I remain riveted - alternately horrified and fascinated (heck, usually both simultaneously) - by the Jodi Arias murder trial, which doesn't appear to have a discernible end in sight. (Hasn't it already lasted over a month? Hasn't she been on the stand for two weeks?)
Instead of just reading about it during my downtime, I've now progressed (or regressed, depending on how you evaluate my increased interest) to watching the TV news trial recaps on HLN in the evenings.
Apparently this is the biggest murder trial since O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony, because all the HLN heavyweights - Jane Velez-Mitchell, Nancy Grace, and Dr. Drew Pinsky (of "Celebrity Rehab," another of my guilty pleasures, fame) - spend post-trial hours weighing in on each day's events during their evening programs. Nancy Grace has taken it a step farther by diagnosing Jodi Arias as a sociopath, though I don't imagine she's clinically licensed to make such a diagnosis (she's a former prosecuting attorney, I believe).
Regardless, the diagnosis seems to fit...and I don't see anyone disagreeing with it. (Although the folks at Websleuths.com have also speculatively diagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder and/or Narcissistic Personality Disorder.) It would certainly explain the manipulation, the charm, the pathological lies, the use of her body and intelligence to get what she wants, the stalking and extreme invasion of privacy of the victim prior to his murder (no regard for others' boundaries or of right and wrong). She seemed to live in her own fantasy world, seeing things through her own uniquely skewed filter.
The most alarming, eyebrow-raising moment of yesterday's coverage for me was seeing a clip of her "48 Hours" interview, recorded shortly after the murder when she still professed innocence. She seemed to enjoy the attention of the interviewer and the camera crew. It seemed like she was starring in her own movie, giving an award-winning performance (the performance of her life, really) for the cameras. Even her explanation of why she smiled in her mug shot - "I knew it would be all over the Internet" - (you know it, Jodi: http://mugshots.com/Current-Events/jodi-arias.5573319.html) expressed gleeful awareness of the attention she would generate for herself.
You would think that murdering her ex-boyfriend, being questioned by police and TV program interviewers, and now facing a death penalty sentence on trial for her life is the greatest, most exciting thing that has ever happened to her. As if she's waited all her life for this kind of attention...
Why are so many of us so fascinated by her (and willingly giving her that attention)? I think we're fascinated when a woman commits a violent crime that's more commonly committed by a man...especially when it's a beautiful woman. And I think we're trying (futilely) to understand the non-understandable and explain the inexplicable.
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