Covering a big chunk of what we have been discussing lately:
Posted at 01:37 PM ET, 08/17/2006
JonBenet and Jumping to Conclusions
(Posted by guest blogger Valerie Strauss)
Upon learning that a non-family member is being held as a suspect in
the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, a friend told me that her first
reaction was shame.
She, like so many of us, thought someone in the family was responsible
for the 6-year-old's death 10 years ago.
The initial botched police investigation and the media leaks that came
out over the years certainly fueled our interest--and our suspicions.
So too, perhaps unfairly, did the parents' sexualization of their
6-year-old in the world of young beauty pageants (so aptly portrayed
in the current movie "Little Miss Sunshine."), something that seemed
to be unusual at the time. Not anymore. Even if many of us disliked
that whole scene, its defining characteristics have since her death
become popularized throughout the culture. Walk into a store for young
girls and look at the booty shorts and the shirts with come-hither
messages written across the chest.
If there is an admittedly obvious but real lesson to learn from this
turn of events (and assuming that the suspect will be found guilty),
it may be that we too often jump to conclusions about important things
with pretty much no evidence on which to base them.
My husband used to look at me increduously when I guessed who killed
the little girl, pointing out, correctly, that nobody but the cops and
the killer had any real clue.
Perhaps we ought to stop relying--and pretending to be--instant
experts on every topic imaginable. Real experts on any subject are few
and far between, and they know they don't know everything. But then
what would the cable television industry do to fill all those empty hours?
Posted by Valerie Strauss | Permalink | Comments (16)
Other Blogs' Comments: | Technorati talk bubble Technorati
But even she says "assuming that the suspect will be found
guilty"--haven't we JUST learned that assuming ANYTHING is dangerous?
And she says this in a column CONDEMNING ASSUMPTIONS!
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