Teens revere Columbine killers

A "Cult of Eric and Dylan" is spreading among disaffected American teens, says an article in the U.K.'s Independent. Charles Baxter captured exactly this dynamic in his novel Saul and Patsy, in which a cult grows up around a nihilistic retarded boy after he kills himself.

"Unless the way high schools work in America is totally changed... unless there is a revolution in our hallways and libraries and dining halls, there are going to be more and more of us," he writes. "Eric said he was only the beginning, the first revolutionary. He was right."

Thus writes a kid posting on one of the Eric-and-Dylan fansites, as quoted in the article. You know what? He's right. Public education in this country does have to change. The cliquishness, the bullying, the terror of being different, the obsession with fashion, the worship of team sports, the brutal mockery, the queer bashing.

I totally sympathise with the losers, because I was a loser in school (though I did well enough in my classes) and hated the environment of both the school itself and the deadly suburb it was in. When I saw Brian DePalma's Carrie, I loved it when she locked the whole school inside and blew it up. Didn't you?