Can Community And Church Prevent Monsters Among Us?

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – This is a sick, perverted society that continues to produce the monsters among us.  In other words, the horror stories and the horror movies may not be fiction or fantasy.  We have people that are willing to explode pressure cookers in crowds of marathon-goers.  We have men that are willing to kidnap and detain young women and do unimaginable things to them and do it for a decade.  We have neighbors and neighborhoods where these events are apparently occurring.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  This is really intriguing, AG.  I think your curiosity will be piqued by this.  Browse on over to, is this Slate or Salon?  I always get them confused.  I think it’s Slate.  Emily Bazelon writing last night, “Amanda Berry’s Story Isn’t Happy And It’s Not Over.”  Really?  Here’s the subtitle, Andrew: “Our morbid fascination with the real-life tales of abducted girls.”  I don’t even have to read the piece to have commentary on that subject.  I don’t think many people stop and think about this these days.  That really is something that is disturbing.  Is MSNBC camped out in Cleveland today?

AG:  I have not seen them do it yet, no.

Mike:  Did they go onsite?  Were they in Boston or do they just send — I don’t watch MSNBC.  Do they send a reporter over there to report or did they bring the entire set over there?  The Clinton News Network is now camped out.  They are there.  They’re not leaving Cleveland until they have someone that’s going on trial to replace Jodi Arias.

AG:  I have not seen an MSNBC show based in Cleveland this week at all.  I think they’ve just had a reporter or two out there.

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Mike:  Shocking.  I say shocking because that’s the exact opposite of what’s going on on the Clinton News Network.  So I’m reading this essay yesterday afternoon.  I read it on the way home from golf practice with daughter #2.

[reading]

The Internet is having a love affair with Charles Ramsey, the man who helped Amanda Berry break down the door of the Cleveland house where she said she was being held captive, along with two other women. All three went missing a decade ago; Berry was 16, Gina DeJesus was 14, and Michelle Knight was 20. It’s entirely understandable to focus on Ramsey in the giddy moment of breaking news. He is forthright and funny in describing what happened.

And what a relief to find a glimmer of help and humor in this macabre story about missing women imprisoned in a house on an ordinary-seeming street of row houses, with a young child who the police said is Berry’s daughter.

[end reading]

Mike:  Andrew, have you ever seen the movie Silence of the Lambs?

AG:  I have not.

Mike:  Really?

AG:  I did not put it in my list of things to do.

Mike:  You can get it on Hulu or Netflix or whatever service.  It came out in ’93, ’94 maybe.  It’s well worth watching.  She makes reference to it here is the reason I ask.  We basically have here, ladies and gentlemen, a basement in this Castro clown’s house where he was holding young women and apparently having his way with them and threatening them with all manner of repercussive violence should they leave the house, which kind of helps to explain why they may have been there or stayed there for ten years.  Ms. Bazelon makes reference to this as Silence of the Lambs in real life.  Why are there news anchors that are all over covering this that are trying to put happy faces on the fact that the ordeal is over?  It’s not as though the Amanda Berry case is isolated.  There are other Amanda Berrys.  Who was the other one that showed up — what was the young lady’s name?  It’s not Elizabeth Smart.  Who’s the one that showed up at a McDonald’s in a bathrobe?

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AG:  Elizabeth Smart was one of the girls that was like paraded around and that sort of thing.

Mike:  There are others out there.  The point is, this is sick stuff here.  This is a sick, perverted society that continues to produce the monsters among us.  In other words, the horror stories and the horror movies may not be fiction or fantasy.  We have people that are willing to explode pressure cookers in crowds of marathon-goers.  We have men that are willing to kidnap and detain young women and do unimaginable things to them and do it for a decade.  We have neighbors and neighborhoods where these events are apparently occurring.  [mocking] “Oh, they caught the guy.  Let’s move on.  What’s playing on Bravo?”  I understand her point.  Then she goes through the recap of the story.  Then she writes:

[reading]

But this is not the ending, and surely little other than the escape will seem happy once the facts begin to flow. That’s already clear from the frantic tone of Amanda Berry’s voice when she called 911. How were these women kidnapped and held undetected for so many years? Does their story connect to the still unsolved disappearance of Ashley Summers, another teenager who vanished from the same neighborhood in 2007? Why didn’t the police or child-welfare workers see anything amiss when they visited the address in 2000 and 2004, as the mayor said Tuesday? What about the neighbors, especially given Ramsey’s description of Castro coming outside to work on his cars? And most of all, what were these women’s lives like inside that house?

[end reading]

Mike:  That’s another part of the community that once was, [r]epublican communities where most people knew one another and you congregated — I know this is anachronistic and old-fashioned and fuddy-duddy — in these things called churches.  You might have even gone to social functions built around these things called churches.  You might have even done Christian charity work because you were going to these things called churches.  This is when you knew your neighbors.  This is when you may have said: It’s okay for the kid to go outside.  Even though I don’t know his exact whereabouts, the neighbors and the community will take good care of him or her.  Such is not the case any longer, is it?  Where did that train jump off the rails, ladies and gentlemen?

End Mike Church Show Transcript