http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/brendan-shanahan/ Brendan Shanahan is a Sydney-based writer. His books include The Secret Life of the Gold Coast and In Turkey I am Beautiful, an account of his time running carpet shop in Istanbul. He has been a columnist with the Daily Telegraph and writes regularly for various publications internationally. He once lived with Rose Hancock Porteous in Prix d’Amour in Perth where he slept in the “Ceausescu Suite” and allowed the Australian-Filipino icon to rub his back with KY Jelly. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:49 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/bullying-myths-who-are-the-real-victims/ On a recent trip the US I read journalist Dave Cullen’s book about the Columbine massacre. With a spate of highly-publicised suicides there apparently linked to bullying, and a subsequent rash of legislation in various states designed to “combat” the phenomenon, Columbine is a timely publication with much relevance to our own national debate on the subject. In his book, Cullen demolishes one of the central and most persistent myths of the Columbine massacre: that a pair of misfits with artistic and intellectual tendencies were hounded by meathead jocks until they finally snapped. Instead he paints a chilling portrait of a malignant relationship between a psychopathic narcissist and his angry and malleable best friend. Yes, the Columbine kids were picked on, argues Cullen, but not as badly as many others and they certainly displayed no ideological biases when it came to blowing away their classmates. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Brendan Shanahan) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/bullying-myths-who-are-the-real-victims/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/bullying-myths-who-are-the-real-victims/#item4928 Wed, 19 Jan 2011 20:00:48 +0000 Brendan Shanahan | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/jessicas-journey-was-a-dangerous-narcissistic-indulgence/ Amidst all the manufactured excitement attached to the arrival in Sydney of round-the-world sailor Jessica Watson consider this: Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister who condemned the work of Bill Henson on the basis of its alleged exploitation of teenage girls and taxed alco-pops for the binge drinking they “encouraged” among the same, is now turning up to celebrate the fact that a teenage girl was allowed to risk her life by sailing round the world for no better reason than to “break a record”. It is just one absurdity among many in the Jessica Watson saga, a story that every day feels more and more like an episode of Chris Lilley’s We Can Be Heroes. Adventure is on hard times. Once, those journeying into an untamed wilderness further than any man (or teenage girl) before them excited the public imagination not merely because what they were doing was dangerous but because they wished, to quote Tennyson’s words carved in memorial to Robert Scott, “to seek, to find and not to yield.” feedback@thepunch.com.au (Brendan Shanahan) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/jessicas-journey-was-a-dangerous-narcissistic-indulgence/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/jessicas-journey-was-a-dangerous-narcissistic-indulgence/#item3089 Sat, 15 May 2010 16:08:49 +0000 Brendan Shanahan | Author bios | The Punch