With the “not guilty" verdict in the recent Casey Anthony trial, Nancy Grace’s head has come closer to exploding, leaving bits of wig and wads of makeup all over the teleprompter. For the past infinity plus months, Nancy Grace has been obsessing over the toddler murder as no one else can. Much in the way reality TV has taken over prime time, child murder has taken over news networks. At first I didn’t even notice the changeover, as I would periodically switch to the 24hr CNN channel expecting news of the world. Nancy Grace became a more predominant figure over time, and now rules over the entire network. If she’s not on the air, whoever is on screen is following up on her same talking points: which is child murder and bad parents. There is no news in America anymore: it was murdered. Now all they can talk about is murder itself.
The sheer level of obsession over this particular, tragic incident borders on “Captain Ahab.” Batman himself spent less time obsessing over his parents’ murders. It is sad, to say the least, but the general public doesn’t have any vested interest in the case except to satiate some primal urge. I can’t understand why violent movies and pornography are so tightly controlled when all they do is cater to a lesser base desire, but material of this sort is splattered everywhere. Why do people give in to this temptation? Why dwell on impotent rage over an event they can’t change, and will never directly effect them in their own communities? There’s actual news happening out there. People are dying down the street. There are worse monsters than this vilified woman, so why has the “news” stopped reporting on anyone but her? It could only be compared to the O.J. trial. That case was different in that O.J. was a fallen celebrity, which makes it all the more juicier, and he had that much-publicized white Ford Bronco chase. No one seeing him try to escape on live TV thought he was innocent: except the jury.
Which brings me to another point. While on trial by jury, the accused was simultaneously before an unwinnable trial by media. Everyone in that court knew what was going on outside the walls. The lawyers played up to it as much as they could while trying to build a name for themselves. The jurors were affected the same way. They finished the trial with a “not guilty” verdict, while everyone watching at home cursed them out loud. Why, if the evidence was so mounted against her?
Money.
If you’re a juror in the spotlight for a brief, shining second, no one is going to pay you top dollar to come out and give an interview if you give the same verdict everyone expects. People will merely cheer you on, and pass you by. Come up with something crazy and they’ll trot you around to every show in the circuit to explain how stupid you are. Meanwhile: you’re raking in the bucks, so who’s really stupid? Think off all the media circuses like the O.J. trial and the Michael Jackson trial that came out with a “not guilty” verdict. Those verdicts gave the case the epilogues for the jurors they needed. Then they went on TV to say, “Oh yeah, I thought he was guilty.”
So it’s a joke, really. If you want to serve justice, turn off the cameras.
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