Posted on 07/09/2011 7:30:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
What is the fascination with Casey Anthony? One 96-year-old grandmother in Alabama was so fixated; she knew the names of Casey’s entire family, the defense team, the witnesses and prosecutors. The Nielsen ratings demonstrated clearly that millions of Americans spent hour upon hour of their own precious lives watching this tragic scenario unfold. But why?
Some say it’s because Caylee Anthony was a pretty little girl…her mom somewhat pretty…and white. A less attractive mother or child or a minority would not get the same attention, they argue. Maybe so. It probably did contribute to media coverage. Visual appeal is an important criteria for television. Storms are perfect as are accidents and people moving about in all sorts of ways. Thinking doesn’t play well on TV. Neither does nobility or thoughtfulness. Rash, erratic behavior…boorish rudeness…aggression….overt sexuality. These look good on camera.
It certainly was the common denominator with the media obsession over Natalee Holloway, La Crosse beauty Yeardley Love…Nicole Smith and Scott & Laci Peterson. It might explain why they got media attention, but it doesn’t explain why we watched it. Why did we watch it? Why did we devote hours of our own lives…hours we can never reclaim on the OJ trial?
Is it uplifting to the soul? Does it make us smile? Do we come back into our own reality feeling better? Does it challenge the intellect? Does it make us grateful? Does it encourage us to achieve? Does it energize or motivate?
It does none of these. Watching the Casey Anthony saga or any other tabloid tail is a squandering of your life. It is a misdirection of your mental energies. Gambling drains precious financial resources causing you to neglect paying your bills. Inordinate amounts of time spent watching this kind of coverage drains other precious resources; your time and your attention. The amount you have of that is finite. It can never be reclaimed. While children or spouses or friends or needy neighbors or responsible citizenship or just plain hard work clamor for us, we blithely turn to the screen, seemingly paying no price, or at least, none we can feel in the moment.
One has only to visit the homes of America’s Founding Fathers to be amazed at their accomplishments. Thomas Jefferson was an inventor….Benjamin Franklin, the Ambassador to France, developed a printing press, founded the U.S. Post Office, invented electricity, the kite, and the Franklin Stove. In his spare time he helped write the Constitution and found the United States of America. George Washington was a surveyor and horticulturalist. Many wrote books, learned astronomy, French, Latin, and Greek while they were already busy adults.
What will future generations say of us? Will they remember all we accomplished or the hours we spent motionless, living vicariously thru the tawdry lives of others?
Did the great men of our past write noble things and think noble thoughts by accident? No. It is undeniable that we become what we surround and saturate our minds with. Advertising executives know this well. So do Leftist educators who have given us a generation of people who reflect the propaganda of their textbooks. Long time hostages can come to think and act like their captors. Imbibing pornographic images can cause men to act upon and think thoughts they would not otherwise have entertained. Romance novels find their power in stirring up female fantasies, destroying marriages that in other generations might have been saved. It matters what we read and see and listen to.
We are not forced to absorb such banality. We choose to absorb it. And we can choose not to. Americans are obsessed with diet. They understand that processed foods, carbohydrates and sugars make them fat. They don’t seem to understand that taking things into the mind without discipline produces fat, sluggish minds. Bad content produces bad results. And we can change both. We know how to discipline our bodies so how about our minds?
Ben Franklin actually formed a “Young Men’s Society” for the purpose of achieving character. Members worked toward obtaining one attribute at a time; honesty…generosity…humility. You can imagine it was an uphill battle, but it was, at least, up hill.
Casey Anthony’s story is tragic, but it is not important to all of us who are strangers. Turn the television off realizing that each moment that remains is precious.
This cartoon says it all
NO difference in all those fixated in making sure they stand on 'high' and point fingers of ugly accusation with NOT one shred of evidence. Must be nice to be up there where some consider themselves to reside.
I heard a woman juror say something to the effect that a guilty verdictor maybe death penalty would have caused an uproar. What? Jurors DO NOT need to blab after the fact. They should be anonymous. But her comment made me think they were swayed less by what they believed and more by what people might think. No real backbone anymore.
“Maybe the fixation comes from the fact that people are TOO SCARED to even think that our nation is on FIRE.’
Bingo! It was/is a diversion. I stopped watching the stuff in the last few days, but was fixated on the trial. Looking back, I think my own fascination was basically a diversion and vacation from watching our nation being flushed down the toilet. Finally....something to watch besides the endless drone of media marxists and liars.
Would the murder trial have even made it beyond local news coverage if Casey was fat and homely or even a woman of color or trailer trash? Not a chance. All over the country there are murder trials and investigations going on with even more interesting plots yet they go under the national radar because they don’t fit the mode of today’s tabloid news coverage - of beautiful, or famous people missing, dead, or in trouble with the law. I call it the OJ syndrome, and it’s all about TV ratings and hooking suckers to tune in night after night.
Her mother should have applied for custody of the child.
“THIS for me was never about ‘ratings’, but a flash image of what American society has deteriorated into .... TRUTH is the first casualty of any civil society. “
And the Jury verdict comfirmed what many of us have suspected was going on for decades.
Lying is acceptable, all men are molestors, common sense has disappeared. Attorney’s with filthy mouths have brought our Court Rooms to nothing but sleezy bar rooms. Honest people are ridiculed. Mothers having their children sleep in the same bed as she and some guy she’s known for less than a month is perfectly acceptable behavour. And in fact makes her a good mom.
This was the white OJ trial.
Identity theft, check fraud, credit card fraud. Hey no biggee.
Kill your kid, Oh Well.
The Jury is an indictment of the American Educqtion system.
I watched a few days at the end, but otherwise I changed the channel as soon as it came up
As a Christian I think that Casey Anthony’s story is tragic. It breaks my heart to see what the lack of Christ in ones life leads to. I pray that she finds Christ and repents and is saved.
After a couple of months of going thru all the perverted shit thrown out by both sides, this jury could not stand one more minute of it.
They were by now getting annoyed with each other, some even coming to hate their fellow jurors. There were a few jurors who were for conviction, some for lesser verdicts, and some for acquittal, and it became clear that it would take perhaps months to come to a verdict of guilty.
The solution which would get them home right now and the one which would insure that an "innocent" person would not be punished would be to simply let Casey go.
So thats what they did.
They let Casey go in order to reclaim their lives...they were sick and tired of each other, of the judge, of all the lawyers, looking at the face of Casey and her "family" and absolutely appaling would be having to go thru any of the "evidence" again....
..so there is no justice for Kaylee in this world....
.....justice for Kaylee is in the hands of God.
The TV media know that they control the minds of Americans and what most people pay attention to. If it wasn’t on TV, people really wouldn’t care about it and would focus on more important/relevant subjects.
They want to keep the American public distracted. Now that the trial is over, get ready for another “important” distraction heading our way...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
“… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses”
I, too, am puzzled as to the media’s fascination with this case, which has even dominated talk shows hosted by the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, who usually focus on far bigger issues.
This sort of phenomenon has happened before. I recall that in 1997 a babysitter somewhere on the East Coast was charged with killing a baby. If I remember correctly, no celebrities or VIP’s were involved, yet the national media was absolutely riveted on this case and likely made it the biggest news event of the year. At the time, I was puzzled by all the attention given to what should have been a local news story.
The media has decided that the story is fascinating.
A far more interesting story is the one about the 3 missing boys from Morenci Michigan. Dad took them for Thanksgiving and never brought them back. First he said he gave them to a woman, then he said he killed them and now he’s saying he gave them to a group that protects children. He’s been in jail ever since.
Pinellas County - same one where Terry Schiavo was executed...
All about the money and ratings and book/movie deals — Nancy Grace started the relentless coverage from the beginning, mainly because of the availability of “on-the-scene” footage from the local media in Orlando. This whole Anthony family is so skanky that it makes people feel better to see “well, at least we’re not THAT BAD!” All those Moms with PPD who are cooking their newborns in microwaves or drowning them in the lake just don’t have the same penache. Not enough post-homicide drama to carry a talking head show.
My son watched the trial mainly to see the arguments the lawyers presented. He created this video to show Nancy Grace’s true reaction to the verdict.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p04mWOwwH6E
I’d love to see a breakdown by gender of those who were really into it. Those threads on FR got a couple of thousand posts in a day! I’m not saying it wasn’t interesting for some men, just not me, and I am male. I would guess that more women than men were really into it, but I reckon I could be wrong.
Freegards
Some things never change.
Bread and circuses; watching animals tears each other apart, slaughtering a few Christians, or watching gladiators kill each other, all while the barbarians are at the gates.
Well, in the end no matter how much you ignore them, the barbarians are going to get in and do what barbarians do.
I'm a Christian too, and I see it a bit differently. When it comes to sociopathy, I fall on the side of nature. I do believe Casey Anthony is the classic "bad seed." In addition to everything else, she's got "the look." (Look on yesterday's thread for a picture of it, I know it is several hundred posts in.) I also saw a rare video (now on YouTube, I believe) of her at age 5 and she had "the look" even then, as well as a flat affect and vocal intonation. ("My name's Casey...happy birthday...my name's Casey.)
Now did it help that her totally crazy family watered the seed? Of course not.
But I still think she was born this way. Something was plainly off from the time she was a small child. And we will surely hear all the stories now that the vultures have been released. $$$
A good indicator of a persons character and overall usefulness is the number of reality TV shows they've never heard of and never watched.
I have a friend that watched every minute of it. She went with me to our boat last weekend. She kept trying to tell me about it and I kept telling her....stop, I don’t care.
I didn’t watch 1 second of it.. If it came on I would immediately switch the channel. lol
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