I’m gonna side with wring, also.
I’m OK with the interview, but the book and movie are somewhat suspicious.
OK, maybe it ain’t the Smarts. Maybe their hands are clean. But somebody is getting ready to cash in.
IIRC, they do have some representation.
From the CNN article, it doesn’t sound like the Smarts are behind the wheelin’ and dealin’. I think a lot of it is from overzealous marketing types who know a good thing when they see it, and who are playing one outlet against another for the best deal for their own projects. Hitting the right shows means more sales for books, more exposure for the TV movie and the Mega-Interview (which means more advertising revenue for the network), and more prestige for the networks and hosts who are lucky enough to land an interview while the story’s still fresh.
Is it sleazy? You bet your ass it is. A little girl was kidnapped and brutalized for months, and people are making money on the deal. However, like it or not, it’s the American Way to cash in on tragedy. Hopefully Elizabeth will see some of this money to pay for her therapy and college.
Robin
Acc. to Couric, whom I will paraphrase here because I can’t find the original source, the Smarts wrote the book for two reasons: to thank all the people who helped look for Elizabeth and to promote their faith, both of which they feel were essential in the safe return of their daughter.
I understand wring’s sentiments because I too feel that a book and movie deal is just…weird. However, I’m giving them a free pass for this one. First of all, we truly have no idea what the Smarts have been through. Thank God. As much as we think they should shun the media now, we have to keep in mind that it was the media who kept her name alive when everyone else, including perhaps the police, had given her up for dead. When Ed Smart wanted to hold a news conference to urge people to look for “Emmanuel”, the media obliged. It was the media who ran “America’s Most Wanted” which ultimately led to the capture of her kidnappers and her safe return. So the Smarts relationship with the media is a symbiotic one. If CNN’s coverage of my daughter’s kidnapping helped return her safely to me, I can’t imagine the degree of gratitude I’d feel. If they wanted an exclusive interview with me, I’m sure they’d get it.
Secondly, the book is sparse on details of their daughter’s ordeal and focuses instead on their spiritual journey. A reviewer said it was more a promotion of the Mormon faith than anything. That’s fair game in my book. What is NOT fair game is invading their daughter’s privacy by divulging salacious details of her sexual assault and daily humiliations, which the Smarts reportedly do not do. So while the whole thing seems a bit odd, I’m going to refrain from criticizing them.
PunditLisa:
Very well said. Very well, indeed & in deed.
Damn, I’m in total agreement with Bricker’s post, too.
The end times are nigh! Nigh, I tell you, nigh!
But when are they going to give us all the juicy details of the sexual assault? Isn’t that what the American public TV News zombies really want to know? Eat it up folks, I hope you swallow every word the media feeds you.
Y’know, actually between her return home and this week, I had hardly heard anything about the case, so it’s not as if a steady drumbeat had been kept up. I WAS surprised by the apparently sudden all-fronts blitz – magazine covers, TV, book and moie deals, etc. A little bit too over-the-top. I can understand deciding to finally tell the story on your own terms, but I can see how the scale does make supplications for normalcy and privacy ring hollow. Thing is, the idea that there is a normalcy to “recover” is an illusion. The previous normalcy is gone irreversibly, Elizabeth has to start anew to build an entire new and different “normalcy”, which includes, inevitably, others wanting to keep track of how she’s doing.
If the various news media have been pestering for information, well, that is their job, but we had not heard them whining much about it. As PunditLisa said, there IS a dual-nature relationship between the Smarts and the news media – the media helped keep the case alive. In some people’s ideal world, after she came home, they’d ride whistling into the sunset, but this is not the ideal world and some sort of reciprocity is expected. As it is, all parts get about as good a deal as you can expect, essentially, the media gets to report an uplifting story, the Smarts control what story is told, and any morbid prurient curiosity will have to be satisfied by the supermarket tabloids.
As to the OP, hey, it’s not that hard to disappear into the hills, hell, it would not be that hard to disappear into a largish city.
I’ve read the comments by others. I’m still at the place where their media blitz has me tasting bile.
Their daughter went through an absolutely horrible ordeal. They’re now marketing her and her story.
re: phone calls - they have a ‘media rep’, they can get their phone number changed, and refuse calls. I don’t buy that at all.
“getting their story out their way”. Ya know what? the story had died. It’s been revived because of their book, which is coinciding with the made for tv movie they’ve agreed to, and all of the interviews they’ve engineered. If they refused point blank all access, the story would have died.
And yes, I am eternally grateful that I don’t have personal knowledge of what it is like to be in their shoes.
From what I’ve read, they consider her return alive to be a miracle from God, and perhaps even related to their level of faith, depending on how you interpret their comments. They might consider telling their story - including promoting the book via interviews - to be a way of preaching the word of God and his miracles. Considering the emphasis put on spreading the word (the missions done by young people, for instance) that I’ve seen among Mormons from my limited experience (a few college friends), I wouldn’t find that explanation surprising. I will admit that I haven’t seen their recent interviews other than short excerpts on news shows, so I don’t know if they’ve stated a reason for doing this or if I’m on target at all.
I think it’s possible that they depleted their financial resources early in this ordeal.
I think it’s also possible that they intend to use the money they get to finance an escape for their family to a new location.
Right. And if they refuse calls, do you expect the media to not camp out on their gateway/doorstep? I’d think that having a particular target for the media might be the right way to herd the hounds, so to speak.
And why should they leave the rest of the family? Maybe (<—note that I says “maybe” here) they’re kind of into that whole family thing being of some value to both them and her.
I wouldn’t be so quick to give them a pass, Lisa. They’re exploiting their daughter’s ordeal for their own gain by publishing a book about it. (If they simply want to get the word out about her spiritual odyssey, why charge anything more than the cost of the book?) The story was over when she returned and has been out of the eye of the media for a while. The only reason to bring it up again is to promote a book.
Let’s remember that we don’t know anything about this situation other than what we’ve been spoonfed by the media. We don’t know who did it - we know who’s been accused. We don’t know how or if she was abducted - we know only what she said.
It seems a bit incongruous to me that someone who is traumatized by her ordeal (seven months later) isn’t so traumatized that a book deal and a series of interviews is out of the question. Not impossible, however. (Her own mother describes her as “strong,” hardly an adjective one attaches to the traumatized. She even took her parents to the place where she’d allegedly been held.)
dantheman: What’s with the “we don’t know if she was abducted?” stint?
What do you mean? Were you there?
WTF do you think I mean? You and the OP are pulling this out of your ass that she wasn’t abducted!
No. I am saying it’s possible she was not, because I have no empirical evidence that she was. I was not there. All I know about the situation is second- , third- , and fourth-hand, at least.
At no point did I say she was not abducted. I said we don’t know that she was. Do you see the difference?
They had a habit of having drifters do their housework. Nine months after the kidnapping, and after the police have arrested another vagrant on their say so, the Smarts “realize” that “Emmanuel”/Mitchell could have been the guy and then immediately blame the police for not taking him seriously as a suspect. After getting their daughter back, they put her on a talk show tour and write a book about how getting lucky after a series of bad decisions somehow reaffirms their faith. Bah.
And the OP is waaaay off base- you do know that the kidnappers a) went cross-country and b) always kept Elizabeth veiled and refused to let her talk?
on preview- you’re out there too, Dantheman- do you have any evidence that what the media has “spoonfed” us is in any way incorrect? “Emmanuel’s” own relatives said that he was dangerous and said it was likely that he would’ve kidnapped someone.
I have two words for you, wring: Patty Hearst. She was silent for almost two decades and the story just died, didn’t it? Trust me, the Smarts version of events is just the tip of the iceberg. The reason you haven’t heard much since her return is because the trial hasn’t occurred yet and there is very limited information. But that will change in January. CourtTV will sue to broadcast the trial and the circus will begin again.
Then once the trial is over, some author or five will piece together the transcript of the trial and the police notes and come up with the down and dirty version of her story. It is, sadly, inevitable.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the Smarts realize what is to come and are just trying to gently ease her into it. I feel nothing but pity for both her and her family. They are damned no matter what they do. They can only control what they can control (that is, THEIR version of the story) and the rest is out of their hands.
I think dantheman is talking about the theory that Elizabeth went willingly (presumably to escape her “stifling Norman Rockwell-esque family” and be a “wild and crazy teenager”).
Of course, a teenaged girl taking off in the middle of the night with a much older male vagrant is still icky, but if she wanted to go, it’s not necessarily abduction.
Note that IMHO, Elizabeth was abducted, but I acknowledge that no one can prove what she did or did not want at the time.
Yes, please do say more. I live in Utah.