Somewhere tonight, in West Palm Beach, Florida, a drunken father will beat his son with his fists. In Sarasota, a step father will rape, for the fiftieth time, his step daughter. In Orlando, an enraged mother will shake her infant to near death. In Tampa, a little boy and girl will cower under the filthy mattress of a day-bed in the corner of a cluttered, disheveled room while their daddy beats their momma black and blue, and then pinning her, belly down, across the dinette table, rapes her. In Tallahassee, three children will go to bed hungry because their mother traded her food stamps for beer at an east-indian owned Superette.
Caylee Anthony is dead. The spectacle that the press and yes, the pathetic public, has created will not revive her, not put flesh on gnawed bones, not show her at five playing happily with her mother, not see her going to the first day of first grade; no, the spectacle will only waste millions of dollars in a prosecution that borders on persecution, weaken the willingness of the underclass to trust the judicial system, and further re-enforce the picture of America, as seen by the rest of the civilized world, as a pandering, cloying, corpulent public pustule.
The notion concerning Casey Anthony of innocent until proven guilty is obviously not of any concern to anyone in the media; further, that ancient Colonial common law notion is not “presumed innocent” but “absolutely innocent” until found guilty by a jury of peers. I can not say, given the evidence presented, that I am certain, without any doubt, that Casey Anthony, with malice a forethought, murdered her daughter. Nor can the prosecution. The very fact that the prosecution is seeking the death penalty is proof that justice will have no part in what ever verdict the jury renders. This prosecution is political and personal, and is an abuse of prosecutorial power, a tragic farce, a miscarriage of justice, a waste of the District Attorney’s time and the public’s money.
What fools we look to much of the rest of the world, where the notion of ” innocent until proven guilty” is seen as absurd, where the defendant must prove their innocence, and where the time from judgement to summary execution is a matter of days, not decades. Even in England, our mother country, the rule of law protects the accused from identification and vilification until and unless the defendant is found guilty. We, the defender of liberty, the upholder of individual rights, the paragon of reason and public virtue, show no such sensibility.
The electronic media and its audience are no more than a Twenty-First Century electronic lynch mob, and worse, the life of a little girl who will never grow up has been made into a circus sideshow of family movie clips and a rancid legal animation. Caylee’s memory will always be a bad taste in the mouth of the body-politic, her smiling face a grotesque reminder of vulgarity of life and the certainty of death.
I believe Casey Anthony is responsible for all of Caylee Anthony’s life, from her birth until her death. I have known child abusers, molesters, I have seen and documented the physical and emotional abuse of children. I do not see an abusive mother, rather I see a negligent mother, a woman who, at the time of Caylee’s birth, should never have been a mother. In the evidence presented, I do see clearly a broken, dysfunctional family; but I also see clear and apparent affection, a maternal bond, an expressed and reciprocated love between a mother and daughter.
This case should have never been “played out” as it has been; by the ratings hungry media, by the breathless commentary of so many talking heads, by the clear ambition of the District Attorney and the confused sense of justice by law enforcement personnel, who were lied to and mislead by a borderline personality. There will be no justice for Caylee, nor will there be justice for the children, the women whose desperate situations I described first above. What there needs to be is empathy and love and aid and treatment. We don’t need better schools, or more police, or more men sent to jail, we need better parents. Why doesn’t the media get that story right; why don’t we demand true justice for all children, not some sensationalized yellow journalism calling for media mob justice for one little girl; but let us demand a righteous justice assuring well feed, well clothed, secure, nurtured, educated and loved children thriving in a country the world respects and emulates.
Only then will Caylee’s death, and Casey’s life begin to have meaning, only then will this spectacle have value, only then will the truth be told of all the lost children, all the beaten and abused spouses, only then will all the callous, gratuitous pandering of the press, in the Case of Florida vs. Casey Anthony, be forgivable.
Well written. I agree with your assesment of the sensationalism of the media and lack of responsibility. These events should motivate others to take action for the betterment of others still alive on this earth. Certainly the people so vocal about Caylee justice would be motivated to work toward preventing another travesty. So much energy with no place to channel it.