylan was the dominant partner.

"But Fuselier disagreed. He spotted nuances that observers not trained to analyze the subtleties of body language might have missed. To him, Dylan's eyes gave away the charade - he would shout like a madman, then glance at his partner, seemingly seeking approval. He felt certain that Eric had directed the entire performance."

I'm still promoting Fuselier's view, but I'm not going so far as to insult and belittle people who disagree with him.

Quote :

As far as my interest in Cullen, I'll say this--I've never started a topic about him.  I'm not the one who has a thing with him.

Yes, but you certainly feel a strong need to defend him.

I'm curious, lasttrain - what is your motivation?

Tell me - what is my motivation? Why do I feel the need to challenge Cullen's views?

Be honest, now.

Porter, you should write a book...
There are several people here that should write a book.

LPorter, your suggestion is barely different from what Cullen wrote.

Dave Cullen doesn’t come from a social science background. He comes from a creative writing background. I don’t sense that wasn’t what he was trying to accomplish. He wrote it in such a way to tell the officially story from professionals and broke it down into one big story for the public to understand. His weakness, like every writer or maybe a historian, is characterization. People are complex and can’t always be broken down to simple things motivation, rationality, or personality types in fictional or in real life. I can’t see into their heads unless they tell me. They could be lying, confusing, or be misunderstood. More information doesn’t necessary mean a better understanding either.

One thing that nobody seems to mention that I think is an amazingly important point is Fusilier's assured bias. He had a son in the school that day and for several hours did not know if his son was dead or alive. He may be a mental health professional but he is also human and nobody cannot convince me that he didn't have prejudice and bias against E &D going in because of this. Where is it written that because he is a professional it is impossible for him to be biased? I firmly believe that he was far too close to this case and the community in which it happened to be able to give fair and unbiased assessments and out of ethical reasons he should have excused himself as soon as possible. Someone else from the outside from another state that had no connection should have been brought in to do psychological assessments of E &D. Just because somebody has a degree on their wall does not make them infallible.

PaintItBlack wrote:

One thing that nobody seems to mention that I think is  an amazingly important point is Fusilier's assured bias. He had a son in the school that day and for several hours did not know if his son was dead or alive. He may be a mental health professional but he is also human and nobody cannot convince me that he didn't have prejudice and bias against E &D going in because of this. Where is it written that because he is a professional it is impossible for him to be biased? I firmly believe that he was far too close to this case and the community in which it happened to be able to give  fair and unbiased assessments and out of ethical reasons he should have excused himself as soon as possible. Someone else from the outside from another state that had no connection should have been brought in to do psychological assessments of E &D.   Just because somebody has a degree on their wall does not make them infallible.

True, very true.

Look, I'll admit my bias right now - I'm deeply skeptical of psychology in general. I'm especially skeptical of a psychologist who diagnoses dead people with whom he never had the chance to interact.

I've been through the psychological/psychiatric rigamarole. My mother long insisted that there was something deeply wrong with my mental state, and she dragged me to a number of shrinks over the years. There were one or two with whom I established a genuine rapport, who honestly seemed to understand where I was coming from. And there were several who didn't know shit from shinola.

lasttrain wrote:

I'm not the one who has a thing with him.

No, you're not, are you? I am. I'm the one who keeps bringing him up all the time.

Why?

Well, I genuinely believe that his book has misled an awful lot of people. But there's got to be more to it than that, hasn't there? There's a fair amount of laughable crap in Larkin's book, but you don't see me creating threads about him.

Perhaps it's because I find excessive self-promotion distasteful. Cullen has gone to considerable lengths to create a cult of personality around himself. He has, with some success, endeavored to establish himself as the go-to celebrity author who owns the mass-shooting niche. He tries so hard to be the Malcolm Gladwell of school shootings.

(Hey, Malcolm, there are 5'3" white guys who've spent far more than 10,000 hours shooting balls into hoops, and they still haven't made the NBA! What are they doing wrong?)

Kass contributes to various blogs now and then, but you don't see him hopping in front of a CNN camera every time some miserable fuck shoots up a shopping mall. Hell, I don't even know what he looks like. I'm sure I've seen his picture out there, but I can't remember his face.

But Cullen - I've seen his picture numerous times. He's photographed fairly frequently, but this shot pops up a lot:
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Now, before I go on, let me say this: This is the guise in which he presents himself to the world. This is how he wants to be seen. People reveal themselves all the time - they can't help it. So I see what I see. Keep in mind that when I say "left" and "right," I am referring to *his* perspective.

Was the photographer going for a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde effect? The right side of his face features a straight smile in the light, while the left sports a slightly crooked grin in the shadow. His head is cocked slightly to the right, signifying ... something? Nothing? The picture itself is cropped so that there's more empty space to the left side of his head than to the right.

The smile is a little forced. He looks as if he's vaguely pissed off about something. It's not an especially friendly look.

He's not an unattractive man. He's gay, so undoubtedly he feels the pressure to keep his body firm.

(I've done the whole questioning-my-sexual-identity thing, so believe me when I tell you that many gay men are not exactly forgiving of body flaws, and not especially tactful. But straight men aren't exactly forgiving of female body flaws, now, are they?)

Actually, one time on the old board I took the whole "Oh, Cullen's gay!" bit too far ... someone told me that he was hurt by what I had said, and I wrote him to apologize. It was the only contact I ever had with him (as far as I know).

My sex life has always been non-existent, so the question of whether I'm straight or something else is largely academic. Gay men have made passes at me and I haven't felt the slightest tinge of temptation. I do find tall, muscular men very attractive, but the idea of having sex with a man does not appeal to me. I generally prefer the company of women to that of men - I've had few friends in my life, but almost all of them have been women.

I say this because I don't want people to think I'm a homophobe or a closet case or whatever. Sex and human relationships in general are not my forte. I'm much better with machines than I am with people.

(Of course, now that I've said it, people will say, "The poster doth protest too much!" But they can say what they like.)

Now that I've dragged this thread totally off-topic, I'll add the following:

I've never felt like I can compete effectively with other men - I feel totally inadequate as a man. Ironically, I have a large build, so people say, "Oh, did you ever play football?", but I have absolutely zero interest in sports. I read the newspaper so I can bluff my way through conversations about the Heat. With the women in my life, I don't have to pretend, or to compete - I can just be myself.

I end up keeping most of my interests and hobbies to myself. Neither men nor women find them interesting.

See, these tidbits are my gift to Cullen, to make up for the unpleasantness - they're little daggers he can throw against me. He can read them and say, "Oh, yes, that LPorter is a weird sexless closet case - no wonder he's always bashing me."

Fair enough. I think what I want to think about you, Dave, and you think what you want to think about me.