June 2, 2000

Ironic Literacy: Grasping the Dark Images of Rock

By KEVIN J.H. DETTMAR

A few weeks ago, my 14-year-old daughter, Audrey, came upstairs to tell me that a Columbine High School junior, a basketball star named Greg Barnes, had hanged himself. When his father found him, Blink-182's "Adam's Song" was playing in the background. Currently in heavy rotation on the modern-rock stations, it is a song in which the singer/speaker contemplates suicide.

My daughter learned of the suicide -- nearly a week after the fact -- because it was the

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