Right On Marilyn Manson!!!
by Fly Girl
The source of this text is an interview that Marilyn Manson did in Chicago
with Kurt Loder of MTV. It was posted on several lists including the one at
my school in New York and my other list, Web Sociology, and it was verified
to be genuine. This is the best text I have seen on this issue. So here it
is: Marilyn Manson on Columbine It is sad to think that the first few people on earth needed no books,
movies, games or music to inspire cold-blooded murder. The day that Cain
bashed his brother Abel's brains in, the only motivation he needed was his
own human disposition to violence. Whether you interpret the Bible as
literature or as the final word of whatever God may be, Christianity has
given us an image of death and sexuality that we have based our culture
around. A half-naked dead man hangs in most homes and around our necks,
and we have just taken that for granted all our lives. Is it a symbol of
hope or hopelessness? The world's most famous murder-suicide was also the
birth of the death icon -- the blueprint for celebrity. Unfortunately,
for all of their inspiring morality, now here in the Gospels is
intelligence praised as a virtue. A lot of people forget or never realize that I started my band as a
criticism of these very issues of despair and hypocrisy. The name Marilyn
Manson has never celebrated the sad fact that America puts killers on the
cover of Time magazine, giving them as much notoriety as our favorite
movie stars. From Jesse James to Charles Manson, the media, since their
inception, have turned criminals into folk heroes. They just created two
new ones when they plastered those dipshits Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris'
pict ures on the front of every newspaper. Don't be surprised if every
kid who gets pushed around has two new idols. We applaud the creation of a bomb whose sole purpose is to destroy all of
mankind, and we grow up watching our president's brains splattered all
over Texas. Times have not become more violent. They have just become more
televised. Does anyone think the Civil War was the least bit civil? If
television had existed, you could be sure they would have been there to
cover it, or maybe even participate in it, like their violent car chase of
Princess Di. Disgusting vultures looking for corpses, exploiting, fuck
ing, filming and serving it up for our hungry appetites in a gluttonous
display of endless human stupidity. hen it comes down to who's to blame for the high school murders in
Littleton, Colorado, throw a rock and you'll hit someone who's guilty.
We're the people who sit back and tolerate children owning guns, and we're
the ones who tune in and watch the up-to-the-minute details of what they
do with them. I think it's terrible when anyone dies, especially if it is
someone you know and love. But what is more offensive is that when these
tragedies happen, most people don't really care any more than they would
abo ut the season finale of Friends or The Real World. I was dumbfounded
as I watched the media snake right in, not missing a teardrop,
interviewing the parents of dead children, televising the funerals. Then
came the witch hunt. Man's greatest fear is chaos. It was unthinkable that these kids did not
have a simple black-and-white reason for their actions. And so a scapegoat
was needed. I remember hearing the initial reports from Littleton, that
Harris and Klebold were wearing makeup and were dressed like Marilyn
Manson, whom they obviously must worship, since they were dressed in
black. Of course, speculation snowballed into making me the poster boy for
everything that is bad in the world. These two idiots weren't wearing
makeup , and they weren't dressed like me or like goths. Since Middle
America has not heard of the music they did listen to (KMFDM and
Rammstein, among others), the media picked something they thought was
similar. Responsible journalists have reported with less publicity that Harris and
Klebold were not Marilyn Manson fans -- that they even disliked my music.
Even if they were fans, that gives them no excuse, nor does it mean that
music is to blame. Did we look for James Huberty's inspiration when he
gunned down people at McDonald's? What did Timothy McVeigh like to watch?
What about David Koresh, Jim Jones? Do you think entertainment inspired Kip
Kinkel, or should we blame the fact that his father bought him the guns
he used in the Springfield, Oregon, murders? What inspires Bill Clinton
to blow people up in Kosovo? Was it something that Monica Lewinsky said
to him? Isn't killing just killing, regardless if it's in Vietnam or
Jonesboro, Arkansas? Why do we justify one, just because it seems to be
for the right reasons? Should there ever be a right reason? If a kid is
old enough to drive a car or buy a gun, isn't he old enough to be held
personally responsible for what he does with his car or gun? Or if he's
a teen ager, should someone else be blamed because he isn't as enlightened
as an eighteen-year-old? America loves to find an icon to hang its guilt on. But, admittedly, I
have assumed the role of Antichrist; I am the Nineties voice of
individuality, and people tend to associate anyone who looks and behaves
differently with illegal or immoral activity. Deep down, most adults hate
people who go against the grain. It's comical that people are naive enough
to have forgotten Elvis, Jim Morrison and Ozzy so quickly. All of them
were subjected to the same age-old arguments, scrutiny and prejudice. I
wrote a s ong called "Lunchbox," and some journalists have interpreted it
as a song about guns. Ironically, the song is about being picked on and
fighting back with my Kiss lunch box, which I used as a weapon on the
playground. In 1979, metal lunch boxes were banned because they were
considered dangerous weapons in the hands of delinquents. I also wrote a
song called "Get Your Gunn." The title is spelled with two n's because the
song was a reaction to the murder of Dr. David Gunn, who was killed in
Florida by pro- life activists while I was living there. That was the
ultimate hypocrisy I witnessed growing up: that these people killed
someone in the name of being "pro-life." The somewhat positive messages of these songs are usually the ones that
sensationalists misinterpret as promoting the very things I am decrying.
Right now, everyone is thinking of how they can prevent things like
Littleton. How do you prevent AIDS, world war, depression, car crashes? We
live in a free country, but with that freedom there is a burden of
personal responsibility. Rather than teaching a child what is moral and
immoral, right and wrong, we first and foremost can establish what the
laws that go vern us are. You can always escape hell by not believing in
it, but you cannot escape death and you cannot escape prison. It is no wonder that kids are growing up more cynical; they have a lot of
information in front of them. They can see that they are living in a world
that's made of bullshit. In the past, there was always the idea that you
could turn and run and start some thing better. But now America has become
one big mall, and because of the Internet and all of the technology we
have, there's nowhere to run. People are the same everywhere. Sometimes
music, movies and books are the only things that let us feel like some one
else feels like we do. I've always tried to let people know it's OK, or
better, if you don't fit into the program. Use your imagination -- if
some geek from Ohio can become something, why can't anyone else with the
willpower and creativity? I chose not to jump into the media frenzy and defend myself, though I was
begged to be on every single TV show in existence. I didn't want to
contribute to these fame-seeking journalists and opportunists looking to
fill their churches or to get elected be cause of their self-righteous
finger-pointing. They want to blame entertainment? Isn't religion the
first real entertainment? People dress up in costumes, sing songs and
dedicate themselves in eternal fandom. Everyone will agree that nothing
was more ent ertaining than Clinton shooting off his prick and then his
bombs in true political form. And the news -- that's obvious. So is
entertainment to blame? I'd like media commentators to ask themselves,
because their coverage of the event was some of the most gruesome
entertainment any of us have seen. I think that the National Rifle Association is far too powerful to take
on, so most people choose Doom, The Basketball Diaries or yours truly.
This kind of controversy does not help me sell records or tickets, and I
wouldn't want it to. I'm a controversial artist, one who dares to have an
opinion and bothers to create music and videos that challenge people's
ideas in a world that is watered-down and hollow. In my work I examine the
America we live in, and I've always tried to show people that the devil we
blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. So don't expect
the end of the world to come one day out of the blue -- it's been
happening every day for a long time.
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