Like most people, I was riveted last week to the unfolding tragedy that befell the family of Hannah Anderson. Hannah is the 16-year-old California girl who was allegedly kidnapped by a family friend, James “Uncle Jim” DiMaggio, after he killed her mother and younger brother and left their bodies behind in his home, which he burned to the ground.
A few friends will attest to my abiding belief that there was/is much more to this story than a murdering, psycho-obsessed, dirty old man trying to live out a Lolita fantasy in some perverted version of Into the Wild … in the wilderness of Idaho. And I’m not referring to reports about DiMaggio’s father being accused of an eerily similar kidnapping years ago….
As things turned out, federal agents shot him dead on Saturday after an intensive, six-day manhunt. Thankfully, they rescued Hannah unharmed. But this means that only one side of this story will ever be told.
Apropos of which, I had reservations about publishing my suspicions about her being more of a willing participant in this tragedy (as a cunning, teenage runaway) than a wholly innocent victim. But that all changed when Hannah began spinning her one-sided story in an online chat room within 48 hours after being “rescued.”
After all, she gave credence to my suspicions not just by sharing details of her ordeal in strikingly clinical, if not calculating, fashion, but by complimenting those details with post-kidnap selfies showing her looking like she did not have a care in the world and could not be happier.
Incidentally, in light of the Snowden disclosures, wouldn’t it be helpful and perfectly acceptable, in fact, if the NSA could produce transcripts of all communications (phone, email, text, etc.) between Hannah and DiMaggio in the days and hours leading up to this tragedy…? Mind you, not because some techie gnome was eavesdropping on them; but because the NSA’s alleged capacity to “spy on pretty much all communications” enables it to retrieve this targeted information from the haystacks of useless information being stored on its secret data farms … allegedly
Now bear in mind that she’s supposedly just beginning to recover from the trauma of her kidnapping. Because I imagine that any sane girl would have found this experience too emotionally terrifying and psychologically scarring to be engaging in this kind of promiscuous social networking already – especially given the reasonable suspicion that she was repeatedly raped.
Then, of course, there’s what should have been the utterly shocking and catatonic news that her alleged abductor had murdered both her mother and younger brother, who haven’t even been buried yet, for Christ’s sake.
Yet here she was acting not like a teenage kidnap victim, but like her Disney namesake, Hannah Montana, interacting with her fans the way all teenage pop sensations do these days.
The ease with which she answered hundreds of questions in this chat room, including hurling profanities in response to those that were predictably offensive, is troubling enough.
But her cutesy pictures, which included one of her custom-manicured nails, speak volumes. For this takes the narcissistic over-sharing, solely for attention, that defines so much of teenage social networking to a new, ironically socio-pathetic low….
Psychologists often say that there is no one way to grieve. And just as one can find an expert to espouse any legal theory, I’m sure one can find a psychologist to explain that Hannah’s behavior is a perfectly reasonable, if not evolved, way to cope in this age of social networking.
Except that her enthusiastic foray into this chat room makes a mockery of her father’s request for her to be allowed to grieve and heal in private. This suggests that she has a very permissive relationship with her father. And, especially when coupled with the very permissive relationship DiMaggio evidently had with him, one can see how this might lead to trouble … of some kind. (I heard her father say during one of his TV appearances that he invited this grown man into his home like family years ago when DiMaggio was a complete stranger. Even more telling and ominous, CBS News reported today that he allowed DiMaggio to take Hannah on several “day trips”….)
Anyway, God bless Hannah if she was truly a victim. But I defy anyone to explain why her wallowing in such self-indulgent and self-absorbed behavior – with nary a hint of any emotional distress – is not, at the very least, suspicious.
Indeed, God help us if our emotional intelligence and grace become such that teenage girls no less can react to the murder of their mother and brother and to being kidnapped and (probably) raped by behaving (again, within hours) the way Hannah did….
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Wednesday, at 2:35 pm