the papini parable

Ah, the Sherri Papini story just keeps on giving, doesn’t it?  We’re told the reclusive California ‘supermom’ is battling to reassemble her life after her alleged kidnapping while jogging in November 2016. Reclusive, hence the media are hungry for any glimpse, and the mere fact she’s observed smiling makes international news? I just hope there are lessons learned along the way — such as, if you want to stage a fake kidnapping, don’t carefully coil your earbuds and leave them neatly placed on top of your phone at the ‘crime scene’! Rip them apart, leave them hanging from a tree branch, use some imagination!

Ah, human nature, create a vacuum and people will want to fill it with all kinds of silly shit. Speculation, assumptions, wild guesses, outright fabrication. In this instance, the mushroom media have concluded that Sherri’s recovery has been ‘far from easy’ because on August 11 police conducted a welfare check at her home after a ‘concerned neighbour’ reported hearing screaming ‘like something from the Jaws movie!’ unquote. But that’s been blown out of the water already: somehow, we know they were watching ‘Game of Thrones’!  I seem to recall a bit of screaming in GoT but I could be mistaken… But no resultant police action, so in other words a total non-event. Television up too loud maybe?

While the split between doubters and believers remains, we’re united on the errata: how the ‘pretty blonde’ is regaining weight and regrowing her hair. Meh, who cares. Show us the ‘brand’ Sherri — that’s what we want to see! But nope, for a girl who loves flaunting her body she’s wrapped head to toe these days. No doubt under strict instructions from her brand-manager (heh). Anyway, publication rights to the first photos of the ‘brand’ would have to be approaching six-figures by now — makes me smile how they use the word ‘brand’ without substantiation — you can’t control the discourse if you don’t control the language! Them good ole boys up there in Yolo County, they ain’t stupid!

Papini hasn’t made a public address yet. She’s the subject of a high-profile case and would be under advice to delay any such statement. Strategic, cop-related reasons. Instead, the hungry public are drip-fed irrelevancies like the picaresque details of the ‘shady plot on the outskirts of Shasta County, pop 10,000’ where they live. Sherri could live in a frigging barrel, for all I care — show me the ‘brand’ and much will be revealed. The ‘sex trafficking’ angle is for me either a carefully tossed red-herring, or an almost unforgivable police leak. I hope the former because, if she was abducted, then the perpetrators will relax, thinking the investigators off their scent, and thus much more likely to slip up.

So, in essence, the latest news is no news. Keith and Sherri Papini have nosy neighbours. But it fills column inches for those wanting to rehash her colourful history with law enforcement — all those sordid details that belie her ‘pretty blonde supermom’ public image. Plus, we’re now hearing titillating, unconfirmed reports that her phone is being tapped, and that police discovered she’d planned a secret liaison with a ‘male associate’.  Broadcasting the substance of a telecommunications interception is about as illegal as it gets here in Oz, but I guess things are different in ‘Merica. Maybe the disturbance on August 11 wasn’t a loud, drunken observation by hubby that Sherri on a good day sorta resembles Daenerys Targaryen; or he might’ve asked who was she going to meet, and why.