Sunday, July 31, 2005

Missing blond high school grads from Alabama!

Is this news? Natalee Holloway disappeared a very long time ago and nothing substantial has happened in this case for a month now. Yet it still finds its way into the headlines. This is thanks in large part to failed lawyer and now hack journalist/legal expert Nancy Grace who created a name for herself by trying and convicting Scott Peterson in the press, tainting any possible jury pool and ensuring that a fair trial was completely impossible. Nancy Grace is a horrible, horrible human being who will likely (if the Buddhists are right) be reincarnated as a slimy greenish black slug. My only hope is that when that happens, some troll-looking young boy is around to pour salt on her. Grace has since gone on to cover such important legal issues of our time as the Michael Jackson trial and more importantly has become the advocate for the Holloway/Twitty Families and personal critic-major of the Dutch legal system. People are giving John Stewart no end of grief for his soft interview of semi-fascist Senator Rick Santorum, but that was nothing compared to the puff interviews that Nancy Grace conducts almost daily with Holloway’s mom, a wannabe MILF who’s only claim to fame is that she has surpassed 40 with all of her teeth intact (something of a feat in Alabama).

I feel for the parents of Natalee Holloway. Nothing could more horrific than losing a child. No parent should have to outlive their children. My heart and thoughts go out to this family as it deals with a nightmare, the likes of which I hope I will never have to endure. But let’s face it, these parents made a rather sophomorically bad decision in allowing their 18 years old daughter to go on a “barely chaperoned” trip to Aruba to stay in a casino. What kind of parenting is that? Perhaps that is what is so upsetting to the family. Knowing that in the moment when it really counted, when Natalee needed an adult to quash her dreams of rum drinks on white sand beaches and sweaty nights at dance clubs, the lights were on but no one was home. And what kind of school organizes such a trip? Have these people never heard of Club Med? Disney World? Disneyland? No, they opted for a trip to a casino filled island! Typical red state hypocritical tomfoolery!

Of course, none of that matters. It really isn’t her parent’s fault any more than it is Nancy Grace’s. It is, quite simply, our fault. I have followed this case. Not because I think it is news. I have followed as something of a sociological research project. Or perhaps I watch for the same reason that we watch reality TV or a car accident on the freeway, because like lemmings, we are unable to turn away. Oh yes, dear readers, I have followed this case, and I am here to tell you that this is not news. It does not even approach the level of news. This isn’t even worthy of the six o’clock news in Birmingham, Alabama, let alone CNN of FoxNews. I guess, though, it is not surprising that it has received press. It is also hardly shocking when it was revealed that a few years ago a couple of black boys were killed on a trip to the Caribbean and they were not mentioned once in the national press.

What is our national obsession with blond white girls? Lindsay Lohan, the Olsen twins, Natalee Holloway, the list goes on and on. We all complain about the coverage this stuff receives and yet it keeps coming. Why God, why? I’ll tell you why, because we are lazy. We are unwilling to use the squishy grey stuff between our ears. In addition, we are like ostriches; we don’t want to know all the horrible things happening in this world. We can’t handle the images of our young men and women dying in Iraq. We can’t handle the images of AIDS and starvation robbing the African continent of any chance at a future. We can’t cope with the devastating rape and torturous killings in Darfur, Sudan that our President has dubbed genocide yet does nothing about. We would rather focus on one American “maybe dying” in Aruba then the over 1000 people who have died in India because of a particular brutal seasonal monsoon.

We need to take a step back and consider what really matters. The death of anyone always matters. Natalee Holloway was probably a good kid who was robbed of a future by some terrible person on her last night in Aruba. Should she have died? No, absolutely not. She should be in Alabama enjoying her summer after high school with her friends. But, in the end, the trail is cold. The family is clinging to anything and all of this media attention is casting the generally good people of Aruba in a bad light and forcing their government to spend way too much money on this case. It is time to call it a day. It is time to let go. Natalee is gone, but hopefully in the hearts of her friends and family she will not be forgotten. It is time for her image to go now, she was never news and we have endured this personal tragedy far long enough. It is time for this story to go away now and make room for more important issues.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You know what I don't get about people, if it annoys you don't read it. Yeah I guess we are all entitled to our opinions. But the fact is if it annoys you it's because some how you identify with it. Because if it was your kid that was dead and missing in Aruba and lets face it she is dead you'd use any methods to at least find the body so you could give your child a proper funeral, say good bye properly and have some closure. Death sucks, loosing a loved one sucks and losing a child sucks worse. As children we aren’t raised being told when you have a child some day they might die before you. Parents aren’t suppose to bury their children and in this case they haven't the opportunity to even do that yet. If this is how the Holloway's deal with the death of their daughter so be it, I can think of far worse ways of dealing with it. And if this is how Nancy Grace makes a name for herself who cares. I have never heard of Nancy Grace or maybe I have but could care less about her importance...or maybe it's just because I don't retain much these days. But you know I have heard of about all the other travesties in the world you write about and we can handle the images we just chose to do nothing about it because frankly none of us have the energy to deal with it. Call us lazy, call us what you want. For most of the population just living their own life day to day is a 5 mile uphill backwards barefoot in the snow work out. Most of us can only deal with the little tiny world that revolves around us, because it's how we deal. Besides when someone like George Bush gets elected twice most of us do just give up and block out the unacceptable. And Who's to blame their parenting skills or the authorities in Aruba, or the girl herself ? The one to blame is the individual(s) who killed her. That’s the individual(s) who should be judged. OH and I for one think Scott Peterson is guilty and got what he deserved and for the record I followed that case very closely on the crime and trails portion of Yahoo News, almost as closely as I followed Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's break up.