Natalee Holloway
2005-06-13, 12:57 p.m.

So I�m sure some of you will consider me a bit callous for saying this, but I am sick and tired of hearing about Natalee Holloway. She�s DEAD. LETS MOVE ON. Yes, her disappearance is tragic, and I don�t even want to think what she probably went through before whoever it was that took her finally killed her, but I�m sorry- things like this happen every day. What makes her so fuckin� special? Is it because she was in Aruba? Is it because she was a good student? Is it because she�s blonde? If she were a young black woman named Shaniqua and went missing in Compton, she wouldn�t even have been a blip on the evening news. So what makes this girl�s disappearance (and lets be honest here, her subsequent death) so news worthy? I am seriously asking, because I don�t know. I�ve really been giving it a lot of thought and the reasons I have come up with are just plain despicable, and they all boil down to ratings. First off- the media knows that people are going to care a helluva lot more about a cute white girl than a black one. Second, the fact that a body hasn�t shown up yet creates an air of suspense. We all know she�s dead, so right now the whole country is checking the news every day with baited breath waiting for the body to turn up. The �news� media has become very good at creating national tragedies. They�ve learned what piques our interest and they play on it- all for the sake of add revenue. �Has the jury reached a verdict yet? Find out after these brief messages from our sponsors!� So here�s a little very unscientific Diaryland pole- how many of you have heard of the Natalee Holloway disappearance? How many of you have heard of the Downing Street Memo? Let me know- my inquiring mind wants to know. It seems to me that these days, the news seems far less interested in giving you the news and much more concerned with keeping you entertained. How interesting can campaign finance infractions be when you can be hearing about who is in Paris Hilton�s address book? Much of the blame falls on us- after all, we�re the ones who tune in and tune out, right? We can�t blame TV for spoon-feeding us what we want, can we? Well, to a certain degree, I say we can. I think we can because things have gotten so bad that a lot of �news� organizations don�t even really TRY and report the news anymore. If we're not given much of a choice and we have to actually SEARCH for real news, is that our fault? If the press had been doing its job, I really don�t think we�d be in Iraq right now. All the evidence was there- a veritable smoking gun pointing right to the White House that Iraq didn�t have any WMD. The problem is that the press didn�t really care about finding and reporting any of it until it was too late. Granted, the Administration has become very adept at strong-arming the press into giving us the news it deems acceptable (having some of them on your payrole helps- yes, that�s right. Your tax dollars being used to bankroll a phony reporter into giving you phony news), but that isn�t really an excuse- we still have a free press, whether George Bush likes it or not. Yet, for some reason, in the roughly 20 press conferences Scott McClellan (the White House Press Secretary) has given since the Downing Street Memo story broke, it has been the subject of a whopping 2 questions out of about 950 that Mr. McClellan has been asked. So basically, I insist that someone isn�t doing their fuckin� jobs. Rather than upholding their integrity and responsibility, the press gives us ad-nauseum coverage of an unfortunate girl from Alabama and the molestation trial of a washed up pop icon. Why? Simply because they�re more concerned with their bottom line and their revenue flow than with actually reporting the news.

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