Carole Baskin debuted on Dancing With the Stars last night, but the family of her missing ex-husband, Don Lewis, decided to use the event to bring attention to his disappearance.
The television ad that aired during DWTS features Gale, Lydia, and Donna (three of Don Lewis’s daughters); Anne, his former assistant; and the family attorney, John Phillips. The women all say that they need answers about what happened to Lewis. During the 50-second ad, they say that this is about getting justice for Don Lewis and his family, but it becomes quite clear that they especially want this justice if it involves Carole Baskin.
“Don Lewis mysteriously disappeared in 1997. His family deserves answers. They deserve justice,” Phillips says in the commercial. “Do you know who did this or if Carole Baskin was involved?” The family mentions a potential reward of $100,000.
Now, as someone who both thinks that Carole Baskin is an irritating media hound and that she was portrayed in the most antagonistic light possible in order to make her a narrative foil in the Netflix series Tiger King, I can say the memes about whether Carole Baskin murdered her husband have officially reached ultimate levels.
To be clear, despite the way that Tiger King filmed the episode covering the subject and despite how weird and off-putting a lot of Carole’s personality is, the police and investigators have said that they don’t have anything that clearly ties Baskin to the disappearance of her ex-husband. As a true crime junkie, I get that—as the wife, the person who got the most money in the will, and a lot of the usual issues—she is likely to be the number one suspect, but at this point, the main people who are accusing her are all people who hate her or, in the case of Joe Exotic, were actively violent towards her person.
Everything about Tiger King has ultimately been a bane on this Earth because it just supported poor documentary filmmaking and boosted the platforms of people who didn’t need to be boosted. Even though I don’t think Carole Baskin is a murderer, the fact that she is now on Dancing With the Stars after just a brief summer in the public eye shows how low the bar continues to drop for everything. Plus, she didn’t even do well, according to The Daily Beast, which says that she got “11 points out of 30” dancing to what else but “Eye of the Tiger.”
Stunt casting continues to be exactly what you’d expect from 2020.
Anyway, don’t privately own exotic pets, don’t pet baby tigers, and support legitimate animal sanctuaries.
(via Variety, image: Netflix)
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