By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO — It is written in the Talmud that “the world rests upon the breath of the children in the schoolhouse.” In the case of Caylee Marie Anthony, the two-year old whose breath was somehow snuffed out even before she ever entered a schoolhouse, before she had the chance to learn, matriculate, love, and even possibly give birth to more human breath, the world has been just a bit more broken.
Legalities aside, it is hard not to know, just know, that her mother had something to do, indirectly or not, with the gruesome quick termination of Caylee’s life. Negligence, misapplication, selfishness, deceit (legally established but recalibrated into the final sentencing), were all fingers on the hand of death of Casey Anthony’s apparently discarded child. To deepen our sadness, Caylee was just old enough to have told us what happened to her—if only her now-celebrity mother had not disclosed the disappearance of her child (also legally established) for some 31 days.
I honor the law, but I dishonor the lawless. And there are laws that are higher that state statutes, more incriminating than physical evidence, further indicting than what a jury cannot even declare because of circumstances and jurisprudence more asphyxiated than a little girl who was wiped out by duct tape or water or whatever fate her partying mother somehow led her to.
I’m not even upset with the talking heads and the self-appointed legal experts who have had more time with this than the amount of time Caylee had on this earth. The pundits are there just blabbering about what we are thinking about; we endure them and their attendant commercial interruptions because we love this stuff. We listen to their blather and their insincere gravitas and then we buy the laxatives and financial portfolios and the automobiles that in turn pay them steep treasuries at the benefit of Caylee’s stillborn life-experience.
And now emerges the speculation: how will the sultry, impassive, slippery Casey Anthony cash in on her notoriety? How much money will she earn from the inevitable book deal (yet another sad commentary on what Americans define as books)?
We should plead with one another not to contribute to this ever-spreading lie, this subversion of human decency that is the clear moral outcome of this Anthony family business. We should not buy any books, watch any movies, or further underwrite the gossip culture that has become the slimy foundation of this voyeur-nation.
And if we keep quiet for long enough and just listen to the wind, perhaps we will hear the cries of all the children whose only voices are but known to God.
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com