Casey Anthony, Miss America

By Alan Caruba

Casey Anthony, the mother of a toddler whose body was stuffed into a bag and tossed into a swamp, will walk free in a day or so. A jury was unable to conclude that the abandoned body, its face covered in duck tape, was murdered. There wasn’t, they insisted, enough “proof” even though the child’s mother did not report her to be either dead or missing, and then lied to family, friends, and law enforcement authorities until the body was recovered.

The case caught the attention of the public because Casey Anthony’s behavior was not just bizarre, it was abhorrent.

The mainstream media has picked the bones of Cayley Anthony clean without telling Americans that the U.S. has the highest rate of child homicide rates, four times as high, as all other Western nations surveyed.

In a March 31, 2000 article, World Net Daily report, Ian Murray, a senior research analyst at the Statistical Assessment Service, a Washington-based non-profit, non-partisan think tank, said “in the rush to reduce America’s high juvenile homicide rates into a gun-control debate, we’re missing the chilling bigger picture of the real and deadly risks our children face, and what it says about our society.”

“For every American child 4 or younger” that is murdered, said Murray, “more than eight others died violently by other means” than guns. They are murdered by blunt objects, strangulation or, most commonly, hands, fists or feet.”

We don’t have a gun problem in America; 80,000,000 Americans own guns. “Even if all the gun homicides were taken out of the equation, America would still have an infant-homicide rate more than 3.5 times as high as the other Western countries”, a phenomenon Murray described as “staggering.”

We live in a society where toddlers are dressed provocatively, adorned with adult makeup, and paraded in contests as objects of desire. We have gone from Shirley Temple to JonBenet Ramsey.

We have gone from a preponderance of traditional two-parent families to a scandal of single-parent “families” and Casey Anthony was just one of many such single mothers. No one knows who the father is.

It is not a stretch to point out that President Obama was the son of a divorced, teen-aged mother, who remarried, divorced again, and abandoned her child to the care of her parents. The President experienced trauma and dislocation throughout all of his formative years. Why should we not conclude that it seriously affected him? To this day, his mother-in-law lives in the White House to provide a measure of care for his two daughters.

Common to both Ms. Anthony and the President is the persistent and blatant telling of lies.

Of the present tragedy and miscarriage of justice, we already know that Casey Anthony has achieved “celebrity” status. We have gone from Hester Prynne of the “Scarlet Letter” to books, made-for-TV movies, and all the other blandishments that will be lavished on this accused and acquitted murderer.

None of this speaks well of our society. Too many toddlers are being murdered by their parents. Too many are being abandoned to the care of their grandparents. Too many are lost in a foster parent system that often leaves them scarred for life.

It does not take much prescience or insight to conclude that Casey Anthony will come to a bad end. It’s just a matter of time.

America is heading in a bad direction, too. Do we have time to turn around a wounded society that allows sexual deviants to parade in our streets and preach their lifestyle in our schoolrooms?

Do we have time to end the practice of same-sex marriages?

Do we have time to put an end to all the calls that any symbol of the Christian and Jewish faiths be removed from public display, any mention of God or any prayer in public meetings be silenced?

The clock is ticking.

© Alan Caruba, 2011