Bands like KMFDN, Filter and Thrill Kill Kult turned on their TVs to discover that they were part of a Satanist plot to brainwash the America's youth because they were included in Klebold and Harris's record collection.

Desperate to explain why two teenagers would turn into mass murderers, commentators sought scapegoats in the usual places: violent films, video games and the 'gothic movement'. In the wake of the '99 High School shooting in Columbine, Colorado, when students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris went on a gun rampage shooting dead 12 students and a teacher, Marilyn Manson became a national symbol of hatred for middle America, for politicians of the Conservative right and the liberal left and centre, for no-neck Christian fundamentalists, for pro-censorship feminists and for dimwit small town High School principals eager to grab some newspaper headlines. and as with any iconic figure, they are defined as much by those who hate them, as by those who worship them. Manson had always been adept at using icons - serial killers, movie stars - for his own purposes, juxtaposing them and playing with the imagery. Manson was a celebrity and his fame had started to outshine that for which he was actually famous. For Manson, that hardly mattered: he had joined that new aristocracy of the global mediaocracy. Mechanical Animals wasn't exactly a stiff - it may not have been his best album but it definitely had some of his best songs - but the kids who bought Antichrist Superstar in their millions were expressing their disappointment at the record store tills and in the half-empty venues he played on the subsequent tour. White trash superstar Eminem had clocked his position and supplanted him. Towards the end of the 20th Century, Manson was no longer America's demon dog. To put it on a completely cynical light, Columbine was exactly what Marilyn Manson needed. Tommy Udo investigates the making of the album meant as a 'FUCK YOU' to middle America. Whichever way you cut it, Marilyn Manson's imagery buried in Holy Wood nailed his reputation in the wake of Columbine - whether you believe he inspired the massacre or not.

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