I love Nancy Grace, but I see I’m in the minority. Just mention her name in any group and people will groan about how awful she is. More than one person has said to me, “I’d hate to be accused of a crime and have her come after me!” I think the problem is that she always presumes guilt, in the most prejudicial and histrionic manner.
Go, Nancy! I love her righteous anger and her crazy eye make-up. I love her phone voice, when she says, “What’s your question, dear?” I love the way her show ends, when she goes from a furious tirade straight to a dreamy, nearly romantic gaze directly into the camera and whispers, “Goodnight, friend.”
I first discovered Nancy during the Scott Peterson case, and it wouldn’t have been half as exciting without her running commentary. Her rage and scorn was such that Scott Peterson had killed her personally. If someone could prove that Scott was on Mars at the time his wife disappeared, Nancy would have sneered, “Oh, right, uh-huh” and gone right back to her charge of guilty as sin. At times, it seemed she might have a stroke right on live TV!
The other night, my husband called me over to the TV and said “Look, you’ll love this one,” and he was right. Nancy was ranting about a woman who had let her baby drown in the bathtub while she shopped online for shoes. What a story. It has everything, including the perfect metaphor for this moment in time.
Who among us hasn’t let the baby drown while we’re shopping online? So to speak.
If you don’t like that perspective, how about this. Here is another woman with five children under the age of ten. Her neighbors could see that ‘something’ was wrong with her….she was unable to get out of bed for days at a time. One neighbor tried to get the authorities involved, but nothing happened. The woman’s mother filed for some custody rights and the woman responded with a restraining order against her mother. The woman appears to have Bipolar Disorder but Nancy Grace’s callers complained “Then why didn’t she get help?”
Why indeed. Our society seems to veer between a chilly contempt for the mentally ill and an excessive sympathy for the addict. Maybe this mother should plead Internet Addiction, in order to evoke some compassion.
Meanwhile, Nancy is expecting twins and I hope this won’t force her to take time off from her show. I hope motherhood doesn’t temper her thirst for vengeance or alter her make-up regime. I love her just the way she is.
