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By Steve Huff in missing persons, unsolved
Wednesday, Sep. 24 2008 @ 4:28PM
Main Entry: mawk·ish
Pronunciation: \ˈmȯ-kish\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English mawke maggot, probably from Old Norse mathkr...
Date: circa 1697

1 : having an insipid often unpleasant taste
2 : sickly or puerilely sentimental

-- from Merriam-Webster.com. Emphasis was added to definition 2.

As guys go, I'm sentimental to a fault. Just ask my poor wife. I'm also sentimental about kids -- my kids. That said, I can understand a certain amount of sentiment from strangers for a missing and/or murdered child like missing Orlando, Florida toddler Caylee Anthony. I look at her photos and I wonder, 'where are you, little one? Who would hurt a cute kid like you? How sick is that?' To me, that's normal.

But ever since JonBenet Ramsey's death in 1996, there has been a big contingent of folks, male and female, who take to the Web to post about their sentiment for the poor, battered, missing and murdered children they only know through the news. Back in the day, they flocked to Geocities or Angelfire. There they posted pages replete with images of unicorns and butterflies. They made animated gifs of the dead or missing child's disembodied head on angel wings. They loaded the page with auto-starting midi files of hymns or even worse, treacly, slow pop songs. I had the rather sweet song "Butterfly Kisses" utterly ruined for me by finding it on one of those pages.

Most of the folks who make these kinds of tributes are female. I don't know what issues they actually have at home. If they lost a child, somehow, I kind of understand why they might fixate on a case like this. Otherwise, I'm not sure I get it. It seems -- well, it just seems wrong.

A few of the tributes, though, could be from pedophiles who jones on obsessing over "the children" in what they perceive -- or perhaps what they want the site visitor to perceive to be an appropriate way. It's a big thing in pedophile culture (and yes, they have their own secret subculture -- but that's for another post) to define themselves apart from molesters. Pedophiles, you see, want to emphasize the fact that they love the children. To them, molesters only want sex.

The sad thing is, unless you dig, you often can't tell some pedophile's worshipful, almost necrophilic tribute to a missing or murdered kid from a tribute created by a bereaved mom who can't help but see the face of her own child superimposed on the face of the little one seen on the news.

The videos listed below? I have no idea who made them. I challenge you to make it through even one of them before biting back some bile. As a public service, I decided to go to YouTube and cull some of the more appalling ones. All of them share a certain grotesque aesthetic and an inappropriate familiarity towards the subject, missing child Caylee Anthony. They have not been posted in any particular order.

If I were the Anthony family, these people would scare me more than any bunch of rednecks hanging out in camp chairs across the street from George's and Cindy's home in the Orlando suburbs.

This video, uploaded August 28, 2008, telegraphs just how excruciating the next 5 minutes will be with the tinkling music, which turns out to be the most appallingly manipulative song in history, "Dear Mr. Jesus." Otherwise, it's really just a slideshow of Caylee photos and perhaps the most common video of its kind where the Anthony case is concerned. The same slideshow, presented in silence, would have been a far more effective and haunting tribute to the missing girl and avoided the giant, steaming load of mawkishness heaped on the presentation by the song chosen to accompany the display. The person who made the video probably intended their tribute to have that haunting quality, but it just ends up revolting. Verdict: On a sickening sentimentality scale where dead baby jokes = 0 and Precious Moments figurines = 10, this video rates a 8. I mean, come on -- the freaking song contains lyrics like this: "Dear Mr. Jesus, please tell me what to do/ And please don't tell my daddy/ But my mommy hits me, too..."

The video above is titled "Caylee Marie Anthony Lullaby" and it takes the slideshow approach and splices in some editing effects -- wipes, page turns, and most disturbing, overlays of hearts and flowers, with random images of butterflies and flowers interposed between the usual shots of Caylee -- which were likely culled from Casey Anthony's now-defunct Facebook account. The nauseating cherry on top of this sentimentality Sundae is the selection of Celine Dion singing an inappropriately chest-thumping rendition of a classic childrens' lullaby on the soundtrack. This video comes very close to the spirit of those old Geocities and Angelfire sites devoted to JonBenet, right up to the blocks spelling out Caylee's name near the end of the thing, which closes with the words, "Caylee, Always in our hearts." Verdict: on that icky sentimentality scale with the dead baby jokes at 0 and Precious Moments equaling 10, this one is easily and 8.5, almost a 9. I sometimes wonder how many times one of these people ignored their own, living kid just so they could pore over what images of Caylee they might want to use in their "tribute."

You know, I know that J-dawg loves the babies. I totally agree with that sentiment. But I'm betting he hates this video. Especially the way His image is squished off to each side, bracketing the same old slideshow b.s. found in the other videos. Then there's Engelbert Humperdinck thrown in the mix between little kids singing "Jesus Loves the Little Children," singing his own magnum opus, "Everything is Beautiful." No words on that one. Verdict: a 9 on the mawkish scale. Misses making a 10 because of the practical insertion of the flyer in the video, giving police contact info.

I get the feeling the person who posted this one fully intended to fuck with anyone who saw it, because the song choice is so bizarre, in context. Fortunately I like the song in question enough that it isn't ruined for me, but now I kind of associate it with the Anthony case, and that's just weird. This one is a 7 on the mawkishness scale, heading towards a 6 for song choice. It's on this list because it's just so. Damned. Strange. I mean, the typical interspersed images of flowers and heart-shaped video transition effects combined with "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor?" WTF, man?

There ya go. All I could really handle of this particular assignment. I really want this clear, though -- I do understand this impulse towards sentimentality. But I don't understand these people who spend so much time on projects like this as if they were memorializing their own kid. It's so inappropriate. So obtrusive. In this case, it does nothing for Caylee Anthony. It objectifies her even more intensely than the constant parsing of her case in the mainstream news. A lot of people making these videos think they're expressing sympathy and care, but they never knew this child. It is true -- those who claimed to love her are doing the opposite of bringing her justice -- but they will have to answer for that, eventually, either in a court of law or in front of a higher Judge. Many of the folks working hard to make tributes are really working through something very personal, something that has little to do with the missing child from Orlando, Florida. To them, I say, I know you mean well, but dude -- stop. The pathology is yours. Keep it between you, your therapist, and God.

I welcome suggestions for other videos in this vein in the comments. Sorta.