Jill StewartSeeing the California, national and global press coverage, it has been impossible to miss the drone of trained journalists describing evil sociopath Ariel Castro as a “kidnapper,” and broadcasters calling his life plus-1,000 year sentence as “tough.”
Let's be really clear here. Castro isn't a “kidnapper” unless you agree that it's exactly proper to call Charles Manson simply a “murderer.” For Google search purposes, as well as historical purposes, here's how a media world that hasn't tipped askew on its axis would rightly describe Ariel Castro of Cleveland Ohio: he's a serial torture sex-slaver, a 21st Century American dungeon-keeper, a vicious rapist, a double-personality psycho and a remorseless life-stealer four times over.
Yet journalists in Washington, New York and Los Angeles — not to mention the UK and Europe — are short-handing his deeds to “kidnapper” in headlines, lead sentences, even entire stories.
That just doesn't cut it for Gina DeJesus, 23, Michelle Knight, 32, and Amanda Berry, 27, and the unidentified little 6-year-old girl born to Amanda Berry in captivity.
A little American girl grew up in captivity in Ohio, the nation's heartland. Her lifelong victimizer, monster and controller is no “kidnapper,” you people in the sanitizing U.S. mainstream media.
A little girl was raised in captivity due to Ariel Castro.; Credit:
Got it?
They were also tortured by Ariel Castro, particularly DeJesus and Knight:
Two of the women imprisoned in a Cleveland house in conditions described as similar to a prisoner of war camp suffered from severe malnutrition and will require long-term therapy for injuries such as hearing loss and joint and muscle damage, two sources with direct knowledge said.
The basement where the women were held had chains coming from the wall, and dog leashes attached to the ceiling, the sources said. The women were restrained with them and duct tape in “stress positions” for long periods that left them with bed sores and other injuries, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the investigation, who asked not to be identified.
Kidnapper? Does it really take much extra gas for U.S. editors and reporters to add torturer and enslaver to headlines and lead sentences? No.
Credit:
It's obvious what's up in the journalism industry, with the abbreviated “kidnapper” headlines — and even entire stories reduced to “kidnapper” to describe Ariel Castro when the 1,000-year sentence broke today.
It's a familiar situation: mega-corporation Google is the tail wagging the media dog, and Google has no apparent fix for this increasingly creepy side-effect of its fantastic search services.
The editors and writers at newspapers, web sites, networks, radio stations and other media outlets are choosing the best two or three Search Engine Optimization words to use in headlines, urls and lead paragraphs.
They want a magic word they think readers will type into smart phones, laptops, tablets and other computers to learn about torturer and sex enslaver Castro's prison sentence.
Which words involving this evil man will the public key into Google, thus bringing traffic to these competing media outlets' web sites?
Readers will probably type in “kidnapper” or “Cleveland” or “three women” or “Castro” or even “Ariel Castro.”
Few people looking for news about the sentencing in Cleveland by Judge Michael J. Russo are going to type in super-complicated, sickeningly dark, poetic truths: “serial sex slaver” “Ohio torturer,” “dungeon-keeper” or even plain old “double personality.”
Thus the corroded horror that is Castro, one of America's sickest modern criminal minds — who fooled everyone, every day, for more than a decade — is already becoming obscured.
Obscured in the fog of Google.
Over time, Castro will be known in the top 100 Google references as the Ohio kidnapper.
But Ariel Castro is really the Cleveland sex-slaver, the Ohio dungeon-torturer, the Ohio life-stealer, the Ohio child-enslaver.
Charles Ramsey, the witty next-door neighbor who became a minor celebrity after he helped save the three women and little girl, has gotten perhaps 21 million hits on YouTube for his haunting ballad “Dead Giveaway.”
In “Dead Giveaway,” Ramsey sings his own lyrics, taken directly from his on-the-spot, live street interview granted to Ohio's ABC 5 when the four females escaped from their life-in-prison.
Ramsey's song is a far better tribute to the women and tiny girl, and a better depiction of the truth than much of the content-lite, truly unfortunate, mainstream media coverage published this morning:
Dead Giveaway
I knew something was wrong
when a little pretty white girl ran
into a black man's arms.
Dead giveaway, dead giveaway…
My neighbor got big testicles
cause we see this dude every day.
We eat ribs with this dude!
but we didn't have a clue
that that girl was in that house.
She said: please help me get out!
Dead giveaway, dead giveaway …
My neighbor got big testicles
cause we see this dude every day.
We eat ribs with this dude!
but we didn't have a clue
that that girl was in that house.
She said: please help me get out!
So I opened the door,
we can't get in that way
a body can't fit through the door,
only your hand.
So we kick-kick-kicked the bottom
and she comes out, and she says:
it's some more girls up in that house!
Call 911! And they caught him
at McDonald's!
I knew something was wrong
when a little pretty white girl ran
into a black man's arms.
Dead giveaway, dead giveaway…
My neighbor got big testicles
cause we see this dude every day.
We eat ribs with this dude!
but we didn't have a clue
that that girl was in that house.
She said: please help me get out!
Dead giveaway!
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