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Trivial Pursuits => History => Topic started by: linnea on August 20, 2006, 12:32:10 am
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Since I was born and raised in Colorado, the JonBenet case was huge, and we heard about it all the time. I figured that I'd start a thread about it.
The new developments in the case are stunning indeed. For example, there are some experts who think that that he's making it up (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Health/story?id=2332514&page=1). This case is so sensational that Karr's "confession" is eclipsing news coverage from the Middle East. IMHO, that is just fuck*ng crazy. I'm not going to bother linking to any other news stories, since they seem to be updated every 5 minutes.
Anyway, I started this thread because I think it is absurd that this case is garnering as much attention as it has. The surviving Ramseys are being nearly suffocated by the unscrupulous, gotta-get-the-story journalists that are camped out around their house in MI and where Burke is supposed to be beginning university.
Let's see... a 130 pound white guy in a scary Thai jail...I can see how he'd come up with some pretty entertaining "confessions" in an effort to get extradited back to the States. And he had already begun to write books about JonBenet, and sent creepy love poems to a friend of his in Boulder and asked this professor to read them out loud at JonBenet's house. The guy is clearly a loon (conviction of possessing indecent material involving children, seeking out teaching jobs so that he could be closer to children and be in a position of power over them, getting fired from teaching jobs due to ineptness and inappropriate behavior around children, married to a 13 year old and a 15 year old, the list goes on and on).
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Apparently the Boulder DA hasn't even tried to get information from Karr, such as his shoe size to even see if it would match the footprint found at the Ramsey's house. Craaaazy media case! I can't say that I'm surprised, though, since over 200 people "confessed" to murdering the Lindberg baby, and I think that (in my personal opinion) that this is someone who concocted a false confession in a plea for attention.
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Karr does sound like a whack-job! I wonder if we'll ever find out who killed her--or the fate of non-white, non-wealthy murdered individuals, such as the killers of 400+ women in north Mexico over the past ~15 years?
But a part of me feels bad for mostly-believing the media shitstorm that her parents killed her. But who fuck*ng knows?
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At this point, I think it's sort of a moot point whether he killed her or not. The dude is clearly a fuckup of the highest order -- I mean, what do you have to do to get imprisoned for sex crimes in Thailand? Something is very, very wrong here...
My hope is just that the surviving Ramseys don't have a harder time of it than they always have. I've always felt a bit sorry for her brother, particularly, who must have had a terrible time.
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It's just weird what the media picks up on. Right at the same time that woman disappeared in Aruba another girl left her house for a Motley Crue concert in Baltimore and never showed up. Even the media in Baltimore didn't really mention it though. The band gave a bunch of money to help find her but the TV news still didn't pick up the story because there was no time because of all the Aruba crap. Why blanket coverage on one girl and not the other?
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At this point, I think it's sort of a moot point whether he killed her or not. The dude is clearly a fuckup of the highest order -- I mean, what do you have to do to get imprisoned for sex crimes in Thailand?
A very good Gary Glitter impersonation...
I only know of this case from South Park (which I feel kind of bad about), but from the news story we got over here alone this guy certainly looks and sounds incredibly guilty of something.
I am at least glad we got about one news story of it, and not the eclipse of what I can't help but think are more pressing issues, as Linnea pointed out. Then again, British news still hasn't quite reached the state of American news. Fuck, watching CNN while in Canada was terrifying. Like Bill says, you would clearly go insane if that's all you watched, and I can't believe it apparently hasn't changed a bit.
Oh also, what kind of name do you need to work for them? Wolf, Fionnula, all the other bizarrely named people I saw... Anderson Cooper was about as normal as it got.
And it may sound horrible, but I'm not sure how much sympathy I can have for parents who push their child into the whole pageant thing. Not none for sure, when something like this happens, but then I've never seen them interviewed or anything... They may just be terrifying for all I know.
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Ugh... I totally forgot to mention the Cuidad Juarez case (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5265448.stm). There was a construction worker in Colorado who was just arrested (http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4929053,00.html)on suspiscion of involvement in the murders of hundreds of women -- mostly poor working mothers who had to work in the factories. Is there ever going to be justice for them?
Why do some cases get recognition and others none? Activists have been trying to get the Cuidad Juarez cases investigated for years, but I guess that the police in Mexico couldn't be bothered with a case where poor women were being murdered and dumped near the border. After JonBenet was found dead, nobody much cared about Girl X, which is a shame (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,985957,00.html). Rich white beauty queen gets massive media coverage, and black folks get nothing...next at 10.
**EDIT...400 posts. Also I feel bad, because I was right there pointing my finger when they found JonBenet dead, and rashly proclaimed that her dad must've been abusing her and that her parents killed her. I feel terrible. However, the lack of justice in the world is the worst, especially with cases like Girl X and Cuidad Juarez garnering a couple of sentences at most, and then cases about a rich white family get spewed all over the media. Weird.
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Rich white girls get publicized because they have rich white parents who have rich white friends in the media and everyone can afford to devote the hours and hours to getting the story in the news and keeping it there. The chick in Aruba, for example -- her mother treated keeping the case in the news as a full time job, doing interviews and making press releases like it was a fuck*ng book tour. If money doesn't make you more important to the news, it at least buys you access to the people who decide what goes on.
Lord help us all if the JonBenet Ramsey case ever goes to trial. There will be media circuses covering the media circus.
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I hate spending my attention on these story types, whoever mentioned Juarez up thread is on point as far as relative scale of importance. The summation of these stories to me are 'bad shit happened here, let's drool all over it' with rarely any greater relevance (outside the occaisional Megan's law) than staring at a horrible accident. But even further, I feel these stories are, in a way, a manipulation of the public attention away from shit the public both has an vested interest in and can make an active impact on if they are informed.
Dig., especially the last sentence.
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like that clip of George Allen on the daily show! I really love indiscriminate and nonsensical racial slurs. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081400589.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081400589.html)
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NOTE: I sympathise for the little girls death, but I know her file will be worked on and periodically reviewed by various law enforcement agencies for years to come, and I trust them to do so. So let's leave it alone until we have someone strapped in and waiting the needle.
I am completely not keen on the death penalty. With that in mind, child predators should get two things: an 8oz Candy bar of their choice, and a couple more oz. of lead, in no specific order.
Everything I've read or seen pretty much points to the fact that we can't fix sex offenders. The best we can do is program them to act normal, and then hope for the best. That's a pretty dangerous "fix" it seems. It's like handing out wolf-sized sheep costumes.
See Also: Woolves (http://www.pbfcomics.com/archive/PBF102AD-Woolves.jpg)
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or, people could be worrying about this. (http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/08/21/sweden.porn.ap/index.html)
or rather, praying for it.
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Wait, there's news on tv now?
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The thing about the JonBenet case and other cases of missing pretty white kids, is that news media of today wants to be Hollywood, and to be Hollywood, they need pretty, well packaged images, tons of salaciousness, and the eternally held-out hope of a neatly tied-up ending. I can think back and remember that the news was once about the news. It was reported by a person at a desk who's relative attractiveness or lack there of was not at issue, and it was relevent and it was based on facts, and it was considered shameful to even touch the speculation. I am horrified at how reporting has shifted, and the warped image of what is to be valued that is reflected back.
It's pitiful.
Here in Winnipeg, as an example, when pretty blond Dru Sjodin (http://www.drusvoice.com/life/) went missing in North Dakota it was front page news and got tons of TV and print media coverage, but when an aboriginal teenager named Sunshine (http://www.winnipeg.ca/police/press/2004/03mar/2004_03_02.stm) Wood (http://photoshttp://www.winnipeg.ca/police/Unsolved_Cases/MissingPersons/mpcase09.stm) went missing shortly after from our own city, she got hardly any coverage at all. Sjodin's alledged killer is currently on trail, while Wood is still missing with no leads.
In Canada, the epidemic of missing (and mostly ignore) aboriginal women is terrifying to me and my girlfriends, because it's our peer group. The trial of Robert Pickton (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/robert_pickton/robert_pickton_jump_page.html), who is currently being tried for murdering 27 women (who were mostly aboriginal - some were prostitutes, but some had no criminal background what so ever) is basically the tip of the iceburg. I have an article right in front of me that states that "over the past 30 years 500 aboriginal women have either gone missing or been found dead." It terrifies me. I worry that one day, I or one of my friends might dissapear, and that because of our race, the case will get little attention - that we will be blamed for being born with brownish coloured skin, and for living in a lower income neighborhood. We will be written off the page. We are not valued.
It took the police more than 14 years to realize Pickton was out there, picking these women off. 14 years worth of murders and no one noticed?! The aboriginal community was aware of the problem, and kept saying that there was a pattern, but was mostly ignored. More than five years ago, I had been warned by other aboriginal women to watch out because there's a serial killer on the lose killing us off. It's a nightmare. As I walked to work on International Women's day last year, here in Winnipeg, women had set up a silent protest - 55 signs for the 55 aboriginal women who are either missing, or who have been the victims of unsolved homicides in my Provence, had been posted in row upon row in front of the parliament building. They were clearly meant to look like tombstones, and it was horrific and chilling. I froze in my tracks because one of the signs was painted in a children's hand and it simply read "I miss my Mommy." I stood there for a moment choking on my tears, unsure if I could make it to work, feeling so powerless... These women are all someone's daughter.... Fuck.
I just don't know what to say. What is reported, what is given weight, the new cult of orgiastic speculation, all frustrates me immensely. Where value is placed, and the the media's total detachment from the idea of objectivity... it's disgusting. Basically disgusting.
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It reminds me of a David Cross stand-up bit where he talks about people only giving a shit because of the drama.
"Somewhere across the country there's a little girl trapped in a well!"
"Yeah, but there was a guy who got killed last night just down the street. His whole family is fatherless."
"But there's a little girl in a well!"
I dunno. This whole value < age thing is a bit bothersome. If I go missing are they going to put out an immediate Alert on the highways for me and round up search parties? Probably not. Granted, people of age do weird shit like jet and leave town without telling anyone sometimes, but still, if we're actually worried about people shouldn't there be some sort of effort for finding lost people and not just kids?
I'm not saying I want harm to come to children (CHILDREN! SAILING MISHAP!), nor even that we shouldn't do our best efforts to help out in these things, it's just if you can't help directly in some manner then to get so wrapped up in these things is a bit too manic for my tastes. When I used to work for the Feds (at a place where everyone has a mission and a point of view in the extreme to begin with, don't get me started), there was this woman who was on some sort of daily crusade. She would always come over and say "Did you hear about $tragedyinvolvingchild. She was always rife with details and carefully would convey every one with a sense of exactness and utmost interest. She almost revelled in it I would say. Hell, I'd go so far as to say she loved that shit. It was her daytime soaps. It was her soma. And she'd try and share it 10, 15 times a day when there was a particularly "juicy" horror unfolding.
It's to the point now where I can't even stand to watch the news. I'm not fooling myself into believing there was a time when things were "better" I guess, but it does seem with the marginalizing and polarizing of opinions being presented and the obsession with ratings on the newscasts, we've lost focus of what once was really important there. (and I'm not even mentioning that old cliched argument "They never report on GOOD things!" That's a fallacy. If people didn't want to see tons of crap, then they'd lose viewership and the nature of what they presented would change by the way they're currently defining themselves at least.)
So... yeah.. sorry about that, I guess I got off on a rant. Um... so I guess Judy's having fun on vacation huh? HUH?
*cough* ...I'll shutup now.
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I'm just going to add my bitching to the pile. Particularly the way that so called 'current affairs' shows seem to be gaining more attention if not respect than actual news shows. As for the news shows themselves, when they actually report on stuff from big brother as one of the main stories I have to cry bitter bitter tears.
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I swear to god, the Daily Show is the way of the future. See... he tells the real news, but he makes jokes about it so it will be entertaining. Instead of only mentioning entertaining news.
they just need another version where the fake news is more clearly delineated. because sometimes, it is hard to tell... sadly.
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It's to the point now where I can't even stand to watch the news. I'm not fooling myself into believing there was a time when things were "better" I guess, but it does seem with the marginalizing and polarizing of opinions being presented and the obsession with ratings on the newscasts, we've lost focus of what once was really important there.
So... yeah.. sorry about that, I guess I got off on a rant.
A rant I do thoroughly condone. I'm pretty anti-'the news' now, and that's the fuck*ng BBC. I get angered by the bad reporting, the bad grammar (they're fuck*ng trained, they should know better) and the 'human interest' shite. But worse than that is the sensationalism and fear-mongering that crops up in our Americanised news coverage. Admittedly, the majority of that on the normal British news only crops up when children are killed, but that's some of the most annoying, as it melds with the human interest story style of reporting on it.
I don't need the families of murdered, raped children appealing for help with tearful eyes and broken sentences. I don't need the 'this is what we wanted' statements the minute someone is actually jailed. It doesn't get us anywhere. It's not news. I know people consider having someone locked up as revenge, that doesn't mean I need to know more than that this person was caught and is doing time, if that. As far as the children issue goes, I certainly don't expect it to become such pervasive news that it takes up all the coverage, with reporters living in the village 24/7 to corner the police on scene, and to do interviews with concerned neighbours. Again, someone's opinion of the 12 year old's life being so precious, so innocent, so torn away, is not fuck*ng news! But it's all we get the minute something like the Soham murders happen. It's not like they didn't have their suspects from the start with that case. Yes, two girls are tragically killed... Shit happens, I'm sorry to say.
All this kind of news does is keep people from letting their children go outside alone. I love the, I think it's Norwegian way of dealing with childhood deaths, which is to admit that yes, they happen, and to get over it. I don't know whether we have the news media to thank for it, but people seem to think they can control every aspect of their own, and their families lives, and it's clearly never going to be the case.
Even with things like the July subway bombings in London... Coverage for the anniversary featured tearful interviews with survivors as they remembered the horror they lived through. It struck me that the media was instilling a level of post traumatic stress is survivors of disasters. Where the majority of people might learn to live with what happened, even considering themselves maybe... lucky say, for living through it, now they are sobbing uncontrollably as they recount the events. I've almost died a couple of times, and both I considered myself incredibly lucky and decided to do more with my life. I felt like an asshole for thinking that about these survivors, but fortunately a day later someone was on the radio commenting on exactly the same phenomenon. As for, like you say Mel, the favouritism when it comes to choosing stories that will sell both papers or airtime... It's deeply sickening. I'd love to see the chart they have telling us why and how and who will make the biggest splash. I'm sure it's more complicated than you might think, with different categories and venn diagram style crossovers stating that say, the handicapped may be in this section, children in this, but add the two and lo...
I find the news incredibly depressing now, and mostly because of the way it is presented, the attitudes and opinions of the presenters and producers, and the hateful, fear-mongering presence with which they pervade society.
OK, now I'll shut up.
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I swear to god, the Daily Show is the way of the future. See... he tells the real news, but he makes jokes about it so it will be entertaining. Instead of only mentioning entertaining news.
they just need another version where the fake news is more clearly delineated. because sometimes, it is hard to tell... sadly.
Alternately, get rid of the (mostly useless, usually awkward and not entertaining) interviews.
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Alternately, get rid of the (mostly useless, usually awkward and not entertaining) interviews.
To be fair, I do fnid interest in some of the interviews with authors, politicians (some) and specialists. Apart from that, I would tend to agree. Perhaps if he brought it down to one or two interviews a week instead of every show.
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To be fair, I do fnid interest in some of the interviews with authors, politicians (some) and specialists. Apart from that, I would tend to agree. Perhaps if he brought it down to one or two interviews a week instead of every show.
I think she was referring to the on-location interviews with regular people. Like the kid whose head was too big for a football helmet. If so I totally agree. I usually ffwd through those because they're just awkward and not entertaining.
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I think she was referring to the on-location interviews with regular people. Like the kid whose head was too big for a football helmet. If so I totally agree. I usually ffwd through those because they're just awkward and not entertaining.
Actually, slink was right; however, I meant to say "get rid of the interviews with celebrities and other such [in my opinion] useless people."
I don't watch the show enough anymore to know to what Cort is referring, but I agree that it sounds like a segment that could stand to be cut. However, it is a fake news show after all, so, though the coverage given to world events may be better than that of most news programmes, we should not expect them to focus all their attention on said events.
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Sometimes the authors and politicians on the show give an interview quite poorly. Kilborne should mail in his five questions.
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Well, it looks like Karr's claim to have killed JonBenet was a hoax (http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-08-29T002201Z_01_N28369419_RTRUKOC_0_US-CRIME-JONBENET.xml). To reiterate a previous post: NEWS FLASH, 130 pound white pedophile in Thai prison gives false confession in order to get extradited to US, story at 10.
The clincher for me is that he got champagne and prawns on his business class flight from Bangkok to LA.
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But hang on, if you can get extradited one way, can't you get extradited straight back or will this be another example of the US's unique take on foreign policy in play?
(to be fair I can see not wanting to extradite someone to a country where punishments are considered too extreme but last I checked the US system isn't exactly lenient on pedophiles anyway).
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As I see it, there will be two competing drives for Thai authorities, here.
1. The desire to discourage pedophilia and administer justice to pedophiles.
2. The desire not to have extra pedophiles in their country. I bet they are full up.
They may think "not our problem," in which case he'll likely be tried on child porn charges in California.
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God, I would so love to not follow this case, but if it's going to be on the top of the hour news on NPR what am I supposed to do?
There was a clip of his lawyer being indignant that they'd torn him away from Thailand without any concrete evidence. Um, if you don't want to be accused of a crime, try not confessing to it next time?
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"my client is outraged that he is not allowed to stay in Thai jail."
I wish there were a new form of punctuation which indicated an imaginary quote.
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"my client is outraged that he is not allowed to stay in Thai jail."
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what's funny is, I read that and then thought "I could have used a quote box!"
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Dammit!
California doesn't need more of those either.
I kinda like the ide of the guy being shutdown in a Thai jail, but whatever locks his ass up will work I suppose.
His ass better have some heavy duty locks it.
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Between this and the titty toast you are just downright sassy today AD.
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"my client is outraged that he is not allowed to stay in Thai jail."
I wish there were a new form of punctuation which indicated an imaginary quote.
Just put brackets around it. It's already well established newspaper code for "the person didn't actually say this but we're going to pretend that he did because god forbid our readers see what was actually said."
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Just put brackets around it. It's already well established newspaper code for "the person didn't actually say this but we're going to pretend that he did because god forbid our readers see what was actually said."
As far as I know, that's done only to elaborate upon or clarify what the quoted individual has said. I'd certainly hope that journalistic integrity would prevent essentially making up entire quotations in that manner.
Another alternative would be to introduce the quotation so as to explicitly show it is fantasy: "The attorney would be all, 'my client is outraged that he is not allowed to stay in Thai jail.'"
Or you could just not care quite so much.
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As far as I know, that's done only to elaborate upon or clarify what the quoted individual has said. I'd certainly hope that journalistic integrity would prevent essentially making up entire quotations in that manner.
It's also used to mask the actual statement just as often. I seriously doubt anybody has ever taken the time to say "bracket expletive bracket" like so many newspapers would have us believe.
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Dusty Baker recently said "If I did that (have a pitcher throw 169 pitches in a game), you guys would lynch me." The Chicago Tribune, which owns the team he manages, printed it as "If i did that, you guys would [criticize] me."
Meaning obscured!