Casey Anthony

I haven't bothered to write anything about the Casey Anthony trial to this point for the same reason I didn't bother to put a "Sociopath alert" in front of her name above: because the truth is so glaringly obvious.

Anthony's sociopathy is as plain as her guilt, and one clearly led to the other. Whether or not the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Casey murdered her daughter is debatable. (I think they did, but the defense's contention that the DA proved only that she was an uncaring mother has some merit.) In any case, common sense tells us that Anthony is guilty.

Perhaps some members of the jury simply couldn't believe that any mother could do that to her own daughter. Perhaps they couldn't believe that such a sensitive-looking young woman so prone to tears could be such a monster. If any of this was part of their thinking, they simply don't understand sociopathy.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of Anthony in the future. Maybe she, like OJ, will try to make some money by writing a book along the lines of "If I Did It." Maybe she can get appearance fees from bars or nightclubs. (Freak shows are a longstanding American tradition.)

Anthony will undoubtedly do her best to continue to party. You have to wonder what it will be like for the men who go to bed with her in the future. Will they have trouble performing, knowing her to be the monster that she is? Or will the knowledge of her notoriety provide an extra frisson? OJ had no problem attracting women after his acquittal; but men are less susceptible to hybristophilia than women.

The worst victimizers were almost always victims themselves as children; this is what psychologists refer to as "the cycle of abuse." Every now and then when I hear about a child horribly abused and then killed, it occurs to me that the child would probably have grown up to be a sociopath anyway.

No child deserves Caylee Anthony's fate. And it's possible that somehow, against all odds, she would have grown up to be a decent human being. We'll never know.

But one has to wonder how many potential murderers, even serial killers, have been stopped in their tracks that way. The world would certainly have been a better place without Casey Anthony.

In his statement to the press after the verdict Jose Baez, Anthony's lawyer, struck a properly somber note when he said, "There are no winners in this case."

The only problem was, he was not being truthful. He himself is the big winner, as he well knows. I'm guessing his hourly rate just doubled -- as it should.