Cable Can't Get Beyond the Pale

[MountainLaurel]

The pathological cable news obsession with young, attractive white women who unfortunately vanish continues unabated. Yes, the nation is still transfixed by Damsels in Distress -- only now it's gotten worse: The media are suddenly obsessed with their own obsession.

Won't somebody please just make it stop?

How silly of me; of course no one is going to make it stop. Certainly not Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren, who's spent so much time in Aruba looking for blond, missing Natalee Holloway that she probably qualifies for a Dutch passport. Leaving no stone or sand dollar unturned, Van Susteren has ridden this sad little story to her best Nielsen ratings ever. Hey, who cares about Iraq? They're draining the pond! They're digging in the landfill!

snip

Meanwhile, the case of Latoyia Figueroa, a pregnant 24-year-old woman of color missing in Philadelphia, is being used as a kind of make-up call. You know what a make-up call is: When a referee in the NBA calls a foul on one team and then the replay shows it wasn't really a foul at all, he quickly calls a cheap foul on the other team as a way to even the score.

In this case, the replay showed that the number of missing women of color who had received the full 24-7 Damsels treatment was precisely zero. So, nagged by a persistent blogger, the cable networks grudgingly devoted a couple of days to Figueroa. Then they dashed back to Aruba and breathlessly reported the latest "developments" in the Holloway case.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081101759.html