miss confederacy

In what has become the daily routine of cruising for how JonBenet Ramsey is mentioned in the media for this blog, this morning CNN buzzing in the background covering heated debates over health care reform. Kiran Chetry was interviewing a mom regarding the cost of emergency room visits and the health insurance supplied as an employee benefit. Seems this mom broke her foot the same week her daughter had a concussion in a sports related head injury. The out of pocket expenses for the family for these two injuries was $1800 after insurance. Good insurance too, she felt, covering the thousands of dollars it cost for an MRI and treatment for her daughter's concussion. So proudly, this nice looking mom making a plug for her daughter the avid sports enthusiast. You see, she explained, her daughter is so dedicated to sports that earlier this year she had an injury the good insurance company also covered. Turns out the recent concussion was not the first but the second head trauma her daughter has suffered this year as a result of participation in sports...

A little distracted by the head injury story I found an article out of Alabama where writer John Archibald mentions JonBenet with equal disdain for those perhaps of a dated or politically incorrect mindset. Adjusting to the affects of the civil issues aside, seems his wife as a child was, heaven forbid, a pageant contestant. After all these years, now looking back his wife understands she was a victim in a form child abuse incident. In turn John seems to betrayed by such news, justifies his apparently wonderful in-laws had, as any human is prone, momentarily acted out of character. The caption for the picture to the left reads "What? Is that Little Miss Holocaust waiting in the wings?"

At the moment I would not know who to feel more sorry for.

Yes, I am still looking for reported pageant molestation cases or any formalized quantified studies that demonstrate the long term detrimental affect to children that participate in pageants. There's nothing yet I've discovered to support level of public outrage. Of course in doing that I am still trying to figure out how it has become a fact in the general public opinion that JonBenet's murder is directly related to pageants.

I still don't get pageants in the exact same way I don't understand parents that think it is a testament to dedication and a badge of honor their child has suffered multiple head injuries from voluntary participation in sports. Sure, where there are kids at play there will always be accidents that need immediate and the best of medical attention. However in view of this report on excess wasteful health care spending as it relates to health care reform, these subjects are giving me a royal headache--

Archibald: Surprise! And then good news
Published by the Birmingham News
by John Archibald

It's easy to feel misled, let down and even shocked by those you think you know.

Like Manny Ramirez or David Ortiz, for example. Like my wife -- not to put too personal a point on it -- when she came home this week with an aging photograph of herself.

She handed it sheepishly to me, and my heart fell. Suddenly our life, after all these years together, seemed a lie.

Alecia was about seven in the photo, wearing a crown and an uncomfortable smile -- and a sequined sash emblazoned with these words: Miss Alabama Confederacy.

Great Jefferson Davis' Ghost! Can my otherwise egalitarian wife really have been part JonBenet Ramsey and part standard-bearer for the not-so-good-old-days? I can't really decide which is worse.

"I didn't know," she said, embarrassed. "I was just a little girl. It was like ... a form of abuse."

Whatever you say, Miss Confederacy!

Yeah, I was shocked and surprised. But sometimes people -- good, wholesome people -- do things that are completely out of character...


John Archibald is the metro columnist for The Birmingham News. His column appears three times a week on the Local News front. In it he tries to break news, to tell stories about politics, corruption or the quirks of daily life in the seven-county metro area. He has been called many things, but his favorite description came in a letter to the editor: "Public nag." Archibald is married with three children. He graduated from the University of Alabama and has worked at The Birmingham News for 20 years. Prior to beginning his column in 2004 he worked as a government reporter, investigative reporter and database editor.