Colloquial query

[DR. BELCH]

When exactly did the phrase "Trenchcoat Mafia" come to be? I was just beginning my senior year of college in Jonesboro, so I was pretty much right next door to the whole ugliness five years ago. But for the life of me I don't recall when I first heard the shooters dubbed that, or what journalist or TV personality first coined it. Was it in vogue as early as March 1997, or did the epithet come later, after the pistol smoke had died down and hindsight took over?

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Remind me again, which shooting was this? The Columbine one, right?

Was that the one where the kids were supposedly "inspired" by the Matrix?

Or was there a real-life Trenchcoat Mafia out there before the school shooting?

I do recall the kids being dubbed the "Trenchcoat Mafia" just hours after the shooting. I also recall that the kids called themselves that...

Sorry, my memory is fuzzy. Kinda shows how many of these kind of occurrences have happened over the past decade or so.

[Chris Sanders MSX]

I think that it may have been one of those things where the media makes up a nick name for a person or group. I really don't know, but if they were calling them selves the Trench Coat Mafia somone at the school should have said something to the kids because at my school we can't have cliques with suggestive or violent names.

[hello_lola]

I live by Columbine, so I can tell you. The kids (not justHarris and Klebold, but all their clique) did not coin the term Trenchcoat Mafia, that's something that was actually used to refer to them in a disparaging manner by their schoolmates. Thinking that this name somehow made them seem more intimidating, they adopted it in the hopes that it would help to ease some of the bullying that they had to endure. That's the really interesting origin of the Trenchcoat Mafia.

[The Mad Hatter]

Actually, according to subsequent reports, the shooters weren't really part of the Trenchcoat Mafia... they were just hangers-on that weren't really accepted by the rest of the group. But, the various reporters missed that little fact in the excitement, and for a fun couple of years everyone who wore a trenchcoat was villified. Lovely.

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

So there really is a Trenchcoat Mafia cult out there? I never knew.

[The Mad Hatter]

Yep, and they were utterly harmless. I hate misrepresentations....