In the minutes after her sons vanished on October 25, Susan Smith raced to a nearby home and told a story about a black man who had stolen her car with the boys still in their safety seats. As the 10-day hunt for 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander seized media attention, two disturbing truths competed for viewers' understanding of the case. The first centered on child abuse, a subject about which we have learned a great deal in recent years. It is a huge and possibly growing problem, and most abuse is perpetrated by parents. Upon hearing the first details of Smith's story about the Union, S.C., incident, a dark fear leapt to many minds: Maybe the mother was involved in the crime.
By instinct or design, though, Smith offered a plot line that captured the second disturbing, and plausible, scenario: The crime was an act of random violence that had special salience because it involved a hot, new phenomenon called carjacking and was reportedly committed by a black man. By providing a riveting alternative, Smith gave viewers an excuse to think about her as a victim and perhaps indulge in some racism. They could push back the unthinkable thought that under the worst circumstances -- the most maddening provocations, the lunatic moments of anger -- a mother might murder her children.
If a Richter-like device could measure the nation's emotional response to the news that Smith had been charged with driving her car off a boat ramp with her sons strapped inside still alive, it would have recorded the shattering sense of betrayal many felt toward her. When a local crowd jeered her, they were not just shaken by her purported confession, but the sin was compounded because she so willingly exploited the nation's infrastructure of pathos and grief -- tabloid shows and mainstream news shows alike -- to beg for the boys' lives.
Beyond the public's anger, though, that Richter device would have registered much lower levels of pure shock at the deaths of Michael and Alexander than would have been recorded a generation ago. We seem less haunted these days by children killed by parents if only because we have reached an understanding of "the problem" of child abuse. Its status on the victim spectrum is attested by government-backed studies and the speeches of statesmen. But this comprehension perversely has helped harden hearts. Only in rare instances now, when a story plays out on television for days, do the child victims matter at all as individuals. And even then, it is easy to watch the screen go dark on the murder-mystery part of the story and believe there is no more useful thought to give to the millions of children in poverty or in crisis-saturated homes or in schools that stink.
One way to beat back the melancholy this evokes is to take a cue from the people of Union and the saint quoted by the Rev. Allen Raines of the First Baptist Church: "Be at peace among yourselves ... encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.... Hold fast what is good."
