Principalities & Powersrnbv Samuel FraticisrnI Was a Teenage Werewolfrn”When I think back on all the crap Irnlearned in high school.. .,” Paul Simonrnmused in a popular song some years ago.rnSimon, of course, was in high schoolrnlong before multiculturalism, Afrocentrism,rnOutcome-Based EducaHon, bilingualrneducation. Heather Has 17 Mommies,rnHolocaust Studies, and assortedrntherapeutic group gropes and mass seancesrnin “counseling” displaced therndeathless vapidities about history, life,rnand literature that typically spill from thernlips of teachers in all ages and nations.rnBut no matter what sort of crap Simonrnendured in his high school and what sortrnpoisons the minds and spirits of teenagersrntoday, it is nothing compared to the offalrnthat the American news media regularlyrninject into grown-ups and anyone elsernwho pays attention to them.rnThe mass murder of 12 students at Littleton,rnColorado’s Columbine HighrnSchool on April 20 was the occasion forrnthe construction of a veritable mountainrnof journalistic chicken doodle by almostrnevery major newspaper and news servicernin the world. The blood had not stoppedrnflowing before the ace reporters and investigativernjournalists had the whole goryrnmess all figured out and ready to servernhot and piping to a gape-jawed public.rnAs it turned out, almost ever}’thing theyrnreported was wrong—some of it almostrncertainly deliberately wrong—and notrnonly wrong, but a carefully craftedrnwrongness that pointed in the exact oppositerndirection of the truth about Littletonrnand a lot of other things in the UnitedrnStates that it is important for some peoplernto hide.rnThe two teenage killers, Eric Harrisrnand Dylan Klebold, an Associated Pressrnston’ told us on April 21, were “said to bernpart of an outcast group with right-wingrnovertones called the Trenchcoat Mafia.”rn”Students said the group was fascinatedrnwith World War II and the Nazis andrnnoted that Tuesday [April 20] was AdolfrnHitler’s birthday,” it continued. Thernsame day, yet another AP story describedrnthe “Trenchcoat Mafia” as a group thatrn”hated blacks, Hispanics, Jews and athletes.”rnA student named Aaron Cohn,rnrepeatedly quoted in several stories.rnclaimed the “Mafia” “often made anti-rnSemitic comments”; he was the apparentrnsource of the story that the killers hadrncalled the black student they murderedrnby a racial epithet, while other studentsrnsaid the group or the killers themselvesrnwore “Nazi crosses” and ‘”made generallyrnderogatory remarks’ about Hispanicsrnand blacks.” “They talked about Hitlerrnand wore clothes with German insignia,”rngasped the New York Times on April 23.rn”They hated jocks, admired Nazis andrnscorned normalcy. . . . They were whiternsupremacists. . . ,” the Washington Postrnbubbled the same day.rnAnd so it went for the next week or so,rnwith proponents of more gun control,rnmore voodoo education, more hatecrimernlaws, and more federal manipulationrnof schools, law enforcement, andrnfamilies flapping their wings and theirrnjaws overtime, intent on squeezing everyrnpossible ounce of political ad’antagernfrom what the press at once dubbed “thernworst attack on a school in American histor)’.”rnEven that wasn’t true. In 1927, arnschool board member named AndrewrnKehos planted several dynamite bombsrnunder his local schoolhouse in Michiganrnand blew it to splinters, killing himselfrnand 45 other people, including 38 students.rnWhether Mr. Kehos was also reportedrnto have “right-wing overtones”rnand to be a “white supremacist” is notrnknown, but that atrocitv committed by arnlunatic, like most others in civilizedrncountries, was soon forgotten.rnThe Litdeton massacre wasn’t forgotten,rnat least not for several weeks after itrnhappened, and it soon became clear thatrnthe media were trying to use it in almostrnexacdy the same way they had exploitedrnthe Oklahoma City bombing of April 19,rn1995. They were setting a Reichstag fire,rncreating a vast and elaborate lie thatrnsought to pin the blame for the Littletonrnmassacre on “the right.”rnBut the Littleton Lie couldn’t last becausernit was just so contrary to certainrnfacts that soon began to emerge from therncarnage, and in any case, the Lie wasrnlargely irrelevant to the main political usagernof the massacre, more gun control.rnYet the major media kept the Littleton incidentrnon their front pages for at least twornweeks after it occurred; it was only whenrnthe facts did emerge that they lost interestrnin it and the stor- began to follow Mr. Kehosrnand his dynamite bombs into thatrnsubcontinent of oblivion reserved for inconvenientrnfacts and truths. The facts,rnyou see, not only gave the lie to the LittletonrnLie but pointed to a truth the newsrnmedia didn’t want to bring up.rnOne glimpse of reality began to creeprnonto the national screen when the contentsrnof Eric Harris’s website were released.rnThose contents had been reportedrnto the local police by an alarmedrnparent more than a year before youngrnMaster Harris tripped over the edge onrnApril 20, but the cops had ignored them.rnAs soon as the massacre occurred, however,rnAmerica Online shut down the Harrisrnwebsite, and no one got a gander at whatrnwas on it until the New York Times, to itsrncredit, reported at least some of the contentsrnon May 1.rnThe Times found the following passage,rnwritten b’ Harris, “intriguing”:rn”You know what I hate?” Harris “repeatedlyrnasked readers of the site,” the Timesrnreported. “One of the answers he gavernwas, ‘RACISM!'” “He wrote that peoplernwho are biased against ‘blacks, Asians,rnMexicans or people from any other countryrnor race besides white-American’rnshould ‘have their arms ripped off and bernburned.” “‘Don’t let me catch you makingrnfun of someone just because they arernof a different color,’ he wrote.” YoungrnMaster Harris, it turns out, hated manyrnthings besides “RACISM,” among themrnfans of “Star Wars,” people who mispronouncernwords, liars, country music,rnfreedom of expression, opponents ofrnthe death penalty, and smokers. Butrn”RACISM,” so far from being a creed tornwhich he subscribed, was definitely onrnthe enemies’ list.rnAs for Dylan Klebold, it soon came outrnthat he was of Jewish background andrnthat his grandfather had been a prominentrnJewish philanthropist in Ohio. Inrnfact, young Master Klebold was reportedrnto have taken part in a Passover seder onlyrnshortiy before the massacre. Whateverrnmotivated him to splatter the schoolhousernwith the brains of his pals, it probablyrnwasn’t the admiration for Hitler andrnthe Nazis that the press had attributed tornhim and his colleague, nor did Eric Harris’srnwebsite reveal any sympathy forrnHitler or for “racism” or indeed for anyrn36/CHRONICLESrnrnrn