Thursday, March 02, 2006

Grace Under Fire


Did you catch New York Observer writer Rebecca Dana's embarrassing attempt at a Smoking Gun "expose" about the television personality Nancy Grace? ("Did Nancy Grace, TV Crimebuster, Muddy Her Myth?") Talk about trying too hard. It was as if Ms. Dana and her bosses sat down and said "Wouldn't it be something if it turned out Nancy Grace really wasn't a crime victim turned prosecutor who never lost a case turned crime victims' advocate turned legal analyst?" -- and then confirmed that she was all of those things but decided to forge ahead with the story anyway.

Ms. Dana shoots for her big James Frey moment but comes up with more of an Amber Frey. Here are some of her "gotcha!" moments about everyone's favorite nutty prosecutor:

  • She doesn't like to discuss her age (ooh!);
  • Her slain fiance's brother thought she was a "dingbat" almost 30 years ago (and?);
  • She has said on national television that her fiance was 23 when he was murdered in 1979 -- but he was really 25 -- ah-ha! (Come to think of it: My mom once told a friend of mine whose parents died when he was around 30 that she, too, was 30 when her mother died tragically in 1970, but I did the math and she was really 28. Perhaps I should never believe another word Mom says again, she's such a manipulator of the truth.)
  • She claims the man who murdered her fiance sought an appeal to his conviction, but Scoop Dana reveals that he really filed a habeas application "claiming he's being illegally held." (That sure sounds like an "appeal" to me.)

    Ms. Dana: A few inconsequential discrepancies about minor details in Grace's past (that even you offer innocent explanations for) hardly warrants 3,500 words. If your editor put you up to this paper-thin idea of a story, I'd be really pissed if I were you. I know I am -- and I only wasted 10 minutes reading it.

  • Read: Did Nancy Grace, TV Crimebuster, Muddy Her Myth?
    • at

    3 comments:

    1. Anonymous3:38 PM

      Actually, I liked this story. I don't watch Nancy Grace and don't know much about her, but I thought this profile raised enough questions about her memory and her role in the case to plausibly suggest that she dresses up the facts a bit. And from the sound of things, it's not just a matter of forgetting the dates.

      ReplyDelete
    2. Anonymous11:06 PM

      Yeah I'm going to have to agree. Ms. Grace has made the tragic case more than it was. The killer was never in trouble with the law and his appeal was quickly dismissed. Grace used her life to critique the justice system, but as the artilce pointed out the system worked in her case.

      For the record: none of this implies that the brutal murder of her soon to be husband does not haunt her.

      ReplyDelete
    3. Anonymous3:44 AM

      Nancy does use "her life to critique the justice system," but you're forgetting that the last 25 years of that life has been as a prosecutor.

      She almost always refers to cases she's tried and families who have been treated improperly along the way when critiquing.

      The article makes it sound like everything she says and does revolves around the heinous murder of her fiance. It doesn't.

      I re-read the article and I still don't see what motive she would have for these so-called "dressing up" of the facts. The article admits that she did drop out of school and then go back to be a prosecutor as a result of what happened. It's the combination of what happened when she was 19 and her many years as a prosecutor that makes her act the way she does.

      ReplyDelete

    All comments must be signed.