When news footage told the story of the shocking death of JonBenet Ramsey, we wanted to believe, in our perverted sickness, that the fine trimmed lawn and expensive furnishings of the Ramsey held a deep, dark secret; that the Ramseys were TOO perfect, and that that "perfection" had to cover an underlying sickness that led them to do the unthinkable.
Given the recent turn of events, it appears that we were duped. More to the point, we ALLOWED ourselves to be duped, because the fiction we created justified the Marxist hatred of the upper classes that seems to drive the thinking of America's underclass far too often. We allowed ourselves to be duped, because ultimately, something within us wants to sabotage the successes of the rich and famous, because in our work-a-day world, we somehow don't perceive themselves to have "earned" their money and their status.
And the media fed on that. They fed us every bit of information that pointed to the Ramseys as the cuplrits, and excluded information that would point in any other directions. They scoffed at the Ramseys, even as Patsy Ramsey was, unknownst to many of us, beginning a fight for her life that she would lose before their names would be cleared in the all important court of public opinion. Because stress is an all important factor in healing, it would not be illogical to conclude that our premature, extrajudicial judgment may have indeed ultimately cost Mrs. Ramsey her life.
The capture of the suspect in JonBenet Ramsey's murder may indeed say more about US than it does about him. We tried, convicted, and treated as pariahs a family that did not earn our scorn, but rather, deserved our sympathies. God bless those people that stood by the Ramseys and refused to believe the worst about them. Shame on the rest of us who fell into a trap set by our own minds.
For my own part, I am deeply sorry about my own premature judgment. I, for one, hope to use this as an object lesson against making such a horrible mistake in the future.