Okay, I don’t like Nancy Grace.
Her schtick is to visciously and vociferously attack and accuse, with a universal presumption of guilt and absolutely no pretense of reasoned argument. That’s repellent enough to warrant a pitting on its own.
Usually, though, her targets are accused criminals, who (rightly or wrongly) are largely considered fair game, regardless of their possible innocence. Whatever, it’s an understandable predisposition for a prosecutor to have, even if it is offensive when it carries over into her punditry, where no judge is present to admonish her when she crosses the line.
Now, though, she’s gone so far over the line as to be declared beyond redemption as a human being. She’s going after Sarah Lunde’s grieving mother, using the same insane fury that she usually reserves for people who have been accused of horrible crimes.
She’s using her bully pulpit to call for charges against the woman, claiming that she was neglectful.
Reality check: This woman left her teenage sons alone for a weekend. Sarah (thirteen years old) was away for a church weekend and wasn’t expected home. There is no reasonable reason to expect that teenagers can’t manage on their own for a couple of days. If you assume they can’t, it’s because you assume they haven’t been raised right. What the hell? An eighteen-year-old is fully capable of babysitting an infant. A thirteen-year-old shouldn’t need a sitter, for Christ’s sake, even if she was expected to be home. There’s no fucking neglect here.
Not content with characterizing something that shouldn’t have posed a problem as “neglect,” the lovely Ms. Grace carried on to disseminate outright falsity about the girl’s circumstance. She has repeatedly claimed that Sarah was either “allowed” or “forced” (depending on how much Nasty Bitch energy she was channelling from moment-to-moment, I guess) to hitchhike to church, due to her mother’s deplorable neglect. She continues to spread this slander after Sarah’s pastor explicitly corrected her, saying that if a ride wasn’t available, Sarah always simply called him for one.
Fuck her. We don’t know that there’s anything Sarah’s mother could have done that would have protected her, even if she knew that she was going to be home.
It’s unreasonable to claim that adolescent children must be attended continually to guard against predators. The blame belongs to the killer. Even if Kelly May was home, Onstott could have found a way. Shit, it looks like he’s a bit sharper than the creep who snatched Jessica Lunsford from her home while her parents were sleeping.
In spite of all this, and absent the spiteful vitriol of some vindictive troll on CNN, I’m sure that Sarah’s mother irrationally blames herself for what happened. That’s human.
Taking it upon yourself to irrationally blame her, with an audience of millions? That’s inhuman.
If there’s any justice in the world, Nancy Grace will face a senseless and emotionally devastating tragedy of her own – and have some asshole in the media throw salt on her wounds by proclaiming that she’s to blame.
Nancy? Crawl back under the rock you emerged from, you slimy piece of human garbage.