Pop culture goes on trial once again after the massacre in Littleton. This time Marilyn Manson gets to be the bogeyman calling the shots in the pre-conscious minds of American youth. The truth is, Marilyn Manson’s music doesn’t make anyone want to kill anyone but Marylin Manson, so we can drop that one now.

A decade ago, Dungeons and Dragons (or Advanced Dungeons and Dragons for the initiated) was the agent provocateur convincing all the young, disenfranchised youth to kill themselves or others. As if the shame of being caught with 20-sided dice by your straight friends wasn’t bad enough.

American culture mutates so fast, we can come up with a new scapegoat every week. It’s always something with us. When kids go nuts, it’s never the responsibility of parents or other adults who are supposed to guide them. Heaven forfend!

We like to feel like we are defending ourselves form outside forces. Someone else screws our children up. Why NOT blame violence in the media; it is shocking.

From the time kids are old enough to sit up, we let TV share the parenting duties. It’s OK when they’re 4 years old and it’s “The Teletubbies” or “Barney” they can’t stop watching. But from there it’s straight to live-action martial arts with 40 different versions of “The Power Rangers.” Before you know it, your kid is freebasing anime at 10.

TV content doesn’t shock me as much as the hours people pack in. There is no time to spend with the kids, but there are four to six hours to watch the tube every day.

Crap though it may be, we cannot hold the entertainment industry solely to blame. The media isn’t ultimately responsible for the monsters roaming the halls of our nation’s high schools. There is something alarming about the way news organizations swarm on tragedy and turn it into a circus before it’s fully formed.

Sure, we need to know what’s going on in Colorado, but do we need the helicopter shots and phone interviews with kids in closets?

What’s more perverse is the unending slew of panel discussions. “The Iowa connection: Meet two people who have relatives in Littleton and hear what they have to say about the tragedy.”

FoxNews and CNN are torn between Kosovo and Colorado. Which is more important, hearing what some pop psychologist’s new book says about American violence in high schools or hearing what a military strategist’s new book says about American violence abroad?

All of these are followed up by show after show of interviews and panel discussions looking for a new angle. They discuss and dissect it until it looks like it’s been pureed.

We need some balance. Certainly we need to know what’s going on. Give us an update when you find out the names of the killers. Break into primetime when you discover the suicide note. But we don’t need 24-hours a day on 10 channels until the next tragedy comes along to boost the ratings.

Anyone remember Andrew Cunanan? His murder of Gianni Versace was the only thing the media could talk about for two weeks until Princess Diana was killed. Then nothing but Di. With all due respect, Di’s death, though shocking, did not warrant continuous coverage for months. And it should not have over-shadowed everything else going on in the world, either.

News organizations like to defend themselves on the basis that it is their job to inform. But what they fail to mention is they like their ratings, too. There should be a greater distinction between information and “info-tainment.”

In Littleton, we had kids calling the television stations before they called 911. This should disturb us nearly as much as the inexplicable violence itself.

Geeky losers get picked on and dream of revenge. It’s sick but understandable. High school is hard for kids at the bottom of the pecking order. It’s only a matter of time before one goes mental. I blame hormones, but hormones don’t have their own TV show, so I am alone there.

But how does a kid find a good hiding place, then call the TV stations, without even calling the cops?

We are talking about two lines on the same cell phone. On one, we have outcast reprobates looking to make themselves famous by murdering their classmates while on the other we have kids risking death to get on TV. What could possibly be gained?

A little fame. All of these kids knew if they took their one mad shot at fame, the media would take up the slack — possibly for weeks. The only thing that could overshadow this shooting spree is the next one.

Meanwhile, it gives the public and guys like me a chance to pontificate endlessly about how morally outraged we all are. That may be the biggest lie. We despise this violence, but we aren’t shocked any more.

If we were all truly morally outraged, would we all be able to spout off like we do? We are all at least a bit guilty of jumping on the fame bandwagon.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He loves his Loess Hills, boy. He is opinion editor of the Daily.