It is sad to think that the first few people on earth needed no books, 
movies, games or music to inspire cold-blooded murder. The day that Cain 
bashed his brother Abel’s brains in, the only motivation he needed was his 
own human disposition to violence. Whether you interpret the Bible as 
literature or as the final word of whatever God may be, Christianity has 
given us an image of death and sexuality that we have based our culture
around. A half-naked dead man hangs in most homes and around our necks,and 
we have just taken that fro granted all our lives. It is a symbol of hope or 
hopelessness? The world’s most famous murder-suicide was also the birth of a 
death icon - the blueprint for celebrity. Unfortunately, for all oftheir 
inspiring morality, nowhere in the Gospels is intelligence praised as a virtue.
A lot of people forget or never realize that I started my band as a criticism 
of these very issues of despair and hypocrisy. The name Marilyn Mansonhas 
never celebrated the sad fact that America puts killers on the cover of Time 
magazine, giving them as much notoriety as our favorite movie stars.  From 
Jesse James to Charles Manson, the media, since their inception, have turned 
criminals into folk heroes. They just created two new ones when they 
plastered those dipsh!ts Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris’ pictures on the front 
of every newspaper. Don’t be surprised if every kid who gets pushed around 
has two new idols.
 
     We applaud the creation of a bomb whose sole purpose is to destroy all of 
mankind, and we grow up watching our president’s brains splattered all over 
Texas. Times have not become more violent. They have just become more 
televised. Does anyone think the Civil War was the least bit civil? If 
television had existed, you could be sure they would have there to cover it, 
or maybe even participate in it, like their violent car chase of Princess Di. 
Disgusting vultures looking for corpses, exploiting, f*cking, filming and 
serving it up for our hungry appetites in a gluttonous display of endless 
human stupidity.

     When it comes down to who’s to blame for the high school murders in 
Littleton, Colorado, throw a rock and you’ll hit someone who’s guilty.  We’re 
the people who sit back and tolerate children owning guns, and we’re the ones 
who tune in and watch the up-to-the-minute details of what they do with them. 
I think it’s terrible when anyone dies, especially if it is someone you know 
and love,. But what is more offensive is that when there tragedies happen, 
most people don’t really care any more than they would about the season
finale of Friends or The Real World. I was dumbfounded as I watched the media 
snake right in, not missing a teardrop, interviewing the parents of dead 
children, televising the funerals. Then came the witch hunt.

     Man’s greatest fear is chaos. It was unthinkable that these kids did not
have a simple black-and-white reason for their actions, and so a scapegoat was
needed.  I remember hearing the initial reports from Littleton, that Harris and
Klebold were wearing makeup and were dressed like Marilyn Manson,whom they 
obviously must worship, since they were dressed in black. Of course, 
speculation snowballed into making me the poster boy for everything that is bad
in the world. These two idiots weren’t wearing makeup and they weren’t dressed
like me or even like goths. Since Middle America has not heard of the music
they did listen to (KMFDM and Rammstein, among others), the media picked 
something they thought was similar.

     Responsible journalists have reported with less publicity that Harris and 
Klebold were not Marilyn Manson fans - that they even disliked my music. Even 
if they were fans, that gives them no excuse, nor does it mean that music is 
to blame. Did we look for James Huberty’s inspiration when he gunned down 
people at McDonald’s? What did Timothy McVeigh like to watch? That about 
David Koresh, Jim Jones? Do you think entertainment inspired Kip Kinkel, or 
should we blame the fact that his father bought him the guns he used in the 
Springfield, Oregon, murders? What inspires Bill Clinton to blow people up in 
Kosovo? Was it something that Monica Lewinsky said to him? Isn’t killing just 
killing, regardless if it’s in Vietnam or Jonesboro, Arkansas? Why do we 
justify one, just because it seems to be for the right reasons? should there 
ever be a right reason? If a kid is old enough to drive a car or buy a gun, 
isn’t he old enough to be held responsible for what he does with his car or 
gun? Or if he’s a teenager, should someone else be blamed because he isn’t as 
enlightened as an eighteen-year-old?

     America loves to find an icon to hang its guilt on. But, admittedly, I 
have assumed the role of Antichrist; I am the Nineties voice of individuality, 
and people tend to associate anyone who looks or behaves differently with 
illegal or immoral activity. Deep down, most adults hate people who go agains
t the grain. It’s comical that people are naive enough to have forgotten Elvis,
 Jim Morrison and Ozzy so quickly. All of them were subjected to the same age-
old arguments, scrutiny and prejudice. I wrote a song called ‘’Lunchbox,’’and 
some journalists have interpreted it as a song about guns. Ironically, the 
song is about a kid being picked on and fighting back with his KISS lunch 
box, which I used as a weapon on the playground. In 1979, metal lunch boxes 
were banned because they were considered dangerous weapons in the hands of 
delinquents. I also wrote a song called ‘’Get Your Gunn.’’ The title is
spelled with two n’s because the song was a reaction to the murder of Dr. 
David Gunn, who was killed in Florida by pro-life activists while I was
living there. That was the ultimate hypocrisy I witnessed growing up: that 
these people killed someone in the name of being ‘’prolife.’’ The somewhat 
positive messages of these songs are usually the ones that sensationalists
misinterpret as promoting the very things I am decrying. 

     Right now, everyone is thinking of how they can prevent things like 
Litteton. How do you prevent AIDS, world war, depression, car crashes? We
live in a free country, but with that freedom there is a burden of personal
responsibility. Rather than teaching a child what is moral and immoral, right
and wrong, we first and foremost can establish what the laws that govern us 
are. You can always escape hell by not believing in it, but you cannot escape
death and you cannot escape prison. It is no wonder that kids are growing up 
more cynical; they have a lot of information in front of them. They can see 
that they are living in aworld that’s made of bullsh!t. In the past, there 
was always the idea that you could and run and start something better. But 
now America has becomeone big mall, and because of the Internet and all of 
the technology we have, there’s nowhere to run. People are the same everywhere.
Sometimes music, movies and books are the only things that let us feel like 
someone else feels like we do. I’ve always tried to let people know it’s OK,
 or better, if youdon’t fit into the program. Use your imagination - if some
 geek from Ohio can become something, why can’t anyone else with the willpower 
and creativity? 

     I chose not to jump into the media frenzy and defend myself, thought I was
 begged to be on every single TV show in existence. I didn’t want to contribute 
to these fame-seeking journalists and opportunists looking to fill 
their self-righteous finger-pointing. They want to blame the entertainment?
Isn’t religion the first real entertainment? People dress up in costumes, 
sing songs and dedicate themselves in eternal fandom. Everyone will agree 
that nothing was more entertaining than Clinton shooting off his prick and 
then his bombs in true political form. And the news - that’s obvious.  So is
entertainment to blame? I’d like media commentators to ask themselves, 
because their coverage of the event was some of the most gruesome 
entertainment any of us have seen. I think the National Rifle Association is 
far too powerful to take on, so most people choose Doom, The Basketball
Diaries or yours truly. This kind of controversy does not help me sell 
records or tickets, and I wouldn’t want it to. I’m a controversial artist, 
one who dares to have an opinion and bothers to create music and videos that
challenge people’s ideas in the world that is watered-down and hollow.  In my 
work I examine the America we live in, and I’ve always tried to show people
that the devil we blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. So 
don’t expect the end of the world to come one day out of the blue -it’s been 
happening every day for a long time. - Marilyn Manson