What joe libermann has to say about this kind of music

Heavy Metal Music Contributes to Teen Suicide. Raymond Kuntz, Sam Brownback
and Joseph Lieberman.
Teen Suicide. Ed. Tamara L. Roleff. At Issue Series. San Diego: Greenhaven Press,
2000.
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Heavy Metal Music Contributes to Teen Suicide
Table of Contents: Further Readings
Reprinted from testimony given by Raymond Kuntz before the U.S. Senate Committee
on Governmental Affairs, Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management,
Restructuring, and the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C., November 6, 1997.
Raymond Kuntz's teenage son committed suicide in 1996 while listening to a CD by the
heavy metal group Marilyn Manson. Kuntz testified November 6, 1997, on the effects of
heavy metal music on teen suicide before the U.S. Senate's Committee on Governmental
Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Governmental Management, Restructuring, and
the District of Columbia. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas is the subcommittee's chair
and Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut is a ranking member of the subcommittee.
Both senators are actively involved in investigating the effect of violent lyrics on youth
and in encouraging music corporations to take responsibility for those lyrics.
Heavy metal music glorifies death and encourages violence and suicide among teenagers.
The offensive lyrics found in heavy metal music contradict community values, harm
society, and endanger the nation's children. Music corporation executives should take
responsibility for the harm that comes to their impressionable listeners. Furthermore,
parental advisory labels should be mandatory on the covers of all violent and offensive
music.
For the record, my name is Raymond Kuntz, and our family calls Burlington, North
Dakota, home. I have traveled to Washington, D.C., from there today to speak to you all
regarding an issue that has changed our lives forever: Violent music's impact on our
children.
On the morning of December 12, 1996, as part of our family's normal daily behavior, my
wife started our son's shower for him and then went to wake him. But Richard, our son,
was not sleeping in his bed. He was dead. He had killed himself. Richard has left us, and
he is never coming back.
Please listen to what Richard heard as he died, hear what was in his mind, the lyrics to
Marilyn Manson's "The Reflecting God" from the CD titled Antichrist Superstar. Your
world is an ashtray_We burn and coil like cigarettes_The more you cry your ashes turn to
mud_Its the nature of the leeches, the Virgin's feeling cheated_You've only spent a
second of you're life_My world is unaffected, there is an exit here_I say it is and then it's
true, there is a dream inside a dream_I'm wide awake the more I sleep_You'll understand
when I'm dead_I went to God just to see, and I was looking at me_Saw heaven and hell
were lies_When I'm God everyone dies_Scar, can you feel my power?_Shoot here and
the world gets smaller_Scar_Scar_Can you feel my power_One shot and the world gets
smaller_Let's jump upon the sharp swords_And cut away our smiles_Without the threat
of death_There's no reason to live at all_My world is unaffected, there is an exit here_I
say it is and then it's true_There is a dream inside a dream_I'm wide awake the more I
sleep_You'll understand when I'm dead.
Dear sirs, my son was listening to Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar on his stereo
when he died—I personally removed that CD with the red lightning bolt on it from his
player the next day—with the rough draft of an English class paper about this artist that
had been returned to him that very day for final revisions, on the stand next to his body.
Richard's friends tell us that in the end this song, "The Reflecting God," from that CD
was his favorite song. They say that this song was what he always seemed to be listening
to whenever they came over, and the lyrics of that song read as an unequivocally direct
inducement to take one's own life.
If you do not believe me, listen to the bridge in the chorus of "The Reflecting God" as
performed, not as written in the liner notes: "Each thing I show you is a piece of my
death"; "One shot and the world gets smaller"; "Shoot here and the world gets smaller";
"Shoot shoot shoot motherfucker/Shoot shoot shoot motherfucker"; "No salvation, no
forgiveness/This is beyond your experience"; "No salvation, no forgiveness, no
salvation."
Gentlemen, we are all certainly free to make our own decisions regarding the value of
content. But if you were to ask me, I would say that the lyrics to this song contributed
directly to my son's death.
Additionally, two of my son's friends, who have been treated for attempted suicide since
his death, are and were caught up in Marilyn Manson's fearful, frightening music and are
still considered to be at risk.
Sirs, this music, because it glorifies intolerance and hate, and promotes suicide,
contradicts all of the community values that people of good will, regardless of faith,
ideology, race, economic or social position, share. Simply put, this music hurts us as a
people. Our children are quietly being destroyed (dying), by this man's music, by ones
and twos in scattered isolation throughout our nation today.
This artist's own words, in his lyrics and interviews, and his actions, indicate that this
injury to society is intentional. The predatory world that Brian Warner markets, through
his stage persona as Marilyn Manson, is a world no normal person would wish to live in.
Brian Warner's band members have adopted androgynous, two-part stage names, the first
part derived from a female celebrity and the second part from a convicted male mass
murderer. And Brian got lucky; as the lead, he got to pick "Marilyn" from Marilyn
Monroe, the female celebrity who committed suicide, and "Manson" from Charles
Manson, mass murderer.