That's Entertainment...Isn't It?

My morbid fascination with crime (of which I am not proud, by the way) began in elementary school when a rash of kidnappings of young girls in Kansas City had me shaking in my bed or sleeping on my parents' bedroom floor. (One of the girls was kidnapped walking home from the community pool where I swam every day that summer. Her headless body was found some time later, but no one was ever charged with her murder.) From that time forward I thought if I kept one finger on the pulse of violent crime, especially in my area, I would know where to go and not to go and what to do and not to do in order to remain safe. I began a lifetime of reading newspapers and watching the evening news.

I recoil at the idea of watching fictionalized violence on TV or in movies, and marvel that such programs succeed, but long before the OJ trial, I was entranced by the real thing. The grizzly details were secondary to me - I wanted to know where, when and why crimes happened. I thought being well informed was like being well armed. It gave me courage.

Occasionally through the years a particular case has grabbed my attention. When I told my brother about BTK years before his capture, Brent thought I was talking about a hamburger at Burger King. The artist's sketch of the Unabomber in a hoodie with sunglasses haunted me because I learned that he had mailed one of his bombs from the same post office I used for several years. One of Ted Bundy's victims was taken from my college campus. I kept a file in my brain full of such information.

I followed the Elizabeth Smart case in Utah, the Lacey Peterson case in California (Why? I don't even live in California) and the Natalie Holloway case in Aruba (of all places) and became hooked on daily updates from Nancy Grace and Greta Van Sustern, whose programs on rival networks air simultaneously when I am going to bed.

So the other night I was flipping channels to see which stories the two programs were covering. Greta, who is from Green Bay herself, was interviewing Brett Favre -- no interest in that story. I switched to Nancy Grace and settled in.

She was interviewing a grandmother about her missing two-year-old granddaughter. As I read the ticker to get more information, snapshots of the wide-eyed little girl were blinking in quick succession on the screen.

She was a darling child, just as darling as Polly Klaus, JonBenet Ramsey, Jessica Lunsford, and all of the rest. As the story unfolded we learned that this little girl had been neglected by her mother in the past. Who could neglect such a person? Who could neglect any small or helpless person?

And that's when it hit me -- I am watching this program for my own entertainment. If someone somewhere didn't kidnap or kill someone else, there would be a void in my own life.

So I am done with Nancy Grace and Greta Van Sustern and the whole cottage industry that has sprung up to satiate morbid curiosities like my own. I am not really using this information - I am feeding off of it, but I won't feed off of it anymore.

Terrible things will no doubt continue to happen at the hands of horrible people, but I will no longer be a party to it.