Brandon's Buzz

Paul Simon — “Pigs, Sheep, and Wolves” (from You’re the One) —

I freely admit that I have no bidness whatsoever chiming in on this luridly crazy Casey Anthony mess that is temporarily dominating the national conversation, because I haven’t followed this trial’s twists and turns with even a passing interest, and essentially all I know about the case I learned from paying half-hearted attention to the daily news blurbs on Inside Edition (a program that, no matter how much I love it, hardly has the probing journalistic sensibilities of a Frontline or even an Access Hollywood). Still, I can’t help myself: I happened to find myself listening to Sean Hannity’s radio program (don’t ask!) yesterday afternoon after the verdicts came down — Anthony was found guilty of lying to the police, basically, but not guilty of murder, manslaughter, or child abuse with regard to the still-unexplained death of her toddler daughter — and because I tend to find Hannity an insufferably pompous gasbag, I tend to avoid his pontifications whenever possible, but I was so riveted by the fact that he was making a great deal of sense in his analysis of this trial (and I was so stunned by the fact that I was actively agreeing with everything he said about same) that I couldn’t summon the strength to change channels. It’s not for me to say what role, if any, Anthony played in the tragic death of her daughter — and, by all external appearances, one must believe it was a significant one — but the prosecution failed wholly to prove their case, and so overplayed their weak hand that this jury frankly had no other choice but to do what they did. It doesn’t really matter what Anthony may or may not have Googled for research purposes (and incidentally, how many items in your personal computer’s history would you be hard-pressed to summon a reasonable explanation for if caught red-handed?), or how she may or may not have acted in the immediate wake of her daughter’s disappearance (and where, exactly, is The Official Handbook for How to Grieve Without Looking Guilty As All Hell in the Dewey Decimal System?), because the very heart of the case, as I understand it, was hollow: nobody — not one of the forensic experts working on this case — has been able to determine with any degree of certitude how this young girl even died, which means no one can say with any definitive proof that she was murdered. The people prosecuting this case seriously expected this jury to send this indisputably troubled woman to death row when they couldn’t even establish that a murder took place here at all? Sorry, but, for whatever flaws it may possess, the American system of jurisprudence — which was constructed around the idea that claims must be proven with silly things like facts, and evidence, and the abject elimination of even the slimmest shred of reasonable doubt — doesn’t work that way, and regardless of how oddly this woman may have behaved or how guilty she may have seemed for the past three years, this jury yesterday, having been handed a pile of tawdry and exceptionally muddled nonsense, made the least outrageous choice possible, and for that, they should be not chastised but commended.

names dropped with reckless abandon: "Inside Edition", Casey Anthony, Paul Simon, Sean Hannity