The Booty of the Feast

Part III: The Jury's Sin

“If she had known that life would be like high school, she would’ve checked out a long time ago.”

The sentiment above is a line from a registered short story I wrote ten years ago; the thought and attitude of a woman who had grown cynical with a chip on her shoulder, realizing how malicious and petty a group of women could be when they move in packs. Animals we are inside and out. Men are also dangerous when they prowl together. It’s nature’s way to maintain a species by using force in numbers. The leader of any pack has a scent the others pick up as they travel together on the same path, sharing the focus of what brought them together as motivation.

Productive packs build and feed off of each other’s energy, mind-melding until they have ignited a frenzy of action/behavior to satisfy their raison d'etre. Packs who are hungry will spend hours devouring the carcass of their kill. It’s an ugly sight most humans find repulsive.

Imagine the same gruesome image with a pack of women feeding off of each other’s blood lust while dismantling a person or persons they have declared the loser of the hunt. What a disgusting visual to signal your mind to process. Yeck! Never-the-less, that is precisely what all of my hissing is about. That’s what it looks like on some of these websites’ comments pages. Oh, there are a few witty people about, lightening the mood during intense cyber punch-outs; at times one or two regulars will form a “close” cyber friendship in both private and public declarations and "have each other’s back," as well as sharing pleasant public exchanges that can be both irritating and sweet. All is not Dante’s Inferno.

The pack mentality seized on the previously mentioned puffy-lipped actress in a way I doubt most celebrities have been treated, with the exception of Ingrid Bergman's international trashing when she ran off with Italian director Roberto Rosselini, becoming pregnant with his child, while married to another man. (The masses were enraged, armed with bibles and torches to burn the witch's films and images. The public shunning would not be undone for many years before she could return to Hollywood, head held high, eventually absolved of falling in love.)

I'm using the virtual evisceration of our current actress as an example of how grim it can get in the underworld when the pack must take down their prey day-after-day, year-after-year, rather than having their meal and moving on. Someone always finds another area to chew and share with the others. By now one would think the skeletal remains would offer little to feast on. But no, the bones have marrow and, for the hungry, their fangs are running on automatic. Until all remnants of the bloodbath are nothing more than pieces of uneatable matter, the gleeful yelps in the revelry of the kill will remain.

What in the world am I "talking" about, you may wonder if you aren't aware of the accusations and players involved. What's wrong with a little bit of gossip and speculation about a public figure? It goes with the territory, doesn't it, to hurl a few juicy spitballs at those who have been standing on a wobbling pedestal. What's the big deal? She/He deserves it. She/He isn't perfect, and by God we'll make sure everyone knows just how imperfect that person really is - again, day-after-day-after-day. In the case of the actress in question, let's have some fun by doing the following:

Continuously show a video of her kissing her brother at various events over-and-over again. I mean, it's so incestuous and nauseating we just have to keep it active for all to view. Never mind that you - yourself - have watched it 65,000 times. Once is never enough, is it?

Copy and paste images of her physical flaws, creating arrows pointing to abnormalities in her physique - some indicating plastic surgery. Yep, she does have some strange things going on around her neck. Hmmm. I would never have noticed if it hadn't been pointed-out. But, to make sure I really get the message that she's imperfect, enlarge the picture until I can see the little dust mites in her hair. Then find another picture with a different angle of something else that looks strange. Blow that one up as well, comment "Eeeew" and you're off and running for another day or two until another visual is found to dissect.

Suggest that she's abusing her children because she holds their wrists rather than their hands while walking (or dragging) through another photo-op. Enlarge those pictures too, and accuse her of using specific "pressure points" to "control" the child/ren. Cluck-on forever on that topic, and make sure you make your concern all about "the children."

Forever-and-ever emphatically state that she used Voodoo to land her man. Keep that brewing in the pot for at least 5 years.

Toss with conspiratorial eye-twitchings that she's a drug-runner for the CIA. Mix with smuggling diamonds; add salt and baste with bodily fluids combined with perverted sexual acts to comment on in detail for another few years.

Above all, ensure that you profess your outrage at all of the above and include additional graphic suggestions in order to educate others on what else she could be doing on those black rubber sheets. Apparently it's not enough to surmise lurid acts when a celeb rag announces such goings-on. One must describe what could have happened and plant smarmy little images into one's head. 

I have to stop here as I'm obviously aiding and abetting the very pack mentality I'm flogging by bringing up the above subjects. But, I had to, you know, because I CAN and I want to and because I want to I CAN.

Some may deem me to be a hypocrite for my own finger wagging when I've been in on a small part of the feast. I assure all that I'm no better than "them" in many ways. Where I differ and slide away from the pack is the truth that as despicable as many find this less-than-perfect-in-every-way actress, I find continued desires to slap her (or anyone else) to the ground while also taking a hammer to those who think otherwise, equally sick.

I will move on after seeing, reading, watching the evidence prior to delivering a verdict. Sane and decent people don't need to linger in the courtroom to view the bloody graphic photographs of an horrific crime with disturbing fascination. If they did, the judge would take them off the jury and send them to a hospital for mental evaluation. Should I continue to blog about these women every day for the next month or so with nothing new to add, I would send myself to the psych ward.

The axe I've been grinding this week has been in the making for well over a year, and although I did have an outlet for my feelings and those involved, I've used my experiences and what I've witnessed as a new way in which to examine and flog the pack mentality, the "mean girls" syndrome, the sad state of scary anonymous internet ah-flares.

As a focus of bullying in real life, I do have a personal stake in the subject. When it happened on the interwebs, I didn't like it. I'm not proud of my own dissection of a few anonymous persona's, but in truth, despite the cavalier "it's just the internet" comments when these sorry fights occur, I fought back because it was personal. I also didn't like to see other's treated in an equally demeaning manner. However, when it gets down to a public figure such as the actress, what personal act did she perpetrate on these women? Nada.

It's not my job or plan to defend this woman. I've had a slightly rosy perception of her lifted from my lens via the various places I've roamed in the nether-world of gossip sites. Okay. Great. I learned something I didn't know that doesn't affect my life beyond satisfying a curiosity. (And yes, those veins ARE creepy!) What I have learned  that does affect my reality is how I didn't fully learn until later in life that seemingly "normal" people will go to great lengths to feed their need for justice against a complete stranger through slander, lies, and vulgar diatribes.

Another disturbing part of this story involves a poster who travels from site-to-site, claiming that the actress either hired or found someone to inflict a sexual assault on them for reasons still unknown to all who have read her many pathetic ramblings. Shivering in the shadows behind her computer, she (we assume she's a "she"), has fanned many of the already inflamed zealots. As I tend to say, "...but that's another story."

In truth, it IS another story with regard to the internet posting issue.

You can betcha this saga will be continued.......