[katyseagull]

Last Night's Prime Time

Did anyone else watch PrimeTime last night? It was actually really interesting. The topic was Family Secrets and they interviewed one of the "Barbie Bandits" who held up a bank last year with her girlfriend and then went to the mall on a shopping spree. Anyone else catch it? Wow, just bizarre.

This girl came from a seemingly normal suburbanite family. Mom is a teacher, dad is in construction. It was heartbreaking to hear the mom say what a nightmare the whole experience has been. She said she often wonders where it all went wrong. If you didn't see it I would be hard pressed to convey just how shallow this girl is. She brings a whole new meaning to the word. All she values is material "stuff." Prior to becoming a bank robber she had taken up dancing in a strip club to make lots of money.

Before the girls held up the bank her parents had kicked her out of the home because she would not give up stripping. (She was supposed to go away to college.) Anyway now she faces up to 10 years in prison but her lawyer is trying to get the charges reduced. He says it was an inside job and his client was just a dumb pawn. It was pretty heavy.

Made me wonder though how much you can blame parents when things go wrong. I had this discussion with a guy at work. He thought the parents are to blame for how the girl turned out. I said I didn't think so.

Later in the episode they interviewed a woman who was a shoplifter. She was a wealthy woman who didn't need the stuff she was stealing. Researchers are now claiming that shoplifters have abnormal brain MRIs. Like their frontal lobe is not as dense as a normal brain. So I wonder how many deviant behaviors could be explained away by brain abnormalities. Like maybe the Barbie bandit has a very thin frontal lobe. Her parents seemed really nice and normal.