Casey Anthony listens to testimony during the state of Florida's case against her.  (AP photo/Red Huber) 

From the beginning, the case of the State of Florida v. Casey Marie Anthony has been about one thing, the selling of Casey Anthony. While it might have appeared on the surface to have been the search for justice for the death of a young child whose remains were found duct-taped in a wooded swamp not far from her family home, it was really always about her mother, the packaging, merchandising and selling of the mother at whose hands and in whose presence she likely died, despite the inability of a jury to comfortably find that had been proven beyond what they considered reasonable doubt.

Casey Anthony spent years prior to the death of her daughter selling Casey Anthony, weaving a web of lies that can only be interpreted as having pathological origin. For much of the time after her daughter was born, Casey Anthony falsely told her parents and associates she had a job, which she didn't, and a babysitter, which she also didn't (the use of the word "nanny" seems not appropriate here, and one has to wonder why Casey Anthony ever thought it was). 

She sold herself to all who knew her, a doting mother, a hot body, from homes to dance clubs. Her parents wanted to believe she could parent; her boyfriends wanted to believe she was available on demand.  

When she and her child last left the family home in June 2008, she managed to sell herself as a busy mother whose daughter was being cared for elsewhere. She could be the hot body; she could be the responsible mother.  

When police got involved a month later, she could sell herself as a victim, pretty young mother missing a child, afraid of something not articulated. Parents and a sibling mobilized to find that child, sold on the Casey-as-victim world.

The Casey Anthony who has emerged throughout her incarceration and legal proceedings has skillfully charmed members of her defense team and been packaged by them and sold, eventually the grieving mother, the prim school marm. Wardrobe and hairstyles and gestures have been carefully chosen for effect, soft sweaters, button-down shirts, pastel colors, makeup at a minimum, just enough mascara to run appropriately when a tissue is required.  All that disappeared after the acquittal, when the hair came down and Casey Anthony as country western star emerged, full makeup, head swinging, hair flipping, smiling, still charming the defense team who feel alternately paternal, maternal or filial after throwing her father, mother and brother under the bus in order to save her life.  

At the vortex, Jose Baez has been particularly vulnerable to her charms, the flirting and pouting not going unnoticed. Where she was once a damsel in distress, a poor young mother unable to defend herself against accusations after the loss of a child, she is now a ticket to something greater than he imagined. He might have hoped to spare her Murder One; he didn't expect she'd walk, and be able to talk. 

She's been a model prisoner, a charming defendant, and is preparing to reinvent and relocate herself, contemplating hair colors and tinted contact lenses and adoptive children while parents are reeling and defense members are hiring talent agents.  Everyone will be on The View and Piers Morgan; there will be books and films, offers for pictorials and reality shows, all to the highest bidder, the grieving mother, moving on, wrongfully accused, abandoned by family, the dysfunctional family portrait tossed aside, now free, free to live La Bella Vita.

While y'all were scratching your heads, Casey Anthony was being carefully packaged, carefully sold. The question is, who's still buying?