Ignoring the Casey Anthony Case: Voyeurism in My Orlando Town

Like most people I have some voyeuristic interest in watching the famous or not famous, glimpsing into their life as it unravels. Being a fly on the wall is one of our secret hidden impulses, but watching the Casey Anthony trial sickens me.

This circus is a barbaric Colloseum-style feeding of the Christians to the lions.

Crowds are pouring into my Orlando town from all over the nation. People are taking time off work, making the trial their summer leisure, lining up at our courthouse, drooling in anticipation, pie-eyed and lusty, eager to snatch a prime seat to kick back and take in the misery of the Anthony’s.

The spectators not so lucky to get a courtside view are glued to their TV’s as they were with the O.J. Simpson trial, their daytime shows pre-empted. But instead of TV viewers getting annoyed as they do when the President dares to interrupt a second of Days of Our Lives, Casey followers are okay with losing their regularly scheduled program because they’re invited into real stories of cholorform searches, decaying odor analysis, claims of sexual abuse, alleged family cover-ups, duct tape pictures, visuals of little Caylee’s clothing, a story about a drowning and Casey’s state of mind.

Viewers are being fed until they're gorged with the forensics of the Anthony case, the unfolding of the greatest tragic thriller our town has ever seen.  

The little girl Caylee is lost in all of this, gone to the more interesting aspects of the case -- the details.

It’s sick.

I say that not because I’m so righteous or above watching a titillating story unfold; I say it because this feeding frenzy on the Anthonys seems gross.  Maybe it's because I’m a mother, maybe it’s because I no longer look for bad news in other people’s lives to give me relief from the bad news in my own.

I followed Casey’s story when it first came out years back but now I mostly catch a brief overview of the latest headline in the paper. I’m not interested in matricide, that a little girl was likely killed by her mother and how Casey finds new intricacies to convince us she didn’t, or that grandma is sobbing on the stand having lost her grandbaby and now her daughter. That Cindy Anthony and her husband’s life is forever stained, the stigma of being Casey’s parents infused into their every day from now until their death isn't my entertainment.  

I watched Cindy bow her head and sob for a minute and had to turn off. Her sorrow isn’t mine to intrude, how dare I.

But tragedy makes us look.

Diana’s tragedy made us look but for heroic reasons for how she lived her life outside the lines, imbuing compassion into the world, standing up to the royal tight asses, maintaining grace despite the suffocating pomp she had to follow and the chilly family she dealt with after she married Charles and his mother.

We watched Diana and felt great love for how she largely broke free of royal shackles.  We watch the Anthonys and feel horror but we keep keep watching. We can't look away from a train wreck, although we get nothing from it. But our voyeurism should be a reflexive response to hope for better for someone, not a peek into a world that reminds us how much better our life is.  

This trial is everywhere and occasionally an uninvited intruder.

A few weeks ago I was with my 13 year old daughter at the AT & T store. While we were looking at cell phones, against the back wall of the store I noticed two huge HD flat screens blaring the trial proceedings. It was like AT & T wanted their customers to know that since  we were kind enough to take time away from watching the trial at home to buy an IPhone from them, by golly AT & T would reward us by making sure we didn't miss a moment of this all important case.

The coverage at the time showed Casey at her seat, tight hair pulled back, raccoon eyes, her signature stoic, emotionless stare. The prosecutor threw questions to one of the detectives on the stand, something about the decaying odor, the death smells, was it garbage or pizza or human remains or….. And while my daughter knows the basics of the case, “mother likely killed kid,” because she asked me once after school when one of her friends mentioned it, I don’t want her involved in the details of death, in the gore and ghastly storyline of how a mother suffocated her little girl with Cholorform.

Asking why is hard enough on the adult psyche, hearing how is useless to everyone’s soul.  

Again, my rant isn't to be self-righteous; I've hardly earned that as I peer into car crashes, read People magazines latest on Lindsey, a train wreck all its own. We all rubber neck the sexy, gory and mysterious cases. We turn and look at the crash on the side of the road while the emergency workers hover, praying we don't see anything ghastly but reflexively hoping we do.

And, it’s not for me to judge our knee jerk primal human responses: fear, fighting, food, finding a mate and fascination, but sitting back chomping a big bowl of popcorn, feet up while watching the Anthony family shatter is something that slithers over me, and so I push it off.  

Perhaps I’m reacting so strongly because of news reports indicating that the cost of the case in added Orlando security and road blockages is astronomical, but that costs are balanced by the profits to our hospitality industry and local businesses.

There is an economy built around barbarianism, and so airing the Anthony case is merely a public service.

I see audacity in people who drive here not for Disney or Sea world (maybe Shamu and the tea cup ride come after the trial), making a vacation out of watching a mother who killed her child while the grandparents are forced to testify to the inexplicable. This I feel, speaks to the lowest depths of humanity.

Destroying your own, being invited to watch the replay in person or on TV, renting a room, grabbing a hotdog and doing it all over the next day.

Whatever happened to vacations to see the Grand Canyon, Woodstock, Disney, Aurora Borealis?

Perhaps one person's entertainment is another person's disgust, perhaps we are too engrossed in the downfall of others' lives to notice the beauty in our own.