Random Michael Moore Deceits [#4]

Kayla Rolland [in Bowling for Columbine]

In Bowling for Columbine Moore portrays Kayla Rolland’s killer as a likable kid from a struggling family that couldn’t rise above its troubles because of an uncaring America. Here are a few facts that Moore chose not to include in Columbine: the shooting was no accident; the kid who killed Kayla had fought with her the previous day. The kid fetched his murder weapon from his uncle’s crack house. The gun had been reported stolen; the uncle had purchased it in exchange for drugs. The boy’s father was already in the slammer for dealing drugs and the kid’s grandmother and aunt were arrested on drug charges only weeks after the shooting. A CBS report on the case quoted a policeman who observed: “The day the boy was born he went from hospital to crack house.” So the kid had spent his life among a pack of criminals; he had been surrounded by violent and lawless felons from his first moments on Earth. It should also be noted that this kid had previously been suspended from school for stabbing a classmate with a pencil and sometime after he gunned down Kayla he stabbed another child with a knife.

The particulars of this young killer’s life are so freakishly abnormal as to be useless for the purpose of building a case against firearm ownership. A better armed neighborhood might have been less intimidated by this family of jerks; when the cops hauled them away the neighbors cheered, but you won’t see that reality in Bowling for Columbine."

source

The other school shooting depicted in Bowling for Columbine is the murder of young Kayla Rolland. She was shot by a fellow classmate at Theo J. Buell Elementary School in Flint, Michigan on February 29, 2000. The boy had been living with an uncle when he found a .38 caliber pistol, took it to school, and shot Kayla. In the film, Moore tells us that the boy’s mother, Tamarla Owens, was being evicted due to her inability to pay her landlord. She was part of a welfare-to-work program, which Moore describes as “tossing poor people off of welfare.” Moore fails to state in the film however that the boy’s mother was abusive, and the Family Independence Agency (FIA) had deemed that the boy and his siblings were in danger while living with their mother. The boy’s father had also been convicted of drug trafficking and the home where he lived with his uncle was used for trafficking drugs and storing weapons. Weapons had been found at the home on two occasions by Flint police (Murphy par6).

Remember that Moore didn’t want to blame bad parenting for violent children, and placed it alongside bowling for nonsense reasons that kids commit crime. Now however, he is saying that a bad home life and a bad family situation were to blame; almost. Tamarla Owens was employed at Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Grill, where she was a part of the welfare-to-work program. It wasn’t enough to blame an unfit parent; Moore had to pass the blame onto Dick Clark himself. Fans of Capitalism will agree that getting off of welfare for earned wages is a good thing. Due to Moore’s underlying socialist views, however, he personally confronts Dick Clark with the idea that due to his company’s welfare-to-work program, Tamarla Owens was kept from spending time with her son which in turn caused him to shoot Rolland. He calls the program a “system that forces poor single mother to work two low-wage jobs to survive” (Moore). Since Moore had no formal appointment to meet with Clark and insisted on questioning him while hewas leaving for a prior engagement, Clark ordered the door to his vehicle be shut and we see him drive off past a visibly dejected Michael Moore. This scene plays out perfectly to prove Moore’s point because it appears as though Clark drives away cold-heartedly without caring about the shooting of a young girl in Michigan."

source

We return to Flint, Mich., for a long segment on Kayla Rowland, a six-year-old girl who was fatally shot in school by a male classmate the same age. Moore blames Michigan's requirement that welfare recipients work at a job. Because the killer's mother, Tamarla Owens, commuted to work in a shopping mall 70 hours a week, and because she still could not pay her rent, she was about to be evicted. She thus moved in with her brother, and then her unsupervised son found a handgun, brought it to school, and killed Kayla Rowland.

Actually, Owens earned $7.85 an hour from one job ($1,250 a month, almost entirely tax-free), plus at least the minimum wage from her second job, and received food stamps and medical care. Her rent was $300 a month. Michigan had rent-subsidy and child-care programs too, but Owens apparently did not know about them. So, contrary to the impression created by Moore, Michigan's welfare-to-work program is generous: Even without the rent subsidy, Owens earned more than enough to pay the rent. Perhaps Owens's caseworker should have told her about the available subsidies, but the caseworker's mistake hardly means that the Michigan system is the Dickensian horror portrayed by Moore.

Moore tells the audience that Ms. Owens and her son were living with Owens's brother. He doesn't tell the audience that their home was a crack house, or that the stolen gun was received by the brother from one of his customers, in exchange for drugs.

"No one knew why the little boy wanted to shoot the little girl," says Moore. Actually, the killer was the class bully; said that he hated everyone at school; had been suspended for stabbing a child with a pencil; and, subsequent to the shooting, stabbed another child with a knife."

source