Nancy’s Fall from Grace

It seems a touch ironic that a book called Objection!: How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System should be discovered to contain “huge verbatim passages” hijacked from a column in The New York Times.

According to the New York Daily News:

[Author Nancy] Grace notes in the book's bibliography that she drew on an Aug. 5, 2002, “Patents” column by Sabra Chartrand about a device that allows parents to track their children. But it was only after the book was out in hardcover that she acknowledged how much of pages 204 and 205 came from the article--359 words, to be exact.

The Daily News also reported that Grace’s lawyer, her publisher, her collaborator, and even Grace herself hadn’t returned calls on the matter by deadline. It’s possible, though, that Grace and her team had other matters on their minds. Let’s face it: it’s been a bad month for the ex-prosecutor-turned-media-maven, who has been accused--loudly, widely, and from entirely unofficial sources--of browbeating the mother of a kidnap victim so harshly, the young woman killed herself just before the taped interview was due to air.

From an Associated Press item that ran in the Detroit Free Press:

Two weeks after telling police that her son had been snatched from his crib, Melinda Duckett found herself reeling in an interview with TV’s famously prosecutorial Nancy Grace. Before it was over, Grace was pounding her desk and loudly demanding to know: “Where were you? Why aren’t you telling us where you were that day?”

A day after the taping, Duckett, 21, shot herself to death, deepening the mystery of what happened to the boy.

Clearly, no one will ever know for sure what happened, either to the child or, in the end, to his mother. However, the noise out of the blogosphere was almost instantaneous, with many calling for Grace’s dismissal, including one piece that ran under Anna Johns’ byline on the TV Squad blog. The headline wasn’t shy: “Take Nancy Grace Off the Air!” The story itself was no gentler:

CNN's Nancy Grace, the most heinous woman on television, needs to be unplugged. She is a contemptible being who gets her kicks off of lashing out at people and flat-out accusing them of crimes that are still being investigated.

(And any time someone starts volleying with “heinous,” you just know they aren’t dicking around.)

Nancy Grace may be a bully. And, if the Daily News is to be believed, she may well be a plagiarist, as well. You can bet, though, that one thing she won’t be is out of a job. TV bosses know that, even if you tune in to watch someone because you can’t stand them, at least you’re still watching.