Nancy Grace Claims First (?) Scalp

David Weigel | September 13, 2006

The odious CNN and Court TV host Nancy Grace has finally achieved her Jenny Jones Moment. The only surprise is that it took this long.

Two weeks after telling police that her son had been snatched from his crib, Melinda Duckett found herself reeling in an interview with TV's famously prosecutorial Nancy Grace. Before it was over, Grace was pounding her desk and loudly demanding to know: "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?"

A day after the taping, Duckett, 21, shot herself to death, deepening the mystery of what happened to the boy.

I don't have much of a philosophical reason for opposing the presence of Grace on my TV screen; CNN can hire who it wants, I don't have to watch it. But she's emblematic of the mainstream news channels' ever-increasing focus on tabloid news to the exclusion of good economic coverage and foreign news. And as Jason Zengerle showed in the New Republic, she's a uniquely awful personality.