News I’d rather not know
Published by Deanna Hoak March 14th, 2007 in blogI’ve been awake for hours because I just can’t stop thinking about this poor little girl. Poor, poor baby. :-( (It’s about unbelievably horrific abuse–it might make you sleepless, too, so maybe you don’t want to click.)
Sometimes I think I should just stop reading the news. I’d rather not know about some things. We can hope, I guess, that stories like that will cause people to pay attention, to make a call that could save a kid’s life.
But…God. Poor baby.
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I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I was short-listed for a World Fantasy Award for my copyediting.
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Two things strike me about this story.
1) How come it hasn’t been picked up nationally? (Of course, I haven’t seen the news yet this morning.)
2) I’m really starting to believe my students when they say they don’t watch the news as it depresses them. I used to think they were lazy. The stories have to be told, but they’re so sensational, so emotional, that it’s hard not to be depressed.
Oy gevalt.
I was going to say, What kind of person would do that? or What were those people thinking? … but it’s so awful, I’m not sure the answers would even make sense.
The thing that annoys me is that stories like this do frequently get picked up nationally. It’s one of the media’s two standard stories about girls: 1. Poor (and usually black) girls who have been abused and/or malnourished 2. More affluent (and usually white) girls who disappear or are abducted.
It’s irritating and repetitive and, IMHO, emphasized mostly as a cheap way to hook an audience.
That’s awful. Have you read A Child Called It? It’ll break your heart.