Fall from Grace

If you have cable, you've undoubtedly seen, at one time or another, the awesome natural force that is \nNancy Grace. \nShe, single-handedly keeping the search for Natalee Holloway alive. She, calling for the mangled testicles of Michael Jackson. She, frothing at anger at the slap-on-the-wrist sentencing of Florida child molester Debra LaFave.\nLike a divine wind, Nancy Grace comes into your home, passes judgment and moves on.\nShe makes everything so easy. Grace is like morality in a can. If something's morally and/or ethically ambiguous, grab her out of the pantry, crack her open and she'll set you straight in no time flat.\nAnd she's totally justified. Because you undoubtedly know (she talks about it all the time on her show) that her fiancé was murdered in an armed robbery back in 1979, therefore giving her the right to pass judgment on every child molester and alky celebrity in the national media. Apparently, a loved one gets killed and that means you get treated with kids gloves by the American public for the rest of your life, regardless of what kind of bile you spit at the camera. \nOtherwise she would have been out of television years ago.\nSee, me and Nancy don't get along. But what bugs me the most is she's a "victims' rights advocate." Because she thinks the American legal system is too soft on \noffenders. \nWhich is funny, in a horrifying kind \nof way. \nAccording to the national Bureau of Justice Statistics, violent crimes have been in steady decline since 1994, and the national homicide rate is the lowest its been since the 1950s. On the other hand, the American prison system has tripled since 1980 -- thanks in no small part to mandatory minimum sentencing. It is the largest it has ever been, and is still growing. \nVictims' rights aren't under attack; if anything, the country needs to be weaned off of punitive justice. I mean, come on, it was only a few years ago that the Supreme Court ruled that you can't execute the mentally retarded. They had to have a ruling on this! There was discussion! The country's so enthralled in punishing the "wicked" that until recently, we were killing people who couldn't distinguish between right and wrong. And Nancy Grace feels like the justice system coddles the accused?\nYou know, there's a reason that the state, not the victim, prosecutes the accused. If we let victims of violent crimes dole out sentences, the murder rate would double quickly.\nThe government would have to hire out to even more private prison corporations (just like they do right here in Indiana) to build more private penitentiaries to hold all of society's new malcontents, and the world as we know it would descend into violent chaos. We'd start having tribal conflicts and retribution killings, and cable television would eventually become obsolete. Oh god, no. \nI wouldn't be able to watch CNN Headline News anymore. \nNo more Nancy Grace. \nSo maybe this isn't a bad thing.