Helping to free three women from nearly a decade in captivity would seem to be enough.
Neighbor Charles Ramsey has also become a star, offering moments of levity in an unspeakable story, free publicity for a restaurant chain and unexpected lessons in race relations.
Ramsey lived next door to where Ariel Castro is alleged to have kept the women in a makeshift prison until Monday afternoon, when Ramsey happened to be home and heard Amanda Berry’s scream.
Or the way he tells it: “I got the day off from work, so naturally you’re doing nothing.”
Actually, he was “eating my McDonald’s,” a fact he trumpeted so frequently that the grateful food giant is trying to get in touch with him. A website that compiled some of Ramsey’s television interviews kept count of how many times he mentioned McDonald’s in each.
Ramsey, 43, gave a series of interviews to Cleveland television stations as the story broke Monday night that were replayed on national news. CNN’s Anderson Cooper tracked him down for a lengthy conversation the next night. The interviews are performance art masterpieces, so filled with colorful language and astute reporting that he trended on Twitter and was the subject of Internet memes and an Auto-tuned song.
Similarly, a tape of a much more profane Ramsey talking to a 911 operator (whom he later called an imbecile) is circulating on the Web.
During his initial interviews, Ramsey said he was shocked to learn of allegations of Ariel Castro’s double life. Ramsey said he “used to barbecue with this dude. We eat ribs and what-not, listen to salsa music.”
There was nothing exciting about Castro, he said, “until today.”
During his Tuesday interview with Cooper, Ramsey, who works at Hodge’s Restaurant in Cleveland, noted that he had trouble sleeping with the knowledge of what had been happening in the house next door. “Up until yesterday, the only thing that had me losing sleep was the lack of money,” he said.
Ramsey’s realization of what was happening on Monday was itself a revealing observation on race. Seeing a white girl in that situation was “a dead giveaway” that she was either homeless or had other problems, he said.
“When a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms, something was wrong,” he said.
That sentence itself made Ramsey’s interviewer uncomfortable; their conversation quickly ended. But the sound bite was also highlighted in a parody song that was quickly doctored with Auto-tune and posted online. The phrases picked out for the song — like “we eat ribs with this dude” — also seemed to emphasize Ramsey’s blackness.
Phone calls to Ramsey’s house Wednesday went unanswered.
McDonald’s seemed particularly delighted by the unexpected association with a hero. The corporation tweeted on Tuesday: “Way to go Charles Ramsey — we’ll be in touch.” A company spokeswoman said Wednesday that it was trying to reach out to Ramsey through its local franchise.
Clayton said she hoped Ramsey’s legacy will be in his actions, not his words.
“I would like for him to be remembered, as he said, as a good man who did what anyone else would have done in that situation,” she said. “Unfortunately, I fear that he’ll be remembered as the guy they made a funny Auto-tune song about.”
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