When In Doubt, Dive In
So I've been told.
I've also been told I need to write more. So I'll dive in.
[clears throat]
Uh, Music In My Head? Just a couple of songs lately. Song One is "Sugar (On My Tongue)" by Trick Daddy (with Lil Kim and several others). Awesome song. It sounded familiar right away, and I finally realized it's a remake of an obscure Talking Heads track. Sort of. Actually it's much better than the original.
As much as I don't want it to, the Runaway Bride story keeps draining my brainpower. I read somewhere (FARK.com, I think) that her family knows someone in power at CNN, and that's why they were able to get so much media attention.
And truly, Ann Telnaes hit it right on the head: http://www.ucomics.com/anntelnaes/2005/05/02/ (this link will expire around May 16, 2005).
'Events' like this, and like Michael Jackson's trial, are sort of the ultimate reality shows. I mean, they're really real. Sort of. If you've ever been interviewed for a newspaper or television story, you probably know what I mean. I've been interviewed for both, and in both cases, I was misquoted and edited to prove the reporter's point. And I was a very small fry. Makes me wonder about the level of distortion in bigger stories. But I don't think the 'public' wants to know that; I think they want to believe.
As for Jennifer Wilbanks (finally getting to the 'substance' of the story) -- didn't she, as an adult in a free society, have the right to 'run away from home' without telling anyone? Seems to me she did/does. Rude? Yeah. Inconsiderate, too, but not illegal. And if her family freaked and pulled strings to have the police make finding her a priority, if people in Duluth dropped what they were doing to comb the sewers for her? Well, those were their decisions, not Jennifer Wilbanks's. She's not a six-year-old child. Amber alerts are not issued for adults.
Of course, she did lie -- explicity -- to authorities several days after running away, and she could be liable for that, both criminally and in civil court. But I would think she'd only be liable for what was done on her behalf after her false reports.
The case is a bit of an onion, i.e. there are a lot of layers to it.
Another layer, below the legality of her running away, is of course why? I think anyone who's ever faced a big wedding can offer one obvious reason: it's scary. This huge event, thundering towards you, now completely beyond your control.... 600 guests. 14 bridesmaids. Of course, there could be other reasons. Did she realize she didn't love John Mason? Could she have been abused by him, or seen hints of such danger?
Could she have some sort of mental illness? I think she almost definitely does. "Jennifer has some issues the family was not aware of." That's her uncle, quoted in this article. John Mason, the fiance, told CNN, the "only concern now is to get Jennifer well." Of course, just realizing that you're the story-of-the-century-of-the-week could be enough to traumatize a person severely.
Finally, why do we care? Some of you probably don't care, and for that I applaud you. We need another one of these distractions like we need a Face Eating Tumor.
And yet...I can't help but think a lot of the fascination centers around the whole woman-as-possesssion aspect of marriage. Sure, laws that grant husbands ownership status have been off the books for many years, but the attitude remains, and I think it's one of the leading causes of friction in modern marriages.
More obviously, we all face decisions with serious consequences. Once we commit to one course of action, we usually experience some post-decision dissonance, but we hardly ever reverse course on such decisions. Jennifer Wilbanks took the other road. And look where it got her.
There's a lot more to this. $100,000 for a wedding? Doesn't she owe at least an apology to those people who crawled through sewers? Doesn't she owe a major apology to Hispanics, for tarnishing their image? And one I keep coming back to, over and over again: out of all those people -- friends, family, bridesmaids, clergy -- wasn't there even one person Jennifer Wilbanks could talk to about this before she ran off?
What we have here, is failure to communicate. Wouldn't you agree?
Oh, and the other song in my head?
"Albuquerque" by Weird Al Yankovic. Of course.
I've also been told I need to write more. So I'll dive in.
[clears throat]
Uh, Music In My Head? Just a couple of songs lately. Song One is "Sugar (On My Tongue)" by Trick Daddy (with Lil Kim and several others). Awesome song. It sounded familiar right away, and I finally realized it's a remake of an obscure Talking Heads track. Sort of. Actually it's much better than the original.
As much as I don't want it to, the Runaway Bride story keeps draining my brainpower. I read somewhere (FARK.com, I think) that her family knows someone in power at CNN, and that's why they were able to get so much media attention.
And truly, Ann Telnaes hit it right on the head: http://www.ucomics.com/anntelnaes/2005/05/02/ (this link will expire around May 16, 2005).
'Events' like this, and like Michael Jackson's trial, are sort of the ultimate reality shows. I mean, they're really real. Sort of. If you've ever been interviewed for a newspaper or television story, you probably know what I mean. I've been interviewed for both, and in both cases, I was misquoted and edited to prove the reporter's point. And I was a very small fry. Makes me wonder about the level of distortion in bigger stories. But I don't think the 'public' wants to know that; I think they want to believe.
As for Jennifer Wilbanks (finally getting to the 'substance' of the story) -- didn't she, as an adult in a free society, have the right to 'run away from home' without telling anyone? Seems to me she did/does. Rude? Yeah. Inconsiderate, too, but not illegal. And if her family freaked and pulled strings to have the police make finding her a priority, if people in Duluth dropped what they were doing to comb the sewers for her? Well, those were their decisions, not Jennifer Wilbanks's. She's not a six-year-old child. Amber alerts are not issued for adults.
Of course, she did lie -- explicity -- to authorities several days after running away, and she could be liable for that, both criminally and in civil court. But I would think she'd only be liable for what was done on her behalf after her false reports.
The case is a bit of an onion, i.e. there are a lot of layers to it.
Another layer, below the legality of her running away, is of course why? I think anyone who's ever faced a big wedding can offer one obvious reason: it's scary. This huge event, thundering towards you, now completely beyond your control.... 600 guests. 14 bridesmaids. Of course, there could be other reasons. Did she realize she didn't love John Mason? Could she have been abused by him, or seen hints of such danger?
Could she have some sort of mental illness? I think she almost definitely does. "Jennifer has some issues the family was not aware of." That's her uncle, quoted in this article. John Mason, the fiance, told CNN, the "only concern now is to get Jennifer well." Of course, just realizing that you're the story-of-the-century-of-the-week could be enough to traumatize a person severely.
Finally, why do we care? Some of you probably don't care, and for that I applaud you. We need another one of these distractions like we need a Face Eating Tumor.
And yet...I can't help but think a lot of the fascination centers around the whole woman-as-possesssion aspect of marriage. Sure, laws that grant husbands ownership status have been off the books for many years, but the attitude remains, and I think it's one of the leading causes of friction in modern marriages.
More obviously, we all face decisions with serious consequences. Once we commit to one course of action, we usually experience some post-decision dissonance, but we hardly ever reverse course on such decisions. Jennifer Wilbanks took the other road. And look where it got her.
There's a lot more to this. $100,000 for a wedding? Doesn't she owe at least an apology to those people who crawled through sewers? Doesn't she owe a major apology to Hispanics, for tarnishing their image? And one I keep coming back to, over and over again: out of all those people -- friends, family, bridesmaids, clergy -- wasn't there even one person Jennifer Wilbanks could talk to about this before she ran off?
What we have here, is failure to communicate. Wouldn't you agree?
Oh, and the other song in my head?
"Albuquerque" by Weird Al Yankovic. Of course.
posted by Warrior of the Woods at 1:27 PM
3 Comments:
True, true and true. In 15 years this will be someone's dissertation topic, and yet probably there won't ever be enough brains being drained in the right places intercept the crap before it's presented in the history texts.
" the right places TO intercept"
and what am I saying? In 15 DAYS this will be a dissertation somewhere.
Thanks for the several insightful comments!
You may well be right. I wouldn't be surprised to see a law or two written and/or changed as a result of this, either.
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