Newsweek Blames 15-Year-Old Kid for His Own Murder

The most oddly reported blame-the-victim story I've read in a while. Larry King, a gay, cross-dressing fifteen-year-old, was murdered by his classmate, Brandon McInerny.

The article devotes three salacious pages to detailing the "commotion" created by the victim, and offers a single page of insight into the shooter. Apparently, one day Larry asked Brandon (whom he liked, apparently) to be his valentine. The other kids at school then teased Brandon about it (the same way they would tease Larry). So Brandon shot Larry.

Here's how Newsweek describes these events: "he was allowed to push the boundaries so far that he put himself and others in danger." They quoted a teacher as calling Larry's actions "bullying."

Yes, asking someone to be your Valentine is the equivalent of being a bully capable of unleashing mass bloodshed. If you're gay. According to Newsweek.

Meanwhile, the only person at the school who seemed to want to mentor Larry - a lesbian principal - is under threat of lawsuit.

But no one cares why Brandon decided it was ok to shoot his classmate in the back of his head. "Brandon was being terrorized," claims his lawyer. By which he means Larry's approach, not the taunting by the other kids.

HEY, NEWSWEEK - IT WAS THE OTHER LITTLE HOMOPHOBE KIDS WHO BULLIED BRANDON (as well as Larry). Isn't THIS the bullying that school officials should have stopped? Apparently not: they were more concerned that Larry was wearing makeup. And apparently it's ok for bullied kids to strike back, as long as they shoot the gay kid.

The reporters give us this little tidbit about Brandon: when he was six, he watched his father shoot his mother in the arm. Like Harris and Klebold at Columbine, one wonders what demons Brandon had inside that a little taunting by the other kids would set him off. But since the victim was gay, this isn't a story about another homicidal teen triggered by bullying: it's a story of a victim made to sound like a prostitute on the street, just "asking for it."

Newsweek seems to have bought into the gay-panic theory. Apparently, the reporters understand the situation about as little as the people in charge of the school did.