It doesn't help that I stayed up way too late on Saturday night and as a result didn't get to sleep until way too late last night either.
I will always identify with the tired kid in this cartoon, no matter how old I get.
So when I was perusing YouTube this weekend, I somehow ended up watching this old interview from the documentary Bowling for Columbine, in which Michael Moore explored the context surrounding the Columbine shootings. At the time, a lot of blame was heaped on Marilyn Manson. I'm not totally clear on why - it seems that the kids involved in the shootings wore clothes you might see in Manson's closet, but weren't actually fans of his music. (????) At any rate, because of all the public criticism heaped on Manson at the time, Moore interviewed him for the film.
You can say what you want about Marilyn Manson's appearance, music or general weirdness, but the guy eternally got my respect after I watched this interview. Not only does he discuss a tragic circumstance with eloquence and sensitivity, but he has obviously put more thought into it than many of those who accused him of being responsible. It's easy to respond to a tragic event by making it about ourselves. The effect it had on us, why we think it happened, who we place blame on, how it's made us afraid to go to school or work in the morning. But somewhere in the middle of all this we lose sight of the actual people who were involved in it. This doesn't mean we don't care, it just means that we're making sense of it through the lens of our own experience. It takes a special kind of person, in my opinion, to take a step back and re-focus on what the kids themselves were going through.
Though it isn't exactly a cheerful antidote to a mopey Monday, I find it to be an inspiring and eye-opening lesson that hopefully will make people stop and consider the assumptions they've made about people's intelligence, personality or perspective based on faulty first impressions. Sometimes we all need a little reminder.
