A 29-year-old mother from Minnesota who accidentally killed her 3-week-old baby by rolling over on him while drunk on vodka set herself on fire this past week. While the story is beyond awful, Toni Medrano's guilt and anguish were made especially bad by Nancy Grace, the CNN talk show host who dubbed her "Vodka Mom" and asked why she wasn't being charged with first degree murder.
There is no doubt that what Medrano did was beyond awful. It was horrible parenting and she deserved to be (and was) charged with manslaughter. But Nancy Grace and her ilk don't make anything better. They're like a cancer to our justice system, and the more we watch them, the more power they have.
Can't you just see her and her angry viewers picking up pitchforks and torches and whipping the villagers into a frenzy?
All of her nicknames -- "tot mom"; "vodka mom"; etc. -- they make a mockery of our justice system. Grace -- and others like her -- see the world as black and white. My 3-year-old has a more nuanced view of things than she does. She may have come off as sweet and vulnerable on Dancing With The Stars, but she is the opposite on her show where she often seems shrill and punitive.
There are good guys and bad guys, and good guys do good things and bad guys are ALWAYS bad. They're bad, not because they have problems or issues or substance abuse issues, but because they purposely planned to be awful. The world according to Grace's kind of media is a wonderfully simplistic place full of people who do everything intentionally and with malice, and then people who are good and pious and watch her show.
Give me a break. For any mom, the unbelievable guilt of killing one's own child accidentally -- even when the circumstances are wholly irresponsible and unforgivable -- is punishment enough. Obviously, our REAL justice system believed in her guilt enough to charge her with manslaughter, but they didn't believe what she did was intentional or well thought out. So where is Grace getting her information?
The fact is, we don't know everything under the sun. Shocking, I know. We can't make pronouncements about people's innocence or guilt or armchair quarterback a legal case. Grace may be a lawyer but she isn't ON any of these cases. She isn't the prosecutor and she doesn't know every detail of the investigation.
Now, all of Medrano's children who were left are motherless and that is, in part, likely due to the intense media bullying she endured thanks to Nancy Grace and her nicknames. This tragedy has no winners. My heart goes out to the children she left behind.
Do you think Grace and other talking heads need to tone it down?
Image via CNN
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Comments 172
Nancy Grace and her kind need to just "shut up". If people stop giving in and listening to that kind of sensationalized "burnalism", they wouldn't have a place to just keep ranting about anything their 3 sizes too small hearts tell them. STOP LISTENING. maybe if we stop believing in them, they'll be like the Boogie Man and just go away.
As an older person, all I can say it that things have really degraded. Maybe this is why I haven't had TV since my mid- twenties, about thirty years. The first show of this ilk was 60 minutes, where someone is cornered, ambushed and put on the spot. That was new, and a big deal when it first came out. Leave well enough alone, the poor woman has enough to deal with. All this is, is enjoying someone else's pain, no matter how else is it rationalized. It's human nature to want to know the dirt, we all love it now and then, but it's not the best of human nature, and it's at the expense of someone else. No matter how messed up the poor woman is, she didn't set out to kill her baby.
In general I don't like Nancy Grace. Although this woman is responsible for her child's death by drinking we should not continue to push her to edge by making awful comments. At least she felt guilty while other parents wouldn't even care. The guilt should would have felt would have been enough punishment for her.