Caylee Anthony Not Only Murder Victim Ever

• Hi Kyla-- Thanks for writing in again. I'm glad I can better understand what you're trying to say, and I don't mean that sarcastically. Though I have to disagree with your accusation that I skimmed your comment: I read it several times over and I thought I understood it. I apparently didn't, but it wasn't for a lack of trying. And as for my response being a "non-answer," I'm not sure how that could be the case since you didn't really ask anything in the first place. A lot of the things your saying now are very interesting points, and I don't have any problem saying I agree with a lot of them. The whole thing really is grody. But I went back and read your old comment again, and I'm still not really seeing how anyone could have been expected to interpret your comments the way you're saying you meant them. You never said in your original post that "the point I was trying to make is that of all the cases that may have all the contributing factors to garner national headlines, it’s almost always arbitrary which ones actually DO." You just didn't -- you insulted me, called me names and tossed around red herrings, but most of the stuff you're saying now, I think, was just unclear in your last post. That's why it took another gigantic comment to clarify. I didn't write this post to make fun of Caylee Anthony or the people who care about her. I wrote it to suggest that, with everything going on in our country right now, a voyeuristic obsession with one murder doesn't make sense to me. That's all. Maybe I didn't do a good enough job making that clear. And I agree with you about Andrew's comment. It happens all the time around here. Cheers, Rich

• Rich - It couldn’t be more flagrantly clear that you skimmed my response and gave me the lamest non-answer ever.  If you had bothered to read past that one sentence before you started looking up statistics to try and show me how wrong I am, you would have seen that I covered that point quite well.  That sentence was a lead-in for the rest of what I said.  When I said “no one” I wasn’t exclusively talking about the media, since you seemed to mean everyone in general not caring enough, and not just the media.  Hence your stupid pie chart.  Unless you’re implying that you think the rest of the news media takes their cues from Nancy Grace, which, god forbid.   Next, you condescended to me in your article, and continue to do so by quoting statistics at me like you’re teaching me ANYTHING that I don’t already know.  I am a Hispanic woman, for the record, and I don’t need a white man telling me how imbalanced media interest is in cases involving white, non-poor people versus everyone else.  And again, if you’d bothered reading what I actually wrote, I wasn’t discounting race and wealth AT ALL.  Those things, and dozens more, factor in massively with who gets coverage and who doesn’t, any jerk off the street could identify missing white woman syndrome even if he/she hasn’t heard the term.   The point I was trying to make is that of all the cases that may have all the contributing factors to garner national headlines, it’s almost always arbitrary which ones actually DO.  What makes this case different from all the other cases that involve white female children?  Nothing in particular, all of these stories are terribly sad, and fairly similar, except for details here and there.  Why this story, and not another white child?  Who knows?  That’s what I was saying.  This isn't hard. As for the “juicy details” of which you spoke, I can only offer anecdotal evidence of why people get so into that stuff, because I think it’s freaking grody, personally.  Perhaps I should have made that more clear in my OP (like how I can’t effing stand Nancy Grace, for example), but it’s not my job to police other people’s tv-watching.  The programs exist because people watch them.  And honestly, you cannot tell me that you think the kind of person who stays glued to HLN watching Casey Anthony coverage all day is seriously going to use her/his time more wisely if the channel weren't airing it.  If ONLY reality worked that way, but it doesn’t, and people who pull out the “couldn’t the airtime be better spent” argument infuriate me, because it’s the biggest waste of time trying to tell other people what they should be paying attention to, especially when you’re so freaking pretentious about it.   How do you think I found your little non-article in the first place?  I was clicking around for a little follow-up after the news yesterday, since I use my brain and wasn’t obsessively glued to the television and didn’t know every single detail.  I actually had followed the case very cursorily, and read an article here and there to keep myself informed.  I referred to people who go crazy following this kind of thing like it’s a movie are “strangely fixated” in my OP, but then I get you lecturing me like you’re some righteous figure who goes to sleep at night weeping over children dying in Iraq.  Give me a freaking break, dude, seriously?  I don’t know why you’d think that you could assume anything about me personally, and I wasn’t trying to make some bleeding-heart comment like the ones all over the CNN articles.  I was trying to tell you how you how offensive your article, and especially your super-witty headline, was to me, a level-headed person whiling away a few moments by keeping myself informed.  Think of that!  Your headline and piece were so incredibly crass, I actually stopped and put some thought into a response!  And what did I get for it?  Eff all. Delilah - This response was absurd and had absolutely no relevance at all to my post.  Not once did I say anything at all about Casey Anthony and what I thought of the verdict.  Learn to read.  For the record, if she did in fact murder her daughter, and not some unidentified person, then the prosecution team failed to do their job.  I have enough grasp on the judicial system to understand this, unlike many of these wingnuts who are out for blood, and I accept the verdict.  CASE CLOSED.  Also, your psychotic rambling about media conspiracy is just that - psychotic.  It was hard to take you seriously anyway, what with you using the term "broadcast-ed". Andrew - Your comments was completely disgusting, and unwarranted, even if you disagreed with what I was saying, you cretin.

• It's off by a little bit, but not much -- Caylee was one of 1,502 murder victims younger than 18 in 2008, which means "other" should be about 99.93 percent.

• Pie chart says she is one out of a thousand murders.  Way off :P

• Kyla, I believe all the people out there who strongly believe that Casey murdered her daughter, should go and search for evidence. No evidence, no case. CASE CLOSED! P.S. The media paid Casey $200K to use all of her pictures of her partying and also videos and pictures of her and Caylee. Also, the media also paid the guy who "found" Casey's body, a lot of money for a picture of snake bones which were in the same area as the body, just so they can say they found something. The media also broadcast-ed this story during the summer where their ratings are usually slow. They moved all of their popular sports over to their slower channels just so they can hook people on to their media bloodbath.  **Instead of building more sports stadiums, maybe they should start building Gladiator arenas. As I can see, many closed-minded people including everyone who will kill another citizen without having any evidence, would love to watch the bloody messes that are made in an arena for no reason.

• this is the same "argument" I used about Lacey Peterson. Thank you for being so much more articulate Than I. One life is no more worthy of attention than another.

• when did rick scott rip you off?

• Rich just put Kyla in a plastic bag and buried her in his backyard, figuratively speaking, OF COURSE. Someone file a missing persons report within the next 31 days please.

• Hi Kyla-- I have to take issue with one of your main points, that "just because this particular case got heavy media coverage does NOT mean that no one is devastated or outraged about the other victims of murder in this country ever year." I think that's EXACTLY what it means. Is anyone on television night after night, breathlessly covering every detail of the case of Ebony Lawson, a Miami 4-year-old beaten to death in April? What about any of the other African American children murdered every year? The year Caylee Anthony was killed, there were 257 of them younger than 12 -- that's 36 percent of murders in that bracket. Does media coverage seem proportional? I'll admit that in a lot of cases, it seems the "race card" is a cheap play. But you were quick to discount factors of wealth and race, and I disagree with the idea that it's "completely arbitrary which stories people latch onto the most tightly"-- people latch onto stories about those who look like them. And as for my being a callous, arrogant ass, I don't think there's any situation where there isn't an appropriate time for a "Yes But," even if it means saying "enough already" when it comes to obsessive coverage of a cute little girl whose life was cut short. It's juicy to learn about how much Casey Anthony is partying and what tattoos she got before her arrest, but those hours and hours and hours of national airtime couldn't have been better spent? We have American combat troops in three different countries and thousands more on active duty on every continent but Antarctica, and we're obsessing over an old man talking about how badly his daughter's car trunk smelled? How many Iraqi children Caylee's age were blown to pieces over the past 10 years? More than one, except people were being paid to do it. I can't understand a position in which understanding their situation was less important than understanding, in absurd detail, the sad case of one toddler. I'm not saying that I don't care about justice for Caylee Anthony. But the national media are powerful tools, tools that could have been much better directed elsewhere. Sincerely, Rich

• I absolutely CANNOT BELIEVE how utterly appalling and asinine this "article" is.  I saw the headline and thought "No way, is this seriously a sarcastic headline about a murdered child?"  And then I read it, and holy christ.  Way to completely transcend already low expectations.  I haven't the faintest idea what makes you think you can condescend to everyone and come off like you're the only one who knows anything about the murder rate in this country.  What kind of callous, arrogant ass uses the words "yes, but" in reference to the currently unsolved death of a child? This post reminded me of every argument I've ever heard against feminism, the old "Don't you know what it's like for women in other countries?  At least no one's forcing you into marriage or throwing acid in your face."  This is a false analogy, just like some idiot saying "Caylee Anthony didn't get justice, well too bad!  Do you know how many other victims never get justice?"  Are you freaking kidding me?  Who says stuff like this?  Just because this particular case got heavy media coverage does NOT mean that no one is devastated or outraged about the other victims of murder in this country ever year.  That's just the way the media works.  So many times it's completely arbitrary which stories people latch onto the most tightly, sometimes there are race and wealth factors, sometimes there is a celebrity factor, like you pointed out.   But either way, this is another false analogy, to complain about Caylee Anthony's death getting such wide coverage when so many others go under- or unreported.  She's the exception rather than the rule, that's how this works!  People will engage with one story now and then, and unless they're grossly shortsighted or strangely fixated, that doesn't mean that they are solely focusing all their thoughts onto the ONE case, the ONE victim.  It just becomes an example, an easily-cited way to for people to discuss crime and the legal system.  You've got it completely backwards, like so many people I've heard pontificating about this case and other high-profile ones like it.  The very basic fact of the matter is that  three-year-old child is dead, and no one is being held accountable.  Her death, the trial, and now the verdict, make people think about things that most people don't enjoy thinking about, but should.  People SHOULD be outraged at something like this!  If nothing else, it should make you imagine what it’s like for the thousands of families whose cases aren’t all over tv, who don’t get super pricey lawyers they can’t afford fighting to represent them.  If after all that time and effort, they’re still technically no closer to finding out who’s responsible for this child’s death, than what hope do the non-publicized others have?  It should make you feel compassion, not like writing a super-smug blurb with a graph that helps absolutely no one. In summation, this article is gross, and your pie chart makes you look like a sad Cracked reject.

• Hopefully cable news will start paying more attention to the REAL issues like health care, social security, Rick Scott ripping us off.  Stop supporting STUPID TV.

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