“You never understood that it ain’t no good / You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you.” — Bob Dylan, “Like A Rolling Stone”
Shortly after my wife and I took our seats at a Charlotte restaurant last Wednesday, we realized that all the customers at the three nearest tables were talking about the Casey Anthony murder trial. At two of the tables, everyone was dumbfounded and angry about the “not-guilty” verdict, while the couple sitting behind me was split on this momentous issue. A woman at one of the “guilty” tables was particularly wound up, her voice rising each time she said something like, “I watched the trial every chance I had, and I’m telling you, she’s guilty as sin.”
Yes, I had seen TV images of the angry mob outside the Orlando courthouse when the verdict was announced. And I had received some nasty e-mails earlier that day after suggesting on the Creative Loafing news blog that prosecutors hadn’t produced any solid evidence linking Ms. Anthony to her daughter’s murder. Yet it still seemed bizarre for anyone — much less nearly everyone around us — to be so upset about a case in which they didn’t personally know anyone involved. Then I remembered the evening in 1994, at another restaurant, when our waitress suddenly came to our table and breathlessly announced that Susan Smith had confessed to killing her two boys. Our intense national rubbernecking habits aren’t exactly something new.
So once again, a horrific tragedy becomes a mirror of America’s penchant for mass hysterics. From the Lindbergh baby and N.C.’s Velma Barfield to Dr. Jeffery MacDonald and O.J., sensational deaths give many of us a hell of a thrill. I know I’m the oddball in this kind of thing, but it still surprises me when otherwise reasonable people become so deeply interested in the details of strangers’ lives, be they possible baby-killers, dead superstars or Octomom. There are simply way too many Americans whose main interest in the news is as a source of vicarious excitement. They can’t resist, though; it’s a Puritan thing.
The Puritans, for better and worse, were a seminal influence on the American mind. Among other things, they gave us our famously schizophrenic attitude toward sex: love the titillation, but hate the titillater. Those impulses carry over to the kick that lots of folks get from of a good, old-fashioned “mom kills her baby” story. Oh my God, this woman I’ve never heard of killed her kid and then went out partying! I’m gettin’ chills, y’all! Plus, we get to curse and condemn her and feel all superior and moral — bonus!
That “scolding busybody” attitude, so long a part of our national psyche, has, sorry to say, recently reached a new pinnacle in the form of the grotesque, lucrative career of Headline News’ Nancy Grace.
Like everyone else (whether they admit it or not), I have no idea how Caylee Anthony died. Her mom says the baby accidentally drowned and her dad hid the body; and frankly, the whole family is so obviously dysfunctional and probably sociopathic, there’s no telling what happened. One killer in this case is certain, however: Nancy Grace, the professional character assassin who has become one of the most truly repulsive individuals to ever host a television program. America’s Revenge Harpy jumped on the Caylee Anthony case three years ago and held on for dear life, spewing hot venom at Casey Anthony and anyone who dared disagree with her.
As bad as Grace is, however, no one is being forced to watch her. Just as appalling, and maybe worse, are people like the mob outside the courthouse, whose primitive wails of “vengeance denied” probably sounded a lot like the collective moan that arose whenever a Jim Crow-era lynching ended in a broken rope.
But OK, let’s say that the trial watchers and Nancy Grace fans are simply concerned about children’s welfare. If that’s the case, then I agree with an acquaintance who wrote last week that if people who spent so much time following the Casey Anthony trial had devoted just a fraction of that time to mentoring or helping a child, the world would be a better place and many children would be safer. But we all know that’s not going to happen. Not when it’s so much easier to turn on the tube and get secondhand kicks through Nancy Grace.
This article appears in Jul 12-18, 2011.
