Are You Pretty Enough?

Remembering the Laci Peterson case and with the return to the U.S. of John Karr the 41 year old school teacher who has confessed to the kidnap murder of 6 year old JonBenet Ramsey in Colorado Christmas of 1996, I once again question the conscience and morality of the average U.S. citizen. It seems the only victims worthy of media interest are white, beautiful and at the very least middle to upper middle class.

What Of the Faceless Victims?

I confess I haven't broken down the statistics but I'm certain the week JonBenet disappeared there were hundreds of black, Hispanic and poor white children abused, kidnapped and/or murdered in the United States. The simple fact the FBI in its 1996 Uniform Crime Reports , lists a shocking 19,645 occurrences of Murders and Nonnegligent Manslaughter that year must give one pause. How many of these murder victims do you remember? How many of these murders were reported on CNN? Ask yourself, was there anything particularly outstanding about the murder of JonBenet other than her status and its occurrence during Christmas. Such holidays seem to bring as much aggression and depression to the surface as joy to the world. If anything the statistics for that week would have been considerably higher than other times of the year. When time permits I intend to explore the statistics in more detail in a future post.

Media Must Make Money

How many of the disenfranchised victims made it to the front page? Very few I suspect and none got the overwhelming T.V. coverage that a 6 year old beauty princess did. Don't even get me started on the horrid exploitation of these little girls by their twisted parents projecting some displaced narcissism on their children.

Face the Problem

What is the matter with the good Christian people of the God Blessed America that they care more about one blond blue eyed victim than the large number of daily victims of poverty, drugs and sexual deviancy. Concentrating on the inherent sickness of a society caused by it's social blinders surely is more important than solving a ten year old murder mystery.

I admire the tabloid This Week With George Stephanopoulos for closing every episode with a listing of U.S. service men and women who lost their lives that week. It brings the tragedy of the war in Iraq to the attention of the American citizen in a graphic sense. What a tremendous value it would be for CNN to end each segment with a listing of those Americans murdered that day (approximately 60) name, age, gender and city.

In all sincerity, my heart goes out to those who loved and cherished JonBenet. No child should ever experience such a death in this world, and no loved one should ever be faced with this sort of wrenching loss.