The True Cost of America's Fixation on Casey Anthony
69I give up. Here I am, doing what I swore I'd never ever ever do: Writing about Casey Anthony.
But only in sheer wonderment. What motivated this breakdown in Ghost Country is not the case itself, not the vicious murder of innocent little Caylee Anthony, not even the slightest concern regarding her now-acquitted-of-murder Mom's status. None of that.
No, my wonderment can be summed up thusly: What on Earth is your problem, America? Are you out of your everloving mass mind? We exist on a planet with a population expected to top seven billion people this October (2011)...and you've decided to lock up not only the tabloids but the media airwaves, clogging them with overblown, overdone coverage of this one case for months?
Excuse me while I vomit.
You too, Fox News. You're even worse on this one than the alphabet networks. At least they have routine programming they seldom interrupt for Casey Coverage.
Sheesh.
Okay, yeah, Mommies who whack their offspring are routinely abhorred by one and most. (Not one and all; there are bound to be admirers. There always are. But one and most, yes.) So? Cover cover cover. Analyze analyze analyze. Give it a rest! If Casey did the dark deed--as most believe she did--there's the Law of God for those who believe in God and the Law of Karma for those who believe in karma. Most likely, there's some kind of tit-for-tat down in Hades, for that matter.
Clearly, far too few of y'all truly believe in any of that. Gotta get the mob mentality going, pass some Caylee laws which won't help the situation at all for missing children but which will further erode our freedoms. Obama will no doubt applaud. Slippery slope, whee-ee! Here we come!
Now, vented a bit there, how about some statistics?
How many Mommies kill their babies? More than you may realize. Charles Montaldo, in an article titled Women Who Kill Their Children, states:
"...According to the American Anthropological Association, more than 200 women kill their children in the United States each year. Three to five children a day are killed by their parents. Homicide is one of the leading causes of death of children under age four, yet we continue to "persist with the unrealistic view that this is rare behavior," says Jill Korbin, expert on child abuse, who has studied mothers who killed their children...."
Beyond that, however, how much other news has been ignored by the media at large in favor of evermore lazy attempts to smother Casey Anthony with microphones and cameras? ("Real reporting? Forget that! Just copy what everybody else is doing with Anthony and call it news! Hee! Hee!")
Here are a few clues, going back just two months. The Anthony furor has been running a bit longer than that, since her trial began on May 9, but we have to set a cutoff date somewhere. So, other things that have been happening during the Anthony Eyeball Glaze period:
1. Murders in the USA: 254.
2. States experiencing major natural disasters due to wildfires and/or flooding: At least 7.
3. Christians murdered in Obama's kindler, gentler Egypt: 12. That figure does not stand alone. The Australian reported on May 16:
"...TWELVE Christian were murdered in Egypt. Two hundred and thirty-two people wounded. The death toll will surely rise as victims succumb to their injuries. And that’s just in the past few days. In the same time period, more Christians were killed in Egypt at the hands of Muslims than people killed in Syria or in Libya as a result of protests, riots and resistance...."
4. Tons of dog meat consumed by South Koreans as food and/or processed to make a medicinal tonic: 1,417 tons and 15,600 tons respectively.
All of the above and much, much more summarily ignored in favor of Casey Anthony coverage by the "news" media that bugles its duty to keep us informed. Uh-huh. Sure. Y'all--including the vengeful mobs desiring to go postal on Anthony herself plus the jurors who followed the law to the letter--y'all deserve to be metaphorically slapped upside the head. Never before has there been a more deserving set of recipients for the head-shaking admonition,
GET A LIFE!
Am I the only one who's turned the TV off for most of the past two months?
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Hi Ghost!
I can think of a dozen local occurrences right here in Northern Nevada since May 9th that could have warranted National News, add to that the thousands of newsworthy unreported information from the rest of our country and the world for that matter....
Yes it is atrocious that whatever happened, happened. enough is enough though. She has to live with whatever actually happened. Seems to me she obviously had a VERY difficult life. Perhaps I'm biased by age but I feel that she is but a confused child herself. The jury made their decision it should be over.
I watched about an hour cumulatively throughout the trial on our idiot box. That was probably forty five minutes too much.
I am fed up with the nonsense as well. We know she probably did it. They jurors said they thought she was involved but no evidence. Enough. She is out and someone will probably shoot her but who cares. Let them. I am tired of hearing about it.
Fred LOL, I watched enough on the net, no tv here to find the jury did it's job, the end. guilty? I have a doubt, the end. next! peace, dust
I wonder what criteria the media uses when they choose a death-grip story like this?
Remember Scott Peterson?
Sheesh!
Mike: Good point. It's not over on the O.J. trial either, come to think of it. Just not as much of it, finally.
David: Sadly for me, I'm pretty sure I absorbed more than an hour per WEEK--not because I cared, but because I kept hoping (mostly in vain) they'd move on to something else.
Becky: ...and then I had to go and add my two cents worth! LOL!
Dusty: NEXT! Yeah, THAT's the word I kept waiting to hear! :)
Will: My guess on criteria = "Hot ratings Deal of the Day", nothing more, nothing less.
Scott Peterson. Yep, that was another one....
Great vent, Ghost. I was sick of all that attention the trial got as well as the aftermath. We have so many problems in this country that could be reported on. Agreed. Enough is enough!
Glad to see I'm not the only one, Dexter. Thanks for commenting!
Scott Peterson. Did I ever tell you about him calling me? It was in TN about the time of the trial and I found the name on my caller ID. I found out 2 days later that it was also the name of the new pastor from CA. Totally different person, of course.
Aw-w-w-w.
Bet the pastor occasionally wished the villain of the piece had chosen a different name. When I moved to Havre, Montana, to attend college in 1961, I soon enough found out there was another fellow who shared my name. He was a local, about 5 years older than me, and according to all reports, we LOOKED alike.
Never did meet him, but the trouble was, he was more than a bit of a rounder. At least twice, women refused to let me date their daughters because they thought I was the OTHER guy....
It's a sad statistic that three to five children a day are killed by their parents - these of course are children who were born - 50 million babies have been murdered in the United States alone by their mothers since 1973.
I reckon that indicates your belief that all abortions are murders, which is of course the default position for most conservatives. (Not mine, but I'm hardly standard issue.) But as you pointed out, even those who were born and THEN murdered by one or both parents...add up pretty quickly.
Unless they're just, shall we say, "too tough to die". On my last job, driving water tankers for the gas drilling boom in Colorado, I had a friend named Adam. He was a tall young cowboy, done some serious bull riding, as had I in my day. We both worked night shift together for a time, until he decided it was time to move along, change companies.
When Adam was born, it was in the back of a moving pickup truck, issuing forth from the loins of a drug-raddled teenaged Mommy...who dropped him in the nearest dumpster. Should have been the end of Adam, right?
Except, when the garbage pickup guys came along, he gave a lusty squall, let 'em know he was there and still kicking--more or less literally. Grew up tall and strong, worked things out with his Mom, and later even kicked the sh*t out of his heroin-addicted cop father.
Couldn't help appreciating a guy like that!
I agree, I agree, I agree. I was also completely nauseated by the crowd of people who looked a like like elephants trying to get seats in the courtroom. I have a feeling things were like this just before the fall of the Roman Empire.
Fred, you need to write a hub about your friend Adam.
BPop: Bread and circuses? Yeah, sounds about right.
Mike: You could be right. I'll have to ponder on that one. Certainly it's a vital topic.
It's the same thing here in my country, so I have the same problem. When the media starts there is no stopping them.
God rot the day I got T.V. back after three years without it... lily
AYK! Fox is the absolute most devoid of fact and objectivity WORST! And so what if Koreans eat dog? USAians eat millions of cows a day. I like dogs better than cows but I like people better than either.
Carisa: "When the media starts there is no stopping them." True that! Unless a hotter ratings item pops up, of course.
Lily: "Got rot the day..." Love that line. You DO have a way with words.
hot dorkage: Hey, easy on my Fox News! LOL!
You made up for that, though, by being the first to comment on the dog-as-chow issue. I was wondering if anyone was ever going to actually notice that! :)
When it comes to cows vs. dogs vs. people, it depends on the individual for me. I can look at any given member of any one of those species and come up with a specific "like" or "dislike" factor.
The coverage won't go away until people stop tuning in, or advertisers revolt. The income is too much of a temptation.
well as long as you watch Fox for its entertainment value and do not actually believe any of their cynical misrepresentations...hehe. And don't go eating people just because you dislike them. It's still pretty illegal, though I dunno, a smear of Casey Anthony pate with fava beans and a nice chianti might be pretty tasty....
Jim: Got it, and agree.
hot dorkage: Well, I'm a good bit farther to the right than Bill O'Reilly and pretty much on the same page with Sean Hannity. Though I think I've probably got more cynicism than the whole Fox network put together.
As for eating people, I don't usually eat things I dislike. Sardines, for example. Yuck!
Well a tip of the hat to the fake news on Comedy Central for saying nothing about that trial. Truly, our most creditable television news sources are the jokers.
I missed that, Jed, but you bet: Kudos to Comedy Central!
As for the jokers, yes indeedy. More than a few of my Hubs have been inspired by comedians mentioning a topic I knew nothing about.
Just an observation....
not pointing any fingers because the fact that I agree with you makes the point...
which is...
Doesn't that fact that we feel this way mean we are watching too damn much TV? There are a lot of better things we could be doing with our time.
Whenever I feel like complaining about the shallow content that 24/7 news channels are using to fill all that airtime I think of two very bothersome facts:
1. They would not be doing it if there wasn't an audience for it.
and
2. I shut my trap because I realize if I'm complaining - I'm watching too much TV and could justifiably be considered part of the same audience I'm denigrating.
Gus
Good point. My excuse for watching as much TV as I do is simply that I write a fair bit of political material and prefer to see snippets of as many stories out there as I can find as grist for my mill.
But it's only an excuse, so essentially...you're absolutely correct.
LOL. so..... does that mean you only eat cows you like? I can see it now.... Hello Matilda nice cow nice cow. You would look soooooo good on my buns. Man if I were a cow I would do my best to piss you off and make you hate me. MOOOOOOOO! Thanks for the laugh!
There you go. Which brings up a warning to all you ladies: Beware the dude who tells you that you look good enough to eat!
The obsession with Casey Anthony had a chilling consequence for a second-shift clerk in an OK City convenience store a couple of weeks ago. The clerk has the misfortune to look enough like CA that she could be her twin. Really. A woman came in to pay for gas, kept giving the clerk the evil eye, then waited nearby until the clerk clocked out and proceeded to beat the crap out of her. Never mind the trial was still going on or that OKC is a good thousand miles from Florida where the real CA was still in jail! The perp was getting "justice" for CA's dead daughter. How sick is that? The clerk lived, btw, but her attacker will be behind bars for a long time. And will hopefully get a grip on REALITY.
That's not good. To put it mildly.
If I looked like Casey Anthony, I would be trying to change it now.
Unless I miss my guess, Casey Anthony doesn't look like Casey Anthony now, either. If Jose Baez (her attorney, who was sharp enough to both get her off and get her out of sight) hasn't set her up for plastic surgery, a new hair color and do, and a bit of botox, he's out of his mind.
Which he's not.
Then of course there'd be the really good idea of living under an alias...in not just another state, but maybe another country.....
Good article, Ghost...you said about the same thing I did...just a bit more...well...fluently?
Thanks. I just checked out your Hub, though, and it seemed pretty fluent to me on its own merits.
Hey Ghost,
No, I didn't turn my TV off WHEN I SHOULD HAVE! But I have done a few hubs that kinda show how I feel. I recently did a hub on "Mothers Accused Of Killing Their Own Children. The stats you presented here are very disturbing.
Hope all is well with you and Pam!
Sharyn
Sharyn, I didn't know what the stats were, either, until I started researching for this Hub.
Pam's doing pretty well today, which automatically means I'm on "all is well" status also. She's still working on quitting smoking. Couldn't make it cold turkey but now has it down--most days--to just two cigs per day. Considering the fact that when we first hooked up (15 years ago) she was going through 4 1/2 packs a day--and those were Lights rather than the Ultralights she's currently fighting--that's downright impressive.
Heading over to check out your Hub on "Mothers Accused...".
In full disclosure, I didn't follow one article on this case. As a young parent, I cannot even stand to watch a jaded justice system try to engage in applying law where an innocent child no longer walking this earth. I admit that I have an irrational sense of immediate anger toward perpetrators of violence against little ones. Giving stories like this a wide berth is the only solution for me. Nevertheless, someone else has to watch, has to care and has to record history. Cheers.
I wouldn't call your sense of immediate anger "irrational", Jason. If there were no natural instinct against filicide within the majority of us human beings, our species would have vanished from the Earth eons ago.
I agree that watching, caring, and recording are all things that do need to be done. My problem with the media coverage was not that the case was covered--but that it was covered to the exclusion of countless other news stories out there that might have been equally important (or even more important)...but which never saw the light of day.
Thanks for commenting.
Old Poolman Level 7 Commenter 10 months ago
Fred, the one thing you never see on any news story is "The End." Unless there is some kind of riot, disaster, or similar event, they have nothing to say. A day without a disaster is like watching the weather channel 24 hours a day for most networks.
Like you i think enough is enough in regards to Casey Anthony. May she rot in hell when her day comes.