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The 'Rights' To The Jennifer Wilbanks Story
7/05/05
by Clay

Jennifer Wilbanks (aka the mildly attractive white woman who is mildly crazy and wholly ran away from her wedding) and her fiancé John Mason have recently signed a $ 500,000 TV/book deal.

Of course this is not entirely surprising since there are many dumb people who are of the opinion that the entirety of Jennifer Wilbanks existence cannot be summed up in a five minute Dateline profile. Recently a reader posted on our message board and asked what we thought of this deal. After much contemplation, I can now say three things,

1. I don't begrudge John Mason any money he might receive out of this. Anyone who is willing to marry a crazy woman who put him through the media ringer deserves more than 500k.

2. Jennifer Wilbanks is crazy, hence, I don't think she has any idea what's going on to begin with and I'm not certain she even realizes she has signed a TV/book deal. As Lara stated upon seeing her bug-eyed photo: "I don't understand why anyone ever thought this woman was anything but crazy."

3. I hate the spokesperson, Judith Regan, who has bought the "rights" to this story. This is primarily because I both hate all unnecessary spokespersons and because this was her quote: "I am looking forward to developing the scripted project with Wilbanks and Mason," Judith Regan said. "Theirs is an unexpected and compelling story of love and forgiveness that has certainly taught me a thing or two."

Why does the media use quotes like these without even calling them out for what crap they are? Let's examine this quote with my italicized additions as explication.

"I am looking forward to developing the scripted project with Wilbanks and Mason" because it will make me enough money to buy twenty-five new alpacas [1] and a jet.

"Theirs is an unexpected and compelling story of love and forgiveness that has certainly taught me a thing or two." I can't even add anything to this because it is such complete crap.

The above sentence drives me almost as crazy as Jennifer Wilbanks already is. Judith Regan hasn't been taught a single thing. Everyone knows Judith Regan hasn't been taught anything at all, yet this damn quote gets reported as if it's the gospel truth. Furthermore, while it might be unexpected that a crazy woman would run away and report that she had been raped by a Hispanic guy and a white woman (the details of this story haven't been widely reported and it's pretty graphic but necessary to read), how is it unexpected that they fell in love? Doesn't this happen all the time to much more interesting people from much more interesting places than Duluth, Georgia? Furthermore, how is anything but her being a crazy bride compelling?

Basically, Judith Regan makes me angrier than either John Mason or Jennifer Wilbanks because everyone knows every bit of her quote was complete crap, yet it is reported, without comment, as if she has just provided some illuminating nugget of brilliance. I truly believe it's time for the media to start quoting anti-spokespersons to give the entire truth to each story. The anti-spokesperson’s quote would have been something like this:

Judith Regan has actually learned absolutely nothing and wants to make this movie because she needs new alpacas and a new private jet. She realizes that in reality Jennifer Wilbanks and John Mason are not very interesting, but she also realizes that any TV movie, no matter how bad, will make approximately 29% of the American public cry if sad music is played in the background.

[1] The alpaca is an animal that rich people love. I have never actually seen an alpaca in person, but here is the link to all things alpaca.

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