Grief, frustration and gossip can destroy a town

By LOU ANTONELLI
Managing Editor
Family members tend to be very protective of one another. Small town social circles thrive on gossip. Families facing grief and loss lash out at others. When all these factors collide, it can be ugly.
Patricia and I attended the Texas Press Association’s (TPA) annual convention and trade show this past weekend. It was held in Denton.
The president of the TPA is Laurie Ezzell-Brown, publisher of The Canadian Record, a weekly newspaper in the Panhandle. She had to help run and lead the convention while back home, rumors, gossip and Facebook are trying to burn her city down.
Let me explain. In 2016 a teenager disappeared in the city. In December the boy’s remains were finally discovered in a rural area.  A week after the discovery, a long-time local teacher committed suicide.
It’s not clear at all how and why these things are related, although Ezzell-Brown said she believes they are. The family of the dead teenager has openly accused the sheriff of being responsible for the boy’s death, and hired a private detective.
Needless to say, I’m sure you can imagine how serious the gossip and recriminations are, and it’s all being aggravated by Facebook.
This kind of small-town blow-up over an unsolved crime is common enough that it was the crux of a 2017 movie, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”. The mother of a young woman who was raped and murdered buys billboard space to attack the local sheriff’s office over the lack of progress in solving her daughter’s death.
The movie makes some good points, the first of which is that small town law enforcement agencies usually do not have the staff and training to deal with and solve such serious crimes. As far as a bitterly grieving parent is concerned, the entire staff and all the resources of local law enforcement should be devoted to bringing the killer to justice, and they are egged on by troublemakers and fools on Facebook.
But no one wants to raise taxes to increase the resources that would benefit investigations, and trust me, behind the backs of grieving family members there are people who would resent one case or incident usurping the so much of the time and effort of local law enforcement.
“Three Billboards” also brings out another important point, which is that you don’t know what is going on in people’s lives that may affect such an investigation. The grieving mother, who was played by Frances McDormand, doesn’t know the sheriff is dying of pancreatic cancer.
By mid-way through the movie, the sheriff commits suicide rather than face a long slow death by cancer, the billboards have been torched, and Molotov cocktails are thrown at the police station by the mother.
I won’t spoil the movie by giving away any more of the plot, but my point – which is well-made by the movie – is that grief, frustration and gossip can lead to many bad things in a small town.
Everyone needs to stop and think before pointing a finger, shaking a fist, or hitting “post” and making unproven accusations on Facebook.
Facebook is too easy to use and abuse. I’m not sure people realize they can start a discussion that – if carried to its logical conclusion – should end up with a lynch mob or revenge killing.
You may say, “It will never get to that?” How do you that someone who is weak-minded or drunk won’t carry this kind of hate-mongering to its logical conclusion?
Is this what we want for Clarksville? Then please exert a little self-control before you pass along dangerous gossip, on Facebook and elsewhere.