Grandma who took viral video of doomed Branson duck boat is a victim, not a villain

Jennie Carr, the Joplin grandmother who prayed as she shot that viral video of the doomed Branson duck boat that sank last Thursday, killing 17 people, has only begun to deal with what she saw that night on Table Rock Lake.

“I just sat here a little while ago and watched them pull that boat up” on television, she said, then lost it. When she could speak again, in a phone interview with The Star’s editorial board, she said, “I’m trying really hard not to let it bother me, but golly.”

We’ve already written that the Ride the Ducks boat should not have been on the water at all — not with that known death-trap of a canopy and certainly not in such high winds, under a severe thunderstorm warning from the National Weather Service that specifically mentioned Table Rock Lake.

But while we’re on the subject of needless suffering, all of the commenters who have been castigating Carr should stop blaming a victim of this tragedy as someone already traumatized by witnessing events she could do nothing to change.

She performed a public service by recording what happened. Yet of course, for no rational reason, she has been pummeled on social media. She’s received personal messages calling her all of the usual woman-hating names, along with a few new ones.

“You’re going to regret this for the rest of your life,” one of the cleaner messages said. Yes, she will, but not because she could have done anything except put her own life in jeopardy had she jumped into the water from the nearby Branson Belle Showboat, where she and her husband Jeff had gone to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

And to all of those asking why she didn’t put the phone down and call 911, here’s the answer: Everyone around her was already on hold waiting to get through to 911 before she ever hit “record” on her phone.

A letter to The Star suggested that Carr and others who “were contented only watching” were somehow criminally negligent. “I may have gotten myself killed,” the writer said, “but I would have been out there in the waves trying.”

Those who witnessed this horror were certainly not “contented.”

Had Carr and others started jumping into the water, too, they might have performed heroically, but might also have wound up in trouble themselves.

There is nothing new about blaming the messenger, though in this angry social media age, it’s easier than ever to let the messenger know about it.

Today, the radio reporter who screamed “Oh, the humanity!” when he saw the Hindenburg explode in 1937, would himself be flamed on Twitter and beyond.

But at least he was a professional messenger, unlike Jennie Carr.

Instead of piling on to punish a sensitive soul who says “golly” and “oh my gosh,” maybe her critics should be honest enough to admit they don’t have any idea what she went through onboard the Branson Belle Showboat on Thursday night, or at any time since.

This story was originally published July 23, 2018 at 5:01 PM.