Well I am sure everyone has heard about the Duluth Georgia Runaway Bride Jennifer Wilbanks. Lots of thoughts on this one. One, where the hell was I on this. Another is the press reaction to this, third is Duluth in general, and fourth what a nutter Jennifer has to be. So in no particular coherent order.
Funny thing about this, I live very near where all this went down. Totally oblvious to it. Didn't even find out about it till Thursday afternoon when heading to the library and kept passing all these news vans near the park. Then I pass this house with crap load of cars and people. At the time I thought "what an odd time for a party", then I saw a large missing poster. So the next thought was "wft?!?!" Then passed a parking lot that has no business so 99% of the time it has like 10 cars. That day, it was filled to the gills and then some. So slightly alarmed, I asked around, got the info and immediatly thought "hmph sounds like she ran away, what a doofus."
Now, Jennifer is not really a nutter. After all she planned this a week in advance (neat timeline here). She withdrew the money from the bank and bought the tickets with a plan in mind. That not nutty. What her behavior is selfish. A spoiled brat really. Obviously she was overwhelmed, having doubts, whatever so her response was a week old plan that gave zero consideration to friends and family. That is selfish brought to a new level. It really appalling. However, once you consider her background, you also can't really be suprised.
About Duluth and where she comes from. Duluth is the classis small town made up of the haves and the have nots. The haves generally have hard working parents, and incredibily lazy and spoiled children. You know the type. Cars, homes, bills, pretty much everything is payed for and taken care of. Have a problem, throw enough money at it, simply goes away. So these children have no concept of hardship and hard work. Can't really blame the parents for this, after all what parent doesn't want to protect their children from the big bad world. The problem with line of thinking is the children develop zero coping skills but lots of me-centric thinking. Which brings us back to the runaway bride. Clearly she has no coping mechanism. Clearly she is incredibily me-centric.
Also side note. Duluth cops...they are basically traffic cops. Except for this incident, they have about 50+ cops, a fleet of cars they replace about every 3 years whose only purpose is to issue tickets. The fleet by the way includes such necessities as SUVs, sports cars with no backseat, Harley's and other "necessities" that one may need to cover what is about a 10 miles square area if one is feeling generous. Usually the tough stuff, like the malls, arena, etc they leave to Gwinnett cops. This is probably the first time in years that Duluth earned to high piles of cash the spend and collect in something other then ways to get more tickets issued.
Anyways, if this story is proof of anything, its that press likes to create stories out of nothing. Lets face it, the only reason this became national news is the press was hoping it would be another Peterson case or just as good a dead bride before her wedding. In anycase for them it was a win win in ratings. Did the local news need to cover it throughly, yes it was local news. It just didn't rise to national news. So again further proof how national media CREATES news. Makes mountains out of molehills and so on. Whats really bad is the media is clueless on how this behavior erodes the trust of the public in them. Every time they make something out of nothing, the public isn't greatful, they just get annoyed and more pissed off. They will never stop though. Those brief spikes in ratings is all they care about.
As for the fiance, whathisname, if he is smart he will dump this women off at the nearest bus stop forever. If this is how she handles a one day even of a wedding imagine what she could do for life's other problems including the biggest stressor of all time - parenthood. Not only is that a neverending stress, it requires one to them-centric, not me-centric. Parenthood would probably knock her completly off her rocker and possibly make her dangerous. So for him, he needs to feel relief that he has dodged one massive and possibly deadly bullet. Mourn the loss and move on is my advice for him.
Regarding Duluth (I'm also a local)... "haves and have-nots"? I've lived in five states and have never found a community identity to compare with Duluth; the baseball/softball associations, the town green, the golf tournaments, the downtown area... it's like sliced bread compared with most of the non-descript ex-urbs and suburbs I've seen. And I actually like it that the speed limit is the speed limit in Duluth; it keeps the riff-raff out! Maybe that's why the crime rate is so low!
ReplyDeleteAs for the bride, her problems are her problems! Stereotyping the Duluth country club set with the same brush as the Sugarloaf/Peachtree Ridge crowd, and then lumping everybody else together as "have-nots" is ridiculous; if only the haves are hard-working, then who is living in all those cheap quarter-million dollar homes; the unemployed? I suggest you spend a little more time at Shorty Howell Park, or Bunten Road, before you jump off that cliff! By the way, one of Duluth's Elementary schools is named after whats-his-name's daddy, so somebody must have been doing something right.
As a Brit who happened to be in Florida at the time of her "re-appearence" I could not believe the coverage the story had on the US news channels. OB units from all the major networks "camped" in Diluth. In the 4 days I spent in Florida 30th April and 3rd May, it seemed that everytime I switched on the news it was about the runaway bride. One got the feeling that if George W had gone berserk in the White House during that time, the item would have to be slotted in AFTER the runaway bride story. Is this the sort of story that merits such blanket coverage in the US?
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