From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Speaking of Murder
Complaints about "bullying" are the excuse factory's latest product.
By now, thanks to the new school massacre, there can hardly be an American who hasn't heard of the latest newly discovered menace to the nation's peace and security--namely, bullying. Yes, there are people here and there who will wonder what exactly is new about school bullies and teens who suffer from teasing, but they are, of course, people who fail to appreciate our media's need to find answers to seemingly unfathomable mysteries. Answers, say, that could explain what it is that causes students to take guns to school and shoot their classmates.
It was doubtless with great relief that they discovered an initial answer after the massacres at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., where, it was rumored, the two shooters had been outcasts of sorts, objects of bullying. For endless days following the Columbine rampage, we heard about their alienation, and about the need to listen to the anger of the young.
No one who remembers the goings-on about the anger of the two killers--a subject that elicited mind-numbing hours of reverential oratory--can be much surprised at the current discourse about Monday's attacks at Santana High School in Santee, Calif., or the speed with which that event became transformed into another object lesson about alienation, youthful anger, and the dangers posed by school bullies.
As was true after Littleton, network bookers spent blood, sweat and tears looking for guests who could talk about those involved--but it was left to Wednesday's "Today" show to come up with what must have seemed a bonanza. Here was a former girlfriend of 15-year-old Charles Andrew Williams, the perpetrator, and her mother. In the course of this interview, we learned of Andy's goodness, and his sensitivity, how everybody back home in his old Maryland neighborhood adored him and still loved him and wanted him to come home. They did not, the mother of the girl allowed, between paeans to Andy's goodness, "agree with what he did."
Agree with what he did? We are speaking of murder here, of two young men dead. Still, there was something about this language, its otherworldly detachment, that did not seem out of place in an interview which consisted entirely of testimonials to Andy's troubles, his loneliness, all of it interspersed with expressions of understanding from Katie Couric about how hard all this must be for them.
At no point in the interview did it occur to the normally inquisitive Ms. Couric to ask if there wasn't something a bit unbalanced, say, in this singularly glowing testimony to Andy, who had just cold-bloodedly mowed down everybody he laid eyes on. All that notwithstanding, one could have learned a lot about the reasons for the behavior of the Andys of this world, from these guests.
For a (by now) long line of young killers, this inner assurance has been enough, evidently, to overcome all taboos, all consciousness of what it means to murder, and enough, also, to overcome what would have been, in another time, the most profound inhibition of all--namely fear of what people would think, what friends, teachers and authorities would say of them in the face of an act so unimaginable in its horror.
Charles Andrew Williams could probably have predicted--give or take a detail or two--the comments of friends and teachers. They would speak of their amazement because he didn't seem the type. Some would remember he had been teased. Everyone would look for causes. There would be talk about him, and plenty of it, on television. At the end of a day's reporting on the event it would be hard to find viewers who didn't know who Charles Andrew Williams was. And just as hard to find any who knew the names of the two people Andy killed, the victims in these affairs being, as always, a subject of infinitely small importance compared with the great journey of discovery on which so many media journalists are now embarked as they ask, who is Charles Andrew Williams? What made him tick?
A delicious question and one that Charles Andrew Williams could have predicted everyone would ask after the deed was done--along with a lot of related queries. How had Andy been feeling? How bad was it? Over and over, since Monday, press reporters have delivered a rich bounty of answers to this searching question, all of them, of course, the same. He was feeling pretty bad, it seems, what with school bullying. How's that for an answer to the murder of two classmates--Randy Gordon, 17, and Bryan Zuckor, 14--and the wounding of 13 others?
Evidently it was enough to bring forth lengthy meditations on the dangers of school bullying--a subject to which CNN, for one, devoted considerable time Thursday. The network news brought reports of a learned study on school bullying, and the Associated Press brings word that the Colorado Legislature is arranging for an antibullying program to be set up in the state's schools. Indeed, a newcomer to this story who tuned in yesterday could easily have concluded that it was all about a terrible crime that had taken place in a California school--and that the victim was a youth called Charles Andrew Williams.
