Amanda Knoxxxzzzzzzzzzzzz

Do I really need to be following the saga of Amanda Knox or can I just ignore it and go back to sleep?

This is one of those stories that I’ll catch for a few seconds on one of the morning shows but not really pay attention to. Every couple of months Knox will get some kind of breathless update because she got a new trial or got condemned to death or whatever and the Good Morning America anchors will be falling all over themselves to give us the details. (There are a lot of stories on those morning shows that seem to be important but not really, like when a plane has a rough landing somewhere. The anchors will announce it as “scary moments for some passengers” and do insipid interviews with people about the turbulence. My God, who cares when something almost happens? Wake me when the plane actually crashes. Just because it was a memorable story for the passengers does not mean it should be broadcast to everyone. But anyway.)

From what I gather (not even interested enough to Google her), Knox was convicted of killing someone in a murder in Italy that involved sex. The only reason I can think of that we would care about a trial in a foreign country is because the defendant is attractive and sex is part of the story.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. The Philadelphia Daily News bleated for months about this couple that was involved in identity theft or something that the reporters nicknamed “Bonnie and Clyde.” The story wasn’t that interesting but the paper just kept going on about Bonnie and Clyde Bonnie and Clyde Bonnie and Clyde because they were both attractive. People wrote into the paper to complain that they were only running this because they had attractive head shots to run and the paper just kept doing it. I vaguely remember the paper gave the same treatment to some white collar criminals who did gay porn.

Titillation is fun sometimes and I can get a laugh out of a salacious story but I’m not shallow enough to care about some vaguely hot woman in Italy who kills someone. I don’t even feel like making the effort to turn my head during the morning news to get an update on whether she’s being extradited or executed by firing squad or whatever. I know I wrote a lot about something I don’t care about but it’s not like I am seeking out news on Knox. It’s just kind of on the periphery and I don’t care for it.

There are awful, awful crimes (I covered some for years as a reporter) that get zero public awareness because the defendants don’t have cute head shots. I guess CNN needs something to report on in between its in-depth investigation on the next cruise ship covered in poop.