Sometimes I am so clueless about current events that it amazes me. What triggered that thought is that I had been almost completely oblivious to the goings on in the murder trial of Casey Anthony. It was only yesterday when she was acquitted of her daughter’s murder that I became aware that this case had apparently been gripping the cable news world over many years and that people around the nation had been so obsessed by it that some actually flew to Florida from all over the country and lined up early outside the courthouse in order to get a seat at the trial.

Apparently the cable news world and chattering classes had decided Anthony was guilty and the acquittal seems to have caused some kind of national freak-out. Why are people so quick to dismiss the jury’s verdict? After all, they are the ones who followed the trial most closely.

I had not been totally unaware of the trial. I check Google News headlines regularly and had seen mention of the name Casey Anthony accompanied by a photo of her and knew that she was on trial for something but did not see any reason follow it up.

While the death of a two-year old child is undoubtedly tragic and sad, there are many such murder cases and it baffles me why some become the focus of so much attention. Is it due to the fact that the media pays more attention if there is a young, white, reasonably attractive (as far as one can tell from the thumbnail photos), middle class woman at the center of events?

Right now there is a trial going on in Cleveland of Anthony Sowell, a man accused of the serial rape and murder of eleven women and burying their bodies in various parts of his home. It is a macabre and truly sensational case that is a big story locally. But as far as I can tell, it is not receiving much attention nationally. I would not be surprised if even many Clevelanders were following the Casey Anthony story more closely than the Sowell case. Is it because the people involved are all black and the victims were mostly drug addicts, prostitutes, runaways, homeless, or otherwise social outcasts?