and it sure ain't W ...
Posted on 09/24/2002 4:21:00 AM PDT by IronJack
The Madelyne Toogood (!) case has captured the attention of the armchair set all across this country. Various grumblings have been heard, from “Hang the bitch” to “Whose business is it?” I won’t presume to judge the slovenly cow – oops! – but it occurs to me that this whole story is a fabrication along the lines of Jessica McClure. It is a media creation, wholly undeserving of the attention it has received, and hardly a credit to either our country or our journalists.
Where’s the meat in this story? The pathos of the little girl? The demonic rage of the mother? The fact that this was a middle-class white woman in a SUV instead of a two-bit crack whore in a welfare warehouse? Is there a story here? Of course. But one that deserves this level of frenzy??? I doubt it. It’s a media fiction. And we’ve all been had.
Somehow or another, the department store videotape was released not just to the police, but to the media – a local station probably. The reporter, sensing a great human interest career move, beamed the footage to the network. The other networks got wind of it and, determined not to be left out if the story got traction, whipped up their own version.
All five networks have aired the story. Limbaugh got a hold of it. Hannity and Colmes picked it up. The Pumpkin Junction Gazette and Outhouse Wallpaper ran it as a lead, with a “local angle” sidebar.
The media became the story.
It’s nothing new. Hundreds of kids are beaten every day, and surely many of the beatings are captured on the ubiquitous surveillance cameras we free citizens endure. But not every video monitor parlays the tapes into a national outrage. Not every security guard strikes gold when he catches a misbehaving ragamuffin taking a cuff upside the head. It takes the media whores to make a story this big out of an incident so casually forgettable.
This phenomenon of synthetic news ill serves an educated populace. The media skulk in the background like slathering hounds panting over a bloody meal. Then the story escalates. The fringe groups want their share of the air time, so you start seeing ‘local color’ stories on your half-assed hometown stations. “Auto Week” publishes articles entitled “Do Jeeps Make Women Bash Their Kids?” Dr. Joyce Brothers hits the talk show circuit with some inane drabble about today’s overstressed lifestyles. Willie Nelson and the Artist Currently Known as Prince get together for a Whomp-Aid fundraiser and Michael Jackson pledges $30 million for a child protection sanctuary on his Fruitcake Ranch outside of Los Angeles. And of course NOW blames it all on the patriarchal, male-dominated society that forces downtrodden women to whale the tar out of their little girls.
Soon the attention vampires in Congress are feeling neglected, so Richard Gephardt opens hearings on parking lot violence, Al Gore announces that he founded a commission in 1980 that would have eliminated anger, and Hillary Clinton demurely suggests that child beating is the inevitable result of Republican intolerance. Robert Byrd proposes $60 million for Michael Jackson’s child sanctuary, on the condition that it is built in West Virginia and is named after Robert Byrd.
Facts are ephemeral things in the hysteria this argle-bargle generates. Emotion runs high. Normally sane folks hustle to the garden shed and whet their rakes and hoes for a lynching. And a stupid, incompetent “mother” with a dubious history becomes a cause celebre for the day, pushing other news off the front page. She hides out for a week after the incident. Who wouldn’t? The peasants were storming the gates, howling for blood!
I don’t mean to trivialize the beating. Sure, it was wrong. It’s tough to argue that any act of a four-year-old girl merits the violence her “mother” directed at her. But the rage directed at Madelyne Toogood should be reserved for the likes of Andrea Yates or Pamela Smart, not some meshugganuh itinerant grifter. It takes lockstep media to exaggerate a case to this magnitude. It’s just another example of how the “mass media” are driven by a school-of-fish mentality. Any hint of movement and the whole swarm follows immediately and without question. There’s no sign of prioritization, no doubt as to the ethics of belaboring such minutiae. The story takes on a life of its own, and the Frankensteins who created it stand back and count the profits as it rampages through the countryside.
It’s yellow journalism revisited, sensationalism writ large, the way only our ratings-obsessed mass media can write it. Overblown, exaggerated, hysterical, fulminating. And ultimately of little news value or little enduring significance. Worthy of 30 seconds on the local 10 o’clock, but undeserving of national notice. But who are we to judge? Our betters in the media have decided that this tawdry little saga merits global attention.
I wonder what they have planned for us next week.
What impressed me the most about her is how unrepentant she was. She's still ticked off at her daughter for making the scam go sour.
And besides, what ever happened to:
"JUST WAIT UNTIL YOU GET HOME" ?
</sarcasm>
She is purported to be an "Irish Traveler". If so, she is a GYPSE w. She was frustrated in her attempt to return two articles of clothing for CASH. Were the items "boosted" as part of a typical GYPSE scheme?
There is a need for facts before claiming "racisim", even though anti white racisim is PC
Secondly, I never claimed there was a "racist" element. You inferred that "crack whore" must necessarily refer to a black woman. Hardly.
My point is that the umbrage this incident reflects could have originated because the perpetrator is not your stereotypical child abuser. I don't think that's the case, but I'm grasping.
when they determine that even though he was inside the building in an office watching the video from a hundred yards away he could have run out of the office, through the store, out the door, and across the parking lot before the women had driven off?
Let's see -- she admitted she's an Irish Traveler, she has already been busted for shoplifting, she's 25, with three kids, and doesn't work, and yet she drives a $50,000 car. Do the math.
I'd be more curious how a private videotape ended up bouncing off satellites all around the world. This was a matter between the store and the woman -- if that -- until the media piranhas got a hold of it. Now everybody from the local gendarmes to the Pope have gotten in on it.
Her real downfall will come from the Travelers.
Thanks to her, the con-man modus operandi
of the Irish gypsies has been imbedded into
the minds of America. New scam time for
them and the dog house big time for her.
The Irish Travelers are not Gypsies. Gypsies are an ethnic group that originally came from India. The Irish Travelers are a group of Celtic con artists.
Meanwhile, the media mind our business, the government butts in and makes matters worse, and the real crooks sneak off with our DVD players while our attention is diverted.
Hey, you are the one who refused to believe that she wasn't a Gypsy, and referred to such media reports as "bugle oil." Now, the woman is NOT of Romani heritage (the traditional meaning of Gyspy, as in the nationality which was slaughtered in the Holocaust) but she *is* an Irish Traveler, which is a group which exhibits the characteristics traditionally associated with Gypsies (e.g. itinerant lifestyle, scamming, distrust of outsiders.)
Anyhow, since you seem to be so brilliant and all, please tell me 1) how this woman could own a $50,000 car without having a job, 2) why an honest person would need FOUR drivers' licenses, 3) why a self-admitted beater of her child should not be punished, and 4) why you posted a thread about a subject you think has already received too much attention.
Actually, as I understand it, she has FIVE cars registered in her name. And until having multiple vehicles registered in your name is a crime, what business is it of ours?
2) why an honest person would need FOUR drivers' licenses,
See above.
3) why a self-admitted beater of her child should not be punished,
I never said she shouldn't. In fact, if you'll have somebody read you the article, I specifically said that the beating was wrong, yada yada yada. Of course, you conveniently overlooked that.
and 4) why you posted a thread about a subject you think has already received too much attention.
Because I wanted to point out that the media are responsible, and that the woman herself is meaningless. A subtlety you are obviously unable to grasp.
Let me give you the Sesame Street version: This is a trivial incident of a loathsome wench who whomped her child. Only because the media blew it up to cosmic proportions do we even know that it occurred. It's not important. It's not significant. It's certainly not worthy of the fooforaw it's created. But the media created a story from nothing, a fact that abuses the high position and responsibility those institutions occupy.
Get it?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
