Who's Suing Who?

The saying goes, "Time heals all wounds." The problem out in Colorado is that some people apparently don't think that time is healing their wounds fast enough, so they're going to try to heal with some cold hard cash.

If you haven't heard the story, I am referring to the families of victims of the Columbine massacre two years ago. Since the two monsters who committed these heinous acts killed themselves at the close of this sorry episode, the victims' families have had to seek vengeance in other ways. First, they sued the county's 911 dispatch for not responding soon enough. That suit ended recently, and apparently it didn't satisfy their desires to be paid handsomely for their tragic losses.

Now supposedly, one of the gunmen was shown on a video he made holding one of the guns he would use in the shooting, and he had named the gun after a character in the video game "Doom". It has also been shown that the two young psychopaths were frequent visitors to adult web sites and played a helluva lot of PlayStation, and the more violent the games, the better, apparently. So the victim's families are suing the makers of the web sites and video games, including such corporate big boys as AOL Time Warner and the people who created "Doom" for $5 BILLION. FIVE BILLION DOLLARS!!!

Now, I don't want you all to think I'm some sort of heartless prick and I don't feel sorry for all the suffering these people have had to go through. Obviously, I do; nobody wants to lose somebody close to them, especially in such a grisly way. However, I do not believe that the way to make up for your loss is to sue everybody for mucho dinero. No amount of money, not even FIVE BILLION DOLLARS, is going to make up for losing somebody you love. If you honestly think it's going to make a difference, it won't, and I won't go so far as to call this an outright case of greed, but it's hard not to.

And then of course, it's the whole pop culture aspect; more precisely, it's the blaming pop culture aspect. While you're at it, why don't you sue Marilyn Manson's record label, cuz after all, the gunmen listened to his stuff and printed Manson lyrics on their web page. You better sue the guys who made "The Matrix", right on up from the producer, director, writers, all the way up to the studio that made and released it, because everyone likened the assault to something out of that particular movie; god knows, we had to see that particular scene enough times right after Columbine, because everyone pointed the finger at that movie above all others. And if you looked further into these kids' backgrounds, found out the other things they liked, music, movies, TV shows, web sites, video games, hell, pretty soon you could find yourself suing everyone who creates the pop culture in our country. And isn't this what it's all about, anyway; indicting pop culture and saying that pop culture is what drove these kids to shoot up their high school?

I have referenced this quote before, but it bears repeating: Pete Townshend of the Who once said that if you thought song lyrics were telling you to shoot up your school then "you're already f&H$ed up to begin with". I think we can safely extend this to TV, movies, and so on. There are people who cannot see the difference between fantasy and reality, I've known people like that. To be honest, they scare me, and I would be the first and probably not the only person to say that something is not quite right with these people upstairs. Something was definitely wrong upstairs with Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, and they had access to high-powered weaponry that seems like a bit much even in the hands of the US Army. That is the formula for tragedy; not music, not movies, not websites, not even video games. It just seems ridiculous that we have to revisit this argument two whole years later about the same incident. How long are we supposed to fight this battle again and again?

That said, there is no way in purgatory or worse that this is going to end in favor of the families of the victims. Not a chance. Way too much money, and it goes right down to the basic argument I have mentioned before; does pop culture drive people to violence? If there are any precedents in cases like this, it would be best to use them at this point. In the past, rock lyrics have been pointed at as reasons for everything from suicide to stalking, and in every case, the party suing has lost or has been forced to settle for a much smaller amount than they asked for. It would be best not to settled this one. Let it be decided; the whole will be watching the results.

And if by some ridiculous reason the victims actually do get their money, then could I possibly get away with beating the crap out of somebody and then suing MTV and the Backstreet Boys because their music drove me over the edge because I HATE IT SO DAMN MUCH?!? Ponder it, people, ponder it. I don't like to join the chorus of the "slippery slope" crowd; you know these people, the ones who believe that every little thing could open a "Pandora's Box" and lead to (insert right here) being taken away from us or whatever. However, one has to wonder that if the victims of Columbine and the families of the ones who died can get mad jack from entertainment providers whether or not this could open the floodgates for anyone to blame some segment of pop culture on anything. Could victims of hate crimes now sue Eminem? Could women's rights groups sue the makers of "Tomb Raider" for creating an unrealistic portrayal of the female body in Lara Croft? Could someone sue MTV because "Jackass" put the idea in their head to try to hurdle an oncoming car?

There could only be one winner here, one group of winners to be specific, that being lawyers everywhere. Just one more unfortunate trend from the country that brought you the multimillion dollar settlement for spilling hot coffee in your lap.