CNN Story
Six girls at a rural high school were charged with homicide conspiracy after their principal found a list of 300 names and officials discovered online postings suggesting they kill people, authorities said Thursday.
School officials said the list, discovered in a classroom trash can, mostly named students and faculty members but also included Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey and the Energizer Bunny.
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The girls, ages 14 and 15, were charged with conspiracy to commit criminal homicide late Wednesday and taken to a juvenile facility.
Our society has become so dysfunctional and rooted in fear that the smallest incident results in wildly disproportionate response. Yes, Columbine, etc etc. Using the circumstances of a couple of maladjusted individuals to judge everyone else is like saying all book repositories should have been leveled after the Kennedy assassination (or if you prefer, all grassy knolls).
Back in the ancient days of gas lamps and vellum scrolls, I also went to high school. When I did, there were kids who would joke around about people they would like to "kill" and make lists of them. They would even come up with elaborate scenarios of macabre detail describing how it would happen. Often the victim was some form of establishment authority, particularly those that represented values teens want to distance themselves from (Oprah) or simply something that was so overwhelmingly annoying the humor of wanting to kill it was obvious (the energizer bunny). No one went to prison for this. No one was killed, either.
Sophomore Lakyn Ledford stayed home Thursday after learning that student-athletes were on the list.
"I was very scared. My friends were scared. That's a scary thing. It can really happen," she told WTVC-TV.
Yeah, I bet you were honey. Such a tragedy that you were so gripped in icy fear that you had to miss a day of school.
Common sense surrenders.
-Remagi