America just loves a pretty young white girl in trouble.
There are two categories for this phenomenon:
The Pretty Young White Girl Who Brought It Upon Herself
When you're young, you do stupid things. That's life. In the Age of the Internet, every stupid thing you post there is saved for posterity. If you happen to have some compromising information floating out there somewhere, you will get caught and your downfall will be public and spectacular. America loves a downfall. America loves pretty young white girls. America goes crazy when a pretty young white girl has a spectacular downfall. If sexy pictures accompany the downfall, we produce enough drool to flood Liechtenstein and cover all of its mountains.
Witness poor Antonella Barba, who was primarily known for being a bit of a jerk on American Idol. When she made it pretty far, somebody put up some naughty pictures. People went nuts. I guess someone tried to bring her down a few pegs. I don't think Antonella deserved that. I still get a little bit sad when I hear Corinne Bailey Rae's "Put Your Records On."
How about Miss USA 2006, Tara Conner? She got caught doing the party thing in NYC, kissing Miss Teen USA and drinking underage.
Some dumb blog catches her and suddenly she's the scandal du jour. Good ol' Donald Trump gets to hop up behind the podium, pretend he's the Moral Voice of America, and grant Tara a second chance. Awww. See? America gets all loopy when a pretty young white girl gets into trouble.
How about Miss New Jersey 2007, Amy Polumbo, who had those utterly tame pictures surface on the internet? They weren't bad at all. Somebody was reaching when they tried to make a scandal out of that. Still, what is the general public going to remember this girl for? They're going to remember a stupid little scandal, and that sucks.
Now that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's "Kristen" has had her true identity and Myspace page revealed, what's going to happen to her? America is going to lavish attention on her and try to paint her in a corner. "Kristen," normally known as Ashley, is an aspiring singer. A bunch of opportunistic morons are going to descend upon her with album deals and movie offers so they can make a quick buck off of her and capitalize on her current image and scandal. The downside of this for Ashley is that it's just going to cement the image and scandal into the public consciousness. Yuk. That's not fair for someone so young.
These pretty young white girls are going to have to deal with labels for a long time--labels that a scandal-loving public was all too ready to paste onto them--just for doing dumb things in their youth.
The Pretty Young White Girl Cut Down In Her Prime
Auburn and Chapel Hill: we're going to be hearing about those two college towns for months. In a way, all the publicity is good for the case. I wonder if it's a double edged sword for the families; the publicity will surely help catch the killers, but it must be so hard to see a picture of your slain loved one every time you turn on the television.
I can't help but feel terrible for all of the murder victims in this country that are not pretty young white girls. When you think about it, pretty young white girls are a small portion of the population. It's like the country doesn't even care when someone else is killed. I think about all of the people murdered in Philadelphia--many of whom are not white--and it hurts me that their families do not benefit from the same kind of media exposure and analysis. Nobody in Dubuque is seeing fuzzy security camera images of prime murder suspects in these cases. So many people are cut down in their prime and America seems to care only about two successful and attractive young college girls. It's a real shame.
America loves pretty young white girls.
America loves pretty young white girls almost to the exclusion of all else.
Weird country.
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