Nancy vs. Nancy

Let's start with the facts, shall we? I always like to start by laying out the agreed-upon facts.

Melinda Duckett was a 21-year-old woman with a small child. The child was reported missing by the mother, who told police that he had been snatched from his crib. Two weeks after the child's disappearance the mother appeared on Nancy Grace's cable TV show, where she was berated by the host, who pounded on the table and asked, "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?" In effect accusing Duckett of complicity in her son's disappearance.

The day after her appearance on Nancy Grace's TV show, Melinda Duckett shot herself in the head, committing suicide at the age of 21.

Those are the facts. What follows from those facts?

Does Nancy Grace have blood on her hands?

Andrew Cohen has an interesting piece in the Washington Post where he argues, a lot more reasonably than I would be able to, that, given the incendiary nature of Grace's show and the lynch-mob mentality with which she operates it, what happened to Melinda Duckett was bound to happen eventually.

This is what Cohen says:

"But if in the end it turns out that Grace did play a role in Duckett's suicide I would not be the most shocked person in the world. In fact, I'm surprised that violence hasn't surrounded her shtick already and more often. The combination of rage, revenge, accusation and innuendo that permeates her show and her television personality is precisely the sort of roiling, viscious, corrosive potion that leads people to think they are heroes when they are about to act as villians. I have often worried for Grace's own personal safety, figuring that it was just as likely that someone who was negatively affected by her show would try to take her out as it was conceivable that someone would in the end decide to allow Grace to become, literally, a femme fatale."

Nicely put.

I will fess up at this point. I am thoroughly disgusted by Nancy Grace and have been long before this incident. Her brand of hang-'em-high-and-sort-out-the-facts-later brand of so-called "journalism" is a disgrace to the network she works for, and they should have cancelled her show and thrown her ass off the air a long time ago. Her claiming that her show bears no responsibility for Duckett's suicide simply because it happened before the show aired is nothing short of pathetic -- the worst kind of sophistry.

I have to admit, though, it made me think.

Famed in American legend (as they say in "Citizen Kane") is the story of how Nancy Grace acquired her prosecutorial zeal. She was a 19-year-old living in Georgia and engaged to a star college baseball player when her fiance was brutally and senselessly murdered outside a convenience store. That incident turned her, or so the story goes, from a young woman who loved Shakespeare into the brutal, bleached-blonde vigilante virago we know and loathe today.

But just for the hell of it, let's imagine something -- a "thought experiement," as Bill Bennett might put it.

Let's imagine that, in the Summer of 1980, Nancy Grace had her show on CNN. And let's further imagine that a grieving 19-year-old Nancy Grace appeared on Nancy Grace's show to discuss her fiance's murder. How would Nancy Grace have stood up to an on-air grilling by Nancy Grace?

I think it might go something like this:

NANCY
Now, Ms. Grace, you’ve said that you and your fiancé had no prior involvement with his killer.

NANCY
That’s right.

NANCY
But in fact he was a co-worker of your fiancé’s, wasn't he?

NANCY
Well…

NANCY
Wasn't he?

NANCY
I don’t think that I –

NANCY
You’ve said that he was 24 when in fact he was 19, haven’t you?

NANCY
I’m not exactly sure…

NANCY
So you were the same age, is that right?

NANCY
I guess so…

NANCY
You knew him before that night, didn’t you?

NANCY
No, not really…

NANCY
You were lovers, weren’t you?

NANCY
No, I –

NANCY
You told him to shoot him, didn’t you?

NANCY
No, I –

NANCY
You had this little scheme in mind from the beginning, didn’t you?

NANCY
No --

NANCY
In fact, you planned it together, didn’t you?

NANCY
No, that not the way it –

NANCY
It was perfect, wasn't it? You get your lover to kill your fiancé, than your lover goes to prison and you’re all alone with the insurance money. You took out an insurance policy on him, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU???

NANCY
I didn’t, no --

NANCY
How many other men do you have waiting in the wings, you fucking slut? How many men have to die before they catch on to what a scheming, conniving, manipulative, murdering little bitch you are? Confess! You killed your fiancé! ADMIT IT! ADMIT IT!!!!

Do you think that, had something like that happened in the Summer of 1980, Nancy Grace might have gone home that night and shot herself in the head?

And do you think that American culture might have been better off if she had?

Tom Moran