mnvnjnsn's Diary To contact send email to mnvnjnsnATSIGNgmailDOTcom. 2004-06-03
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am now officially a cranky old hag. You can call me hard-hearted and crass, but I just can't get myself up in arms about the disappearance of Brooke Wilberger. Maybe because it's on the news constantly, as if she is the only missing woman in the state of Oregon. I think my irritation stems from the media and what they choose to talk about. Sure, it sucks that this woman is missing, and probably dead. But you know what? A child goes missing in the United States every 40 seconds. And there's no way the news can report on all of these disappearances, but must they *always* focus on the pretty, blonde WHITE girls? Why bombard us with only the pictures of the cute, smart, smiley women who go missing or are butchered? Why does it seem that the news thinks the public will only empathize with the beautiful abducted? I don't know, I'm kinda hazy about my thought process here, but it seems to me to almost be glamorizing the victims and feeding the ego of the abductor. It seems like an unwritten rule in missing persons stories, like the rule in slasher pics that it's the sexually active kids who get killed. And I can't feel so much for the poor women who are put up on these post-abduction pedestals because their faces are EVERYWHERE. And so my anger at the media for their selective coverage pandering to the idea that only the rich and visually pleasing are valued is transferred to the victims instead. And that pisses me off. I certainly hope I would be missed if I went missing, but I'm not young, and blonde with "so much potential," so I'd probably just get a paragraph on the second to last page of the newspaper. 5:00 p.m. - 2004-06-03 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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