And all morality aside, one word: edit.

Even the McMartin case was not about them or the children, but establishing an image and storyline that still lives in the intended recipients, no matter that the false reality fell apart once it hit the court room, the story was already told and the media had moved on, first to a flurry of me too prosecutions, and then when even actual abuse was unprosecutable, dropping the subject entirely, or perhaps the Ramseys were the next phase, the opportune victim in a different sort of serial crime wave.

I don’t think my TV has been on to watch anything but a dvd in several years now. When they quit broadcasting the analog signal I doubt I will notice beyond a reference in Google news.

Or make three documentaries about the case? Or frequently pose for pictures with key figures in the case? Or attempt to participate in the investigation of the case, going so far as to court an admitted pedophile via e-mail? Or flit from interview to interview discussing everyone else’s misguided obsession with the case? Or write a memoir about his own involvement with the case and his rather un-astonishing discoveries about popular media?

I don’t read tabloids. I rarely watch television news. I have no idea who killed this child. And I see very little moral difference between the media hounds castigated here and the person revealed in as much of this series as I could bear to wade through.

Fortunately for that little girl, and despite any grandiose pronouncements of collective guilt, nothing any of us do truly matters to her now.

I pray that they do find the killer and will look for the show on TruTV, should be interesting.