Recent Observations Of Media And Culture

David Shagoury, Published in The Bulletin Newspapers June 28, 2001

The bizarre story of Chandra Levy, the intern in Washington who surreptitiously disappeared, has been a media focal point for almost two months now.  Much time and attention has been dedicated to this one particular missing person, although one has to feel nothing but compassion for her family and their horrible circumstance, after viewing the endless speculation about the issue I began to wonder if this massive media exposure would prompt all appropriate law enforcement departments to respond too aggressively to this case to the detriment of other families suffering the same horror.

Ms Levy was unknown prior to her tragic disappearance, and although it is completely justified that the media treat this case with more interest than most due to the possible entanglement of a sitting member of Congress; does the case itself justify two months of headlines without at least some significant change or development in the story?  Perhaps if the story was more directed at the publicly elected Congressman’s knowledge, then the incessant drama could be more justified, but generally speaking this is not the case.  Until Congressman Condit voluntarily or otherwise makes a significant statement and/or answers media questions, I would ask us all to think more about the hundreds of names we don’t know of whose families are mired in pain and who may be sadly pondering the idea hat due to the potential for a salacious element to the Levy disappearance, their loved one is less important and deemed less worthy of receiving the necessary attention to bring that daughter, son, husband or wife home for the 4th of July.

Every so often we are provided with a story so gruesome that it really defies even the expanding imagination of criminal destruction we have been numbed by experience to acknowledge.  Locally, the Stuart case pushed out understanding of the increasing lack of moral sense that a self indulgent, post modern society can produce when we were forced to accept the fact that a man planned and executed the murder of his own wife and unborn child.  Yet at the time, the media acted in a manner appropriately consistent with our societal values, and subsequent to discovering the sordid reality of the case correctly avoided even providing potential justification for the assailant’s heinous act.  Unfortunately, that good standard has not endured to the current tragedy we all have now been subjected to.

In Texas a very sick and depraved woman killed her own children; all five of them.  Notice that I did use the word “sick”, but certainly not in an exculpatory way.  For any person who can wantonly plan and perform the murder of five innocent children is evil and sick, and should be dealt with accordingly.  And any mother who can actually bring herself to doing the same to her own children possessed an evil that cannot be justified, because to do so subliminally expresses a message that there can be a reason for such a hideous violation against nature.  And yet, over the past week, certain T.V. reports actually led their report of this story with a reference to the Monster-Mother’s problems with post-partum depression.  This hideous if unintentional presentation was enticing the public to view this unparalleled case of criminal depravity as primarily a product of the hormonal imbalance that affect certain women after birth.  In truth, that media malfeasance is a reflection of what depths society can be led towards by powerful message makers.  For as we all know, regardless of what other behavioral deviances they can be fully blamed for, neither depression, nor hormonal affliction can justify the gross treachery that occurred in Texas.  More importantly, we as a society need to vigilantly guard against those who for political, professional or cultural reasons continue to explain the victim hood of the perpetrator regardless of the extremities of the crime.  In Texas, a woman chose to have many children.  She had a problem, but continued to give birth, and never loved her own babies enough to leave them to the care of another.  In Texas, a woman murdered all of her own children.  Her condition can provide an exculpatory explanation for certain unstable and yes even criminal behavior, but it cannot be allowed to provide a cart blanche to this most unnatural act, or more importantly any comparable act in the future.  Killing one’s own innocent children is not even remotely within the aegis of “crimes of passion”, it is a unique act of dark depravity that should introduce the guilty to her end.

In Texas, a mother murdered all five of her own innocent children….. that’s the story.