A Fulbright Scholar Goes to Jail

Miss Arizona contestant Kumari Fulbright, 25, has been charged with multiple offences over the kidnap and torture of an ex-boyfriend. Miss Fulbright, who was released on $50,000 bail, served as a law clerk for US District Court judge while she attended the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law in Tucson. She is a second year writer for The Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, is on the ASUA Appropriations Board, and is on the University's Senate Task Force for Campus Child Care.

Once Promising

Now Pathetic

As Miss Pima County, Fulbright's platform was "Students Helping and Reaching People" (SHARP) and her talent was theatric interpretation-- something to keep in mind when you gaze at her mug shot.

I'm sure her grief is genuine but I suspect that her remorse is in getting caught, and not for her victim whom she tortured. According to prosecutors, she "bit him several times while he was bound, stuck a butcher knife in his ear ... said she was going to kill him, [and] pointed a pistol at him." The victim, according to the documents, was able to grab Fulbright's gun after more than eight hours. After the weapon accidentally discharged, he ran out of the house screaming for help.

I am again astonished at yet another moment of bad judgment that immolates a promising career. This kind of post is the stuff of tabloids, but it is also the stuff of life. And shadenfreude is as much a deterrant against this crime as the penalty the school or courts will exact against the likes of this violent harridan.

Even after I had excluded the following terms from Google's search engine--indicted, threaten, criminal, hostage, felony, torture, kidnapper,crime, tortures, tortured, crime, mugshot, kidnapped, kidnapping, accused-- there were still more than 12,000 entries for her name. Let this be a cautionary tale. In today's internet world, there is no privacy. If you do something dumb or cruel, the world will hear your anguished cry: "Don't taz me, bro!".

A curious angle in this case is her G. Gordon Liddy-like infatuation for cheesecake and high caliber weaponry-- strange for a future barrister, although perhaps not so strange for someone yearning to work in a Republican Justice Department or perhaps for Fox News.

An Ominous Love For Guns

But that doesn't make much sense for someone who clerked for U.S. District Judge Raner Collins. Collins, a Clinton appointee, is by Arizona standards a liberal jurist, with his decisions on school funding, conservation, and abortion rights,

It could be that Fulbright was a bit like Los Angeles-- there is no "there" there-- devoid of a core. So, in pushing the envelope in exploiting her assets-- her intelligence, personality, and sexuality-- she finally pushed the envelope a bit too much by forgetting her conscience. And for this, all that Miss Fulbright has dreamed and hoped for is now in ashes.