nicknames

Nancy Grace Explains What the Heck ‘Tot Mom’ Means

Even if you didn’t follow the histrionics surrounding the Casey Anthony trial, at some point or other, you probably heard her referred to as “Tot Mom.” It was a maddening nickname invented by her prime antagonist, HLN host Nancy Grace. Why “Tot Mom”? Is there anything specific to Casey Anthony that makes the name more applicable to her than, say, any other mother of a young child? Why not “Murder Mom”? Or something more chilling and specific? It’s not like the case was short on memorable details. And it’s certainly not as though Grace shied away from judgment or ugly descriptors during her coverage of the trial — when Anthony was cleared of murdering her daughter, Caylee, Grace said on the air that “the devil is dancing tonight.”

Last night on Bill O’Reilly, Grace explained why she came up with such a generic nickname. “When I was in law school, I would often give cases that I would have to memorize hundreds and hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pages of legal documents for class, and it was easier for me to remember a case by the content of the case not the name,” she said. “So I would name each case by the content. In this case, I needed content that would fit at the bottom of the screen so our viewer would know what we were talking about, and ‘Tot Mom’ fit. It was nothing personal.”

So, basically, she picked a moniker with the smallest number of characters possible so that she could fit more crazy into the rest of her chyron. Sort of like how on Twitter it’s best to pick a short name so it’s easier for people to RT your tweets. Frankly, that makes a lot more sense than we anticipated.

Watch Grace get defensive with O’Reilly below:

Nancy Grace Explains What the Heck ‘Tot Mom’ Means