The Truth About Columbine

By Bill Maher

April 20th was Easter. It was also "Stoner Christmas." And it was the 15th anniversary of the Columbine shootings. 

Columbine dominated the news for months. It was the missing Malaysian plane of 1999. And the media got practically everything wrong. The guys who did it were not bullied; were not part of a "Trench Coat Mafia;" didn't target "jocks" or popular kids; didn't execute a girl because she said "yes" to believing in God. All this is meticulously debunked in an authoritative book by Dave Cullen called "Columbine." 

Okay, Columbine was the first big massacre when everybody had cell phones, so it's easy to understand how all these rumors quickly turned into facts. But why are they still considered "facts" 15 years later? Every time there's a school massacre, you can still count on some cable TV anchor to ask some expert, "Is this a bullying situation, like Columbine?" And, even more astoundingly, you can count on the "expert" to answer as if that was the situation at Columbine. 

Allowing these lies to persist prevents us from asking the tough questions, like, "What do we do with born psychopaths?" Because that's what Eric Harris, the ringleader, clearly was. And "What do we do with clinically depressed teenagers?" Because that's what Dylan Klebold, the other killer, clearly was.