http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/arts/television/jonbenet-ramsey-on-television.html 2016-09-12 14:09:00 Trying to Make JonBenet Ramsey Must-See TV, Again The approach of the 20th anniversary of this Colorado girl’s murder prompts a barrage of programming, but why? === Television can be a great unifier, and that can be a useful thing — in a time of national crisis or triumph, for instance. But not always. At the moment TV seems determined to have us all believe that we should be ghoulishly obsessed with the ugly murder of a 6-year-old girl 20 years ago. Suddenly that girl, JonBenet Ramsey, is everywhere once again as CBS, A&E, Investigation Discovery and more try to capitalize on the coming anniversary of her strange and brutal death in Boulder, Colo., during the Christmas holidays of 1996. You remember JonBenet. How could you not, since she has been reappearing regularly in the news media for the past two decades every time the investigation into her murder has taken some incremental twist? She is the child made into a household name by her unsolved killing and the endless replaying of somewhat uncomfortable videos of her competing in beauty pageants. Her parents, John and Patsy, have alternately been the leading suspects in her death or the most wronged mom and dad in history. The initial police investigation is a case study in ineptitude. And TV is determined to make this child the O. J. Simpson of fall 2016. The A&E network got things started last week with Monday brings Investigation Discovery’s “The killer first placed the garrote low on JonBenet’s neck, throttling but not killing her. As the garrote was pulled tighter, it rode higher up her neck.” Television doesn’t get much more dehumanizing than that. Also on Monday is the first installment of a And on Sunday, CBS jumps in with Maybe the CBS program will at least break the tie. So far, the A&E special seemed determined to exonerate the Ramseys (Patsy Ramsey There’s more. Lifetime is planning a TV movie. Last week “Inside Edition” had a segment on how the current owners of the home where the killing took place have renovated it. In television’s opinion, apparently, there is no limit to the amount of JonBenet-related goo we should be force-fed. We can partly blame O. J. Simpson for all this. Television recently discovered that his already thoroughly strip-mined story was good for another round of excavation, so why not try again with a case with the same sort of botched police work and clearly delineated opinion camps? The difference, though, is that the Simpson case took on broader significance because of its racial components. The Ramsey case has nothing so elevating. Maybe the CBS docu-series will hit the Durst jackpot and actually lead to some criminal charges — the gold standard for these types of programs ever since the 2015 HBO series “