Runaway mom

Usually I try to catch a few minutes of "Good Morning America" before coming to work -- it's about the least annoying of the morning "news" shows. The downside is that the program frequently gets caught up in breathlessly reporting some gushy nonsense about people behaving strangely. Today was one of those shows. Never mind the important stuff that might actually affect me, like GM teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, an identify-politics jurist being nominated for the Supreme Court and the National Spelling Bee winner still undetermined, the Good Morning folks spent the first six minutes babbling on about the woman who called in fake abduction reports to police before being nabbed with her 9-year-old and somebody else's driver's license at Disney World. The report included this fascinating bit of insight:

The ex-husband of the Philadelphia mother who faked an abduction to flee to Disney World with their daughter said 38-year-old Bonnie Sweeten "got herself in over her head a little bit."

[. . .]

"I just think she just kind of lost it a little bit," he said.

Gee, got in over her head. Really? "Lost it a little bit." Ya think? I shouldn't give ABC all the grief. The story was featured on "Bob and Tom." It was displayed prominently in this morning's Journal Gazette. It's one of the top listings today at Google News, with more than 1,000 stories appearing. (I just checked, and we have the story, too, but buried in the third section, about as much prominence as it deserves.)

What makes a particular story catch fire and spread so quickly? Sometimes the human drama makes the answer obvious, but not in this case. The story was all over before it was even reported, and nothing happened. The daughter was not in any danger during the Disney World trip, and the woman will be found to have had a mental breakdown, which will probably keep her out of jail but prevent her from having to pay back the money spent on investigating her phony report.