Friday, May 06, 2005

Leave the Runaway Bride alone

Why can't we disappear?What ever happened to the truly American right to be left alone? To be rude, crude, obnoxious. To treat your family poorly and--yes--to chuck it all and vanish if you want.

It may not BE right, but I thought we HAD the right.

Jennifer Wilbanks left her groom at the altar. For whatever reason, she decided to go. She didn't leave debts behind, or legal issues untended. She didn't desert a family or abandon children. She didn't ask anyone to come looking for her and she sure as heck didn't ask the media to make her front page news.

Now the outcry is to make her pay! And all she did was exercise that bedrock right to be left alone and do as she chooses.

But the media has made paranoia a national pastime. Although only a small percentage of missing children are really the victim of foul play and the Scott Peterson case is the exception not the norm, the 24-hour news channels whip up our fear, officials catch the furor...and we waste thousands of dollars looking for a woman who we had absolutely no reason to believe was in trouble.