How Much Encouragement is Required to Hate?

It was a cool, clear night in December on the north side of Albuquerque, I was on my way to work.
I pumped iron for a couple of hours before I began the workout on my  mountain bike,
a ten mile uphill ride to the Health Care Center.
I was fifty, but my body didn’t know it.
The ride to work each night seemed almost effortless.
Riding north, crossing Central through the War Zone.
I pick up the bike trail which runs along an arroyo, with the majestic Sandia Mountains  not far off.
I love the high desert.
I love every natural environment, actually, but these peaceful niches in the midst of a city are welcome.
It’s almost Christmas.
As I pumped my legs and maneuver the machine onto Moon St both sides of the lushly vegetated middle class community are glowing softly with intricate and lovely light displays.
I’m listening to Dylan on the Sony Walkman strapped into a case on my tool belt.
He is warbling, “I threw it all away.”
 It’s hard for me to hear that song, as beautiful and meaningful as it is, all of these years after losing my wife, the song, as Bob Dylan’s music did to roughly a million of other listeners, seemed to be prophetic.
“One thing’s for certain, you will surely be hurtin’, if you throw it all away.”
God, sometimes I hated that song.

Suddenly everything went black.
I came to with my eyes shut tight, a natural reaction to extreme pain.
I heard voices, the pain was incredble.
I could feel that I was naked, covered with a sheet.
“What happened?” I cried out.
A voice spoke in a strong but hesitant way, “You were on a bicycle and you were hit by a car. You are in pretty bad shape. We think you have internal injuries.”
Through the agony twisting my body in spasms of fire, I asked, “Am I dying?”
The voice, probably an EMT or Paramedic, answered, “We don’t know. You are busted up pretty bad internally, you have some real serious fractures. “
I think I started moaning, uncontrollably.

As we have just seen, a life can be derailed in the fraction of an instant.

Sometimes things that happen are unavoidable, and sometimes the consequences are immeasurable.

What I really wanted to talk about today is Misty Croslin.

This is an involved and convoluted case.
Not a lot is known about the circumstances that led to Haleigh Cummings’ disappearance.
The case has generated a good deal of media attention, particularly from Nancy Grace, the former prosecuter.
A hero to some, to many she is evil incarnate, getting her jollies from verbally beating up on attractive, vulnerable young women.
Grace makes it clear on her show that she believes those she suspects of crime are entitled to no respect or civil rights or compassion.
She actually drove a suspect to commit suicide, and she’s proud of it.
A young attractive girl.

Back to Misty Croslin.
She is a child.
She’s 17, and in many ways she is a woman, but if you listen to her, and observe her, for even a few minutes, she is a child.
She was arrested recently, and her mug shot haunts me as I write this.
All of the pain and miscomprehension and fear is so obvious in her child’s face.
She faces several life sentences for selling prescription drugs without a license.
Can we get real here, for a second?
The Manson family girls  stuck a fork into the belly of a dying pregnant woman and are eligible for  parole.
But a teenage girl, an unsophisticated teenage girl, is going to get several life sentences for selling prescription drugs?

Nancy Grace starts every show by talking through the whole case, always shouting “Bombshell!” or “Breaking News” when she talks about episodes that occurred months ago, and were well covered.

Grace herself is physically attractive, although she wears a perpetual sneer of contempt for almost every one that appears on her show, including people who agree with her, but use a word or phrase that she objects to .
When that happens Grace goes into an angry diatribe “Rights?? Rights? Where were the rights of this helpless little child? Oh I forgot,” she says, with an even more obvious sneer, “You’re a defense lawyer, you believe the victim doesn’t have any rights, only the killers and rapists.”

Nancy Grace boasts of not having lost a case during her career.
I believe her.
I also know that statistically, some of the people she convicted were probably innocent.

I can safely say that Nancy Grace hates 17 year old Misty Croslin.
A young, pretty and obviously confused youngster caught up in events beyond her control.
Married to an older, reportedly, physically abusive drug user.

Hate, anger, revenge and superiority come so easily to Ms Grace and those who think like she does, which is, undoubtedly, millions of Americans.

This televising and glamorizing and over-exposing of crime and prison and suspects, particularly young, attractive suspects, or particularly “gory” suspects, cannot be a good thing for our psyche as a nation.
Compassion is not stupid. It is not socialist.
It is an important part of who and what we are.
I don’t know what happened in the case of Haleigh Cummings.
Neither does Nancy Grace.

Nancy Graces chortling “Tot Mom whines in court,  Misty Croslin cries, ‘I want out’”
is extremely mean and unbecoming.
She is the Glenn Beck of Televised crime "News".

People like Ms Grace, and Mr Beck, do not need encouragement.

They are our dark side.