Piece Of Art

While information is relatively quiet in the American national media, data on some recent LA freeway sniper incidents have hit the London papers . Four deaths on the highways around Los Angeles have been recorded during March and April 2005, but other than in southern California, it has not jumped to broader attention before now. The Times of London (UK) observed: "So far detectives have no suspects in any of the shootings. Although they are not ruling out the kind of 'Beltway sniper attacks' that terrorised the East Coast in 2002, they are more concerned that the shootings are simply copycat incidents."

I am off to Atlanta, to spend three days with the folks from the CDC, reviewing applicants' grant proposals on suicide prevention. I'm not certain what's going to happen while I'm away, but I am prepared for the coming days to be eventful. This next week will hold promises of some hopeful news and yet, too, of some events that hopefully will not occur, despite my sense of what might be. The election of a new pope will be signaled with puffs of white smoke and ringing of bells, but this may be proceeded by days of black smoke as a divided conclave reflects the disputatious days in which we live. Who will be the twilight language's 111th Pope - "The Glory of the Olives" - Pope Gloria Olivæ ? Meanwhile, will April 18, Patriots' Day, technically exactly four weeks since the Red Lake school shooting, greet us with wondering for whom the bells will toll, as gun smoke drifts over a school campus? Or will April 19 (Waco and Oklahoma City bombing) or April

The D.C. newspaper, the Washington Blade , raises the notion that there's a hidden, in their words, "fag factor" behind school violence from Red Lake to Moses Lake, in their April 15, 2005 article, "'Boy-code’ a factor in fatal school shootings?." Writer Ryan Lee makes several good points about the shameful abuse gay and lesbian students endure, and the homophobia in school. But as with articles that only consider the one-note arguments of medications or guns in America or bullying being the sole risk factor behind school shootings, we have to be careful about blaming everything on this newly promoted "boy-code." Lee's examples are hand-picked, slanted, and focus only on the homophobia found in a few, only six, of the 45 school violence events since 1996, noted in my book. For example, his retelling of the Moses Lake incident is incomplete, if not downright incorrect. The Blade's Lee writes that the February 2, 1996 school shooting at Fr

As expected, there has been a rash of copycat school shooting threats and "death lists" discovered around the country since the Red Lake shooting. ABC News overviews a good summary, here . Look for more. Meanwhile, the spillover between "rampages" was in evidence the middle of the first week of April. Beginning at 8 a.m., on Thursday, April 7, a man went on a widely broadcast shooting spree through two states. Two people were killed and four others were wounded during the 45-minute shooting events that began in Delaware and ended in Maryland. Allison Lamont Norman, the 22-year-old alleged male shooter, like Jeff Weise in Red Lake, was wearing a bulletproof vest. Also on April 7, Jeffrey Doyle Robertson, 45, reportedly went to the Canton, Texas (near Waco) high school just after classes started Thursday and shot football coach Gary Joe Kinne, apparently with a .45-caliber pistol. The story received widespread media attention, for a few days nationwide, such as i

Just placed online, THE FUTURIST, May-June 2005 Vol. 39, No. 3, has published Lane Jennings' article, "Combating Copycat Violence," which tackles an important issue. I appreciate their acknowledgement of my attention to this subject in my new book . THE FUTURIST has even been very responsive to my bit of feedback about their article. At the end of the commentary by Jennings, the journal has this final paragraph: "Instead of suppressing the media, as Coleman seems to recommend, we could try harder to balance violent content with more positive stories that are dramatic and worthy of potential copycats' attention." I wrote the editor to note that as opposed to wishing to restrain the media, in the final chapter of my book I agree exactly with Jennings through my seven recommendations and supporting text. My final recommendation, number seven, in fact, is as follows: "(7) And finally, the media should reflect more on their role in creating our increasin

Dear Editor, New York Daily News: Neil Steinberg's column in the Sunday, April 3, 2005, issue of the New York Daily News , has a negative comment on the NYU decision to close balconies to prevent suicides. I have read similar comments in one student newspaper. But this view is an unfortunate one. And tragically uninformed, as well. Steinberg notes that NYU's resolution is "well-intentioned but wrong in trying to curb student suicides," and then repeats this old incorrect chestnut: "People who want to kill themselves find a way." Recalling a deeply personal experience (which is how most people relate to suicide), Steinberg remembers when he was a student how another used a knife as the way to kill himself. Steinberg is talking about different methods. He is not discussing going from one method to another in his example, and certainly not giving insights into the copycat effect we see occurring at NYU, in which students there are dying by jumping, a very