Karla Normalka

What is the media’s obsession with Karla Homolka? She got a job and it headlines the evening news. She applies for a passport and reporters utter in shock: “she can go almost anywhere she wants.” Granted, the crimes she committed were heinous and her punishment did not quite fit her crimes, but it has been fifteen years and she had finished her prison sentence. The obsession with her is pathological. Every time a report is made, the reporter dutifully retells the lurid details of the rape, torture and murder of young women, including her own sister. The reports themselves are really pointless—an ex-con doing some fully legal mundane things. What is of interest to the reporter and the audiences/readers is the change to re-encounter the story and thus vicariously relive the forbidden. Now who is sick? Karla seems pretty normal.