White Women NEED Help

I was reading the Washington Post today (online) and I came across a story about Natalee Holloway -- here's excerpts of it, plus my comments in italics

Someday historians will look back at America in the decade bracketing the turn of the 21st century and identify the era's major themes: Religious fundamentalism. Terrorism. War in Iraq. Economic dislocation. Bioengineering. Information technology. Nuclear proliferation. Globalization. The rise of superpower China.

Every few weeks, this stressed-out nation with more problems to worry about than hours in the day finds time to become obsessed with the saga -- it's always a "saga," never just a story -- of a damsel in distress.This type of yellow journalist drama should be regulated to the grocercy store fishwrap and those chump shows like Inside Edition, but these stories always are the lead on so-called news shows like CNN and Fox News Channel. And it's ALWAYS covered on the three network news channels, plus the othe bevy of cable news channel are up here giving us round the clock coverage -- at the expense of what I would consider real news, real debate and real investigative reporting (if such a thing is possible post-Reagan).

Before the Runaway Bride, there were too many damsels to provide a full list, but surely you remember the damsel elite: Laci Peterson. Elizabeth Smart. Lori Hacking. Chandra Levy. JonBenet Ramsey. We even found, or created, a damsel amid the chaos of war in Iraq: Jessica Lynch. Are you starting to see a pattern here?

The specifics of the story line vary from damsel to damsel. In some cases, the saga begins with the discovery of a corpse. In other cases, the damsel simply vanishes into thin air. Often, there is a suspect from the beginning -- an intruder, a husband, a father, a congressman, a stranger glimpsed lurking nearby.

Sometimes the tale ends well, or well enough, as in the cases of Smart and Lynch. Let's hope it ends well for Holloway. But more often, it ends badly. Once in a great while, a case like Runaway Bride comes along to provide comic relief.

But of course the damsels have much in common besides being female. You probably have some idea of where I'm headed here.I can see what the Post writer has to pussy-foot around the subject -- all these broads are white, and the majority are blondes

A damsel must be white. This requirement is nonnegotiable. It helps if her frame is of dimensions that breathless cable television reporters can credibly describe as "petite," and it also helps if she's the kind of woman who wouldn't really mind being called "petite," a woman with a good deal of princess in her personality. She must be attractive -- also nonnegotiable. Her economic status should be middle class or higher, but an exception can be made in the case of wartime (see: Lynch).

Put all this together, and you get 24-7 coverage. The disappearance of a man, or of a woman of color, can generate a brief flurry, but never the full damsel treatment. Since the Holloway story broke we've had more news reports from Aruba this past week, I'd wager, than in the preceding 10 years.

I have no idea whether the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida hung on every twist and turn of the Chandra Levy case; somehow, I doubt he did. But I suspect the apostle of "deconstructionism" would have analyzed the damsel-in-distress phenomenon by explaining that our society is imposing its own subconsciously chosen narrative on all these cases.

It's the meta-narrative of something seen as precious and delicate being snatched away, defiled, destroyed by evil forces that lurk in the shadows, just outside the bedroom window. It's whiteness under siege. It's innocence and optimism crushed by cruel reality. It's a flower smashed by a rock.

Or maybe (since Derrida believed in multiple readings of a single text) the damsel thing is just a guaranteed cure for a slow news day. The cable news channels, after all, have lots of airtime to fill.

This is not to mock any one of these cases (except Runaway Bride) or to diminish the genuine tragedy experienced by family and friends. I can imagine the helplessness I'd feel if a child of mine disappeared from a remote beach in the Caribbean. But I can also be fairly confident that neither of my sons would provoke so many headlines.

Whatever our ultimate reason for singling out these few unfortunate victims, among the thousands of Americans who are murdered or who vanish each year, the pattern of choosing only young, white, middle-class women for the full damsel treatment says a lot about a nation that likes to believe it has consigned race and class to irrelevance.

What it says is that we haven't. What it says is that those stubborn issues are still very much alive and that they remain at the heart of the nation's deepest fears.

Non-white men dicking down white woman and then disposing of them (either by leaving while they're sleeping or slicing their throats, although Black men know better because history has taught us not to ever go down that route) ALWAYS gets the tisk-tisk, as they're sharping up the knives and preparing the hot tar.

This Hollaway chick is dead, and lost at sea. There's no other smart explanation, 'cause if she was kidnapped where's the ransom? Now because there are whites and well as people of color involved in the disappearance, the white kid (whose pop is a judge) is going to get the best legal defense... the Aruban niggas, shit they is going to be hung or keelhauled or thrown to the sharks -- whatever they do in that part of the world for the Death Penalty.

Still what's going to irk the fuck out of me is what little girl's face is going to be a banner-ad on the CNN ticker later this summer?

And is it going to be something with a person of color is involved? True or not! Remember that one crazy-ass white women who executed her kids, then said some "nigger did it", remember her? That's gonna happen again, mark my words!