Off The Wall #5

My World

Now that the Casey Anthony trial is over, I can comment on it without unduly influencing the jury. Like the rest of the media in this country, I’ve avoided the subject up until now.

Obviously, I’m kidding.

There were so many things wrong with this entire Casey Anthony story, the worst of which is that a little girl was murdered and nobody has to answer for it. I watched with amusement as hundreds of people lined up every day to get into the courthouse to watch the trial. People acted like complete morons as they pushed, shoved and generally ran over one another to get a seat. Don’t these people have jobs? I doubt very much if they were all independently wealthy, so how are they able to spend their mornings standing in lines and their days in a courthouse gallery?

I also watched with amusement as crowds of people gathered around public areas with televisions and their collective jaws dropped when the verdict was announced. It was very much like the scenes I saw when the O.J. Simpson verdict was read, except in that case, people cheered, while in this case people were none too pleased.

The only difference I can discern between these two cases is that one had racial overtones while the other had a cute girl as a defendant. But in both cases, someone got away with murder, in my opinion.

I barely had time to watch the coverage on the nightly news. But I saw enough to realize that nearly everyone connected to this case (with the possible exception of the judge), from the spectators to the witnesses to the jury to Casey Anthony, are all crazy. I realize that “crazy” is an oversimplified, overused and somewhat generic term, but what I really mean to say is that in my world, they are all crazy.

In my world, a parent doesn’t lose their child and not report it for 30 days, then weave a web of lies intended to distract, mislead and confuse the people who actually care that my child is missing and are willing to help me find her.

In my world, a grandparent spends as much time as possible with their grandchildren, and if that grandchild’s mother avoids me, I’m going to track her down and choke some answers out of her concerning the whereabouts of my grandchild. Then I’m calling the cops.

In my world, people spend their days working or doing things productive to their family, community or world. If my goal for the day is to outrun a few hundred people so I can watch a train wreck and get all the gory details, I need to reexamine my life, because it has very little meaning and I’m of very little use to my family, community or world. The same applies to anybody that proposes marriage to someone they’ve never met just because they watched them on television.

In my world, people who murder their three year-old daughter and then get a free pass from the justice system are, at the very least, doomed to oblivion and are never heard from or seen again unless it’s to re-arrest, retry or revile them. Sadly, this will not be the case with Casey Anthony. In all likelihood, she will be a rich person one day soon, whether it’s from a book publisher, a movie producer or Playboy magazine.

In my world, unattractive people who kill their children are represented by a public defender and promptly convicted while attractive people are given a free legal defense team that realizes the potential of representing an attractive client on their future earnings potential.

Oh wait, that’s your world, too. Like it or not, that’s the world we live in.

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Randy Hartless is Executive Director of the Parker Area Chamber of Commerce, columnist and regular contributor on KLPZ 1380am.