Pissed off and Skeeved Out

Honestly, have you ever seen any one who better fit the pedophile stereotype than John Mark Karr? I know, I know, pedophiles come in all shapes and sizes, they are everyone and no one. But he has that effete and innocuous, but somehow menacing blandness that seems to be the hallmark of those who spend their lives trying to shroud themselves from scrutiny. At first glance he seems harmless, but when you look in his eyes, there is something chilly and feral behind the vacancy of his gaze. He does not fit inside his own skin; it is ill equipped to contain the scope of his malignance. Those who encounter him experience a sense of vague but decided unease.

And yet, the bulk of my anger is not directed at him. What I feel for him is revulsion and loathing, but I understand that the poisonous urges that drive him are uncontrollable and innate. He is a slave to his perversity. He is powerless to reign it in. He cannot fix himself.

When I was a child, there was a man in the neighborhood that was known as "The Candy Man." One had simply to ring his doorbell, and he would proffer a bowl of goodies, smiling as the neighborhood children shyly helped themselves. I was never allowed to go there. As far as I know, he never hurt anybody, and was, most likely, a lonely and harmless old man. But he set off alarm bells for my mother, and she did not ignore them even knowing that her instincts could be wrong. She would rather have been wrong, than sorry.

We've all felt that prickling fear, haven't we? That sense that something about someone is just wrong. That sick dread in the pit our stomach that tells us there is danger, evil, malevolence in the presence of innocence. Do we push it away? I think most of us do not.

I think Patsy and John pushed it away. That's not a fair or rational accusation to make. It's an injudicious assignation of blame, but I can't help but feeling that something...something was there. Something they should have seen or felt. The man was in LOVE with a six year old. He was obsessed. He pined for her day and night and was finally compelled to kill her, rather than live his life knowing she could never be his. Such aberrance does not pass through this world without leaving some kind of ripple on the placid surface of normality.

Why didn't they see it?? Their blindness angers me.

And there's more that fuels my indignation. I am...sickened and disgusted by the way that this beautiful, innocent child was tarted up, paraded around, sexualized and objectified by the gaurdians of her innocence. They exploited and defiled what should have been protected and nurtured. It's quite likely that John Karr would have fixated on JonBenet regardless. Pedophiles do not need reason or encouragement to feed their need. But they fueled the fire of his depravity by marketing her sexuality and cultivating validation of her beauty and desireability.

I find the entire concept of Children's beauty pageants loathsome and obscene. Not only because they sexualize and objectify, but because they promote the ideal that worth lies with beauty, and because by quantifying the beauty of some children, they diminish the inherent beauty of all children.

We are destroying the innocence of our children. Through increasingly pervasive, voyeuristic and harmful media in addition to apathetic parenting, we are leaving our children vulnerable to influences they are not equipped to understand or reconcile. We have lost sight of the fact that children are not small adults who possess the capacity to reason through the very complex issues they are being assaulted with every day. Violence, irresponsible and injurious sexual constructs, intolerance, immorality and hatred are tainting the purity and simplicity of chidhood. And it is our fault.

Damned if I know what to do about it.

I have been accused of being overprotective and hyper-vigilant. I have been accused of not letting my kids have any fun. I have been accused of being rigid, unrealistic and overly censorious.

But my kids are alive. Part of that is sheer, unadulterated luck, of course. But JonBenet is not lying in a cold and lonely grave because of bad luck. She was set on a collision course with disaster through the actions and choices of those charged with her safekeeping. That is not a very charitable view to take, I suppose. And perhaps someday I will find myself eating those words. But for now, that knowledge is eclipsed by my anger. She didn't have to die.

R.I.P. JonBenet and Patsy. I hope you both find some peace.

Footnote:I realize John Karr has not been proven guilty. I realize there is still some doubt about his involvement. But somebody killed her, and my assessment of why remains the same, regardless of the identity of the murderer.