As you may have heard, a woman committed suicide the other day after a blistering interview with Court TV host Nancy Grace. The few times I've watched Grace, I've found her whole act pretty tasteless. She seems to operate off the premise that a person who's under suspicion of a crime is probably guilty and once they're arrested, you can remove that bothersome "probably" qualifier and get on with the sentencing.
Even worse to me is this notion that if your life is touched by crime, the only appropriate response is pure, uncontained rage. For some, that may well be the proper course but there are those forms of anger that are self-destructive and which serve to extend the damage. There are also some people who simply can't handle the anger. I'm thinking now of one acquaintance of mine who, years ago, was a crime victim. The harm done to him by the criminal was nothing compared to the harm my friend proceeded to do to himself, hungering for some kind of revenge that became increasingly unattainable. In fact, it was almost like he was consciously enlarging his victimhood until it became so large that no one could ever take it away from him.
In the case of the lady quizzed by Nancy Grace, the news clips I've seen suggest that she was almost attacking Melinda Duckett for not playing her prescribed role on a TV cable news crime investigation. It's all pretty disturbing and I think I agree with most of what Dahlia Lithwick wrote about it.