Marilyn Manson’s Response to Columbine Blame In the June 1999 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, rock and roll idol Marilyn Mason writes to defend himself on his alleged role in the now infamous Columbine shooting. He states that although the media has labeled him as the primary reason that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed all of those high school students, nothing could be further from the truth. While Manson does have a couple of good points in his argument, he falls short of truly getting across to his readers. This is true for several reasons. In his writing, Marilyn Manson is sorely lacking in seeing other points of view that are not the same as his own, and then goes on to present his own point of view in a way that could be highly offensive to a large portion of readers. Moreover, Manson does not ever use any statistics or expert opinions to support and prove his points. In all fairness, it is necessary to first determine what is good about Marilyn Manson’s argument. There are a couple of things that Manson does do well in his article. He must first be credited for using the element of pathos to draw the audience toward his side. This is most obviously seen in the way he continuously makes statements about the “stupidity and ignorance” of the media which causes one to feel like only a moron would not agree with him. This sets the tone of the argument, and that is the second thing that Manson does with fair success. Every article has some sort of tone that can influence its readers to want to read more. Manson’s tone in this article is one of extreme anger that also draws in the reader. When someone is angry with a person or, in this case, a group, it makes the person want to know why. Marilyn Manson uses this same approach with his tone in the article. Manson has a very angry, frustrated tone throughout his argument. For example, he makes