I think it’s very clear to most of us by now that most
people are fine human beings – but not all. And often, we think they’re the
former, and they turn out to be the latter. Now we have a school bus
driver from Cleveland, Ariel Castro, accused of kidnapping and holding three
women in bondage for 10 years. This is the lead international story, and every
day, new horrors surface.
How many of us are shaking our heads in disbelief, calling
for the eternal torture of the alleged perpetrator, while lapping up every “breaking
news” detail that’s breathlessly delivered to us by anchors and reporters, some
of them shaking their own heads? How much is a part of us enjoying this story? Do
you think maybe the news media folks know this?
That said, I wonder if devoting 45 minutes of every hour to
this isn’t a bit much. Sometimes, I think the news producers aren’t good at
gauging when most of us yearn to change the channel and see something else.
Maybe it’s just that I and some of the rest of you have seen this movie
already: “Manhunter” or “Silence of the Lambs.” How long do you think it will be
before the Cleveland
movie comes out?
I think the Stockholm Syndrome has been covered well past
the point of exhaustion. If there is a live topic here, though, I think it’s
about privacy. Where is the bright line between minding one’s own business and intervening
where it might save victims many years of grief? When do we pick up the phone
and call 911 to report something suspicious, or is that just paranoid meddling?
In a world where privacy is a vanishing commodity, where does our duty to
respect it end and our duty to help another human being begin? If we help, are
we heroes? And if we don’t, are we, in some small measure, accessories?
These questions may make us squirm a lot more than the story
itself does.
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