Nancy Grace is Leaving Court TV

I was quite pleased to see that Nancy Grace is ending her show on Court TV. That show was called “Closing Arguments,” both because it was the last of the daytime courtroom shows and because all she has ever done is argue. I wonder if any of her colleagues at Court TV feel as I do; I am sure there are other viewers who do.

I used to be a fan of Court TV. I watched it almost daily when it had live coverage of major trials. But after only a few weeks, I found myself shouting at Nancy Grace’s pronouncements, although I realized she couldn’t hear me. I’m not sure what made me the most angry: her assumption that anyone who gets as far as a trial is guilty and deserves the death penalty, or her description of herself as a “victim of violent crime.” When I first heard her say that she was a crime victim, I wondered what had happened to her; had she been mugged, beaten, even raped? As it turns out, her fiance was murdered. Don’t misunderstand; I realize that those who loved a murder victim are also victimized by the killer. But Nancy’s fiance was murdered years ago; surely by this time, she should consider herself a survivor? Especially since she has been active in fighting for victim’s rights, and compensation for those left behind by the murdered victims.

I know enough about psychology, having been through years of counseling myself in addition to courses I took in college, to know that what you call yourself, how you picture and describe yourself, affects your attitude and how others perceive you. If you think of yourself as a victim, and call yourself a victim, you are setting yourself up to be victimized again. Think for a moment of people you know who have been divorced, and were the ones left as opposed to the ones leaving. They cry, they believe they have failed at marriage, and guess what? They are more likely to “fail” should they marry again. The same is true for battered women. If they are battered as children, they feel (wrongly) that they have somehow brought it upon themselves, and they are very likely to marry men who are batterers, and continue to feel that they deserve what happens to them, until they get themselves to a shelter and counseling, or are ultimately killed by their batterer. People who have been mugged once, and show fear as they walk through dark parking lots or “bad” parts of town are more likely to be mugged again. Crime statistics bear this out. If you can either on your own, or with the help of a mental health professional, come to realize that you are a survivor of divorce, or battering, or mugging, you will no longer see yourself as a pathetic victim, and no one else will see you that way either.

I was especially angry at Nancy Grace’s continued description of herself as a victim of violent crime because I was once a victim of a brutal assault. I am not a victim now; I am a survivor. I hold my head up and walk where I choose without fear, because my attacker did not succeed in assaulting the inner me; I am a survivor, I won that battle. It was a hard fought battle, after the attack, for me; I wasn’t able to call myself a survivor for a long time. Instead I withdrew into myself, licking my wounds and living in fear. It feels good to walk in the light again, as a survivor. Nancy Grace’s repeated description of herself helps neither victims nor survivors, and it certainly doesn’t increase her esteem in my eyes.

Her assumptions that anyone arrested for a crime must be guilty and deserves the worst possible punishment is just as wrong and annoying as her self-description. Worse than that, she reaches thousands, if not millions, of people daily, and weekly, and some of them probably believe her. After all, she’s on a “news” program, isn’t she? Her vicious questioning of Melinda Duckett for her CNN Headline News show, conducted last year after Ms. Duckett’s two year old son was kidnapped, is an example of Nancy at her worst. She treated Ms. Duckett as the prime suspect in the child’s disappearance, and all but accused her of having killed her son. After the interview, Ms. Duckett committed suicide. Ever the show-woman, Nancy Grace aired the interview anyway. Apparently she felt justified and righteous for giving Ms. Duckett what amounted to the death penalty.

Her verbal attacks aren’t limited to those charged with crimes, however. On her Court TV show, she routinely attacked the opinions of her guests, who were mainly attorneys and/or law professors, and talked so much that they couldn’t get a word in edgewise. That doesn’t seem to me to be a respectful way of treating a guest, and after the first week or so, when I realized that was how she always treated her guests, I started wondering why anyone would agree to be on her show. I also stopped watching it. Her assumption that those charged with crimes goes against the law in America, which tells us that anyone charged with a crime is assumed innocent until or unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. She doesn’t care about the law of our country, or of any state; she only cares about her own law, and she has appointed herself judge and jury; she would undoubtedly sign herself up as executioner, too, if she could. Give me the reasoned and balanced show hosted by Catherine Crier any day.

I hope that viewers of Nancy Grace in her show, “Nancy Grace,” on CNN Headline News, will soon realize that her analysis of crime is always the same: He or she is guilty; never mind the trial, just string him up; and that those viewers will abandon her in droves. I’m just grateful that she is no longer a prosecutor, and was never a judge. I would have pity for anyone who came before her in a real court of law.