NOT NATALEE HOLLOWAY AGAIN

THE BODY OF LATOYIA FIGUEROA WAS FOUND DEAD in Pennsylvania.  Whether she would have been found alive if given the attention paid to missing white rich girl NATALEE HOLLOWAY, we may never know.  Neither attention, nor money, nor life are endless. A pregnant black woman’s life has ended, and with that loss of dear life flow the tears of family and friends, as well as the tears and words of people who never knew Latoyia Figueroa.  Latoyia Figuerao died for not being Natalee Holloway and for the trusting too much her fiance, the wrong man, with her life.

TRUST IS THE STORY of Natalee Holloway and of LATOYIA FIGUEROA and of us who hear the news.  Rich parents trust their children will be well on foreign vacations pregnant poor women only dream of taking and we trust who tell us the news to tell us what matters.  Broken trust of the goodness of strangers in foreign lands and broken trust of men who should care, broken trust is the story of our lives.  Broken trust is the story of breaking news.  Something passes the breaking point, though, when our world full of so much color and wonder is told only in the color of white.

WHITE IS THE COLOR OF COLD HARD CASH.  Demographics are the reason you hear about Natalee Holloway again and again.  No news on Natalee Holloway is actually good news for cable news networks, for while she is probably dead, speculation on her fate keeps profits alive.  But the cost is fear is kept alive in the mansions and the minds of the well off, and the not so well off, in the minds of the white and not so well read.  When voyeurs need ever more victims, what victory is won?

SOMETHING HAS BEEN WON, small victory though it be in the story of Latoyia Figueroa.  Some said no out of no disrespect to Natalee Holloway.  Some said yes to the story of Latoyia Figueroa.  RICHARD CRANIUM said no, this MAN said NO, and this WOMAN said NO.  Philadelphia bloggers said no, WE see another story.  A black woman is missing.

BOB COSTAS SAID NO, he would not do a LARRY KING LIVE show on Natalee Holloway.  Why?  No one is happy when a woman and her life are lost, but there are other lives and other stories.  Only stories that differ from our own in ways small and large show us true how common is the news and what is common in us all.