Monday, June 13, 2005

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees...

Sometimes a bitch wishes she was a dumbass and all the problems of the world were beyond my comprehension.

But I am who I am and I notice so very much…

For the love of God...
Natalee Holloway has been missing on the island of Aruba for quite some time. A bitch was tired of this shit from the start, because I really don’t see the news angle. “Pretty young honor student goes missing” is tragic, but not news. Then, the Aruban authorities threw the media a familiar bone – two large black men who work as security guards near, not at, the hotel were arrested and dragged before the international press while handcuffed! Yeah! Now, the media licked its chops over the prospect of a brutally assaulted and or murdered young blond! And sexualized black men too...oh my!

If she’s alive...Dateline Survival Story and Ann Curry can interview, because she does emotion better than Katie!

If she’s dead…48 Hours Mystery! Who killed the young student and isn’t Aruba dark and dangerous?

Without a victim, we are left with “What did these evil black beasts do to that poor young blond blue-eyed honor student? Oh, my gawd!” And this bitch thinks this story has been old.

A bitch’s mind was more intrigued by the fact that the media wasn’t covering the “What the fuck was she thinking?” angle. See, Miss Natalee was seen getting into a car with not one, not two, but three young tan frat types. Okay. Miss Natalee was also at a club…late…very late and without her “who needs enemies when you have friends like this” friends who let her most likely drunk off her ass self go into a vehicle in a fucking foreign country without them! Then they left her ass to go back home when she didn’t show up at the airport! MmmmHmmm…maybe they should have a chat with the original travel group, but that would be too much like right.

But I digress.

That would have been an interesting story. A bitch might have tuned in to see NBC tackle the “other countries have their own laws and not all pretty faces with clever accents can be trusted” angle. But instead NBC followed the heard and covered the “crazed black men took Massa’s daughter out ‘da yard!” angle.

This morning Natalee Holloway’s mum took to the airwaves to bitch about Aruban justice. Hello?! They are a country and get to do “justice” however the fuck they want to! Note to ‘bama – when you have to whip out your passport you are no longer in the US and our laws don’t mean shit! If that pisses you off, take a number and get into line behind the Gitmo prisoners trying to make sense of our fucked up methods. Jesus.

Anyhoo, Natalee’s mum was all frantic because Aruban authorities aren’t beating the shit out of the three boys to find out what they did to her daughter.

What three boys? What happened to the two huge black security guards?

Great questions, class! See, the guards disappeared from the press. The three frat types were the folks actually seen with Natalee the night she disappeared! So why arrest two unrelated massive black security guards? Now that is a fucking dumb question.

Since security tapes don’t show the boys doing what the boys say they were doing, a bitch thinks Natalee’s mum may have a point. But she also stated that she thinks that the two security guards need to be set free because they really are not connected.

Not connected...yet dragged before the international press in handcuffs.

And this takes a bitch to the ugly topic of lynching. The Senate will apologize this week for failing to pass an anti-lynching law back in the day. For my international readers – lynching was the practice of murdering a black person by hanging and or burning and or dragging them in public to “send a message”. Lynchable offenses included, but were not limited to, failing to leave the sidewalk when a white person passed, making eye contact with a white woman, addressing a white person in a familiar way, getting too full of oneself and being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the village got bored. Folks actually held picnics and danced around burned and or hung bodies. There is only one known survivor of a lynching and he will be on hand to see the Senate address its wrong this week.

A bitch appreciates the symbolism of this apology, but to me the two stories (Natalee and lynching) are intertwined.

We now live in a world where children of the Diaspora do not face the constant threat of lynching. A bitch would like to point out that the practice still exists and has moved on to more diverse targets (see Matthew Shephard) But we still live in a world were a black man is the first suspect when a white woman goes missing. And the media still dives right in without question when a black suspect is presented to them.

Is a bitch supposed to find progress in the fact that these two men in Aruba are not swinging high?

Seems like Aruban trees bear strange fruit too and this bitch doesn’t plan to celebrate the lack of blood on the leaves and blood on the root…

5 comments:

Maven said...

Aruba's legal system is Dutch (subtext: white). Doesn't surprise me that they're going whole hog on the black men they picked up. As a whole, I think last year they had six rapes. It's a relatively safe country.

I agree about it being tragic, but not necessarily "newsy". Just the media striking up the ol' "Fear Machine" they do so well. What else is going on in the world which this story is deflecting our attentions?

I think there are so many different angles to this. The one I find repugnant, or two, rather is the fact that she was allowed to go there in the first place. And what does she do with what was probably her first taste of freedom? Probably got drunk and lined up a four way gangbang with some strangers--and her girl"friends" let her go.

This story is so fucked up from so many different angles.

Admin said...

ABB I was thinking along the same lines all weekend. The guys who were ACTUALLY INVOLVED didn't get drug before the cameras and pulled out their homes in a perp walk for the world to see. Hmmmm. I wonder why? Could it be because they're NOT BLACK? Noooo, couldn't be. The main guy is a Dutch national--son of a FREAKING DUTCH JUSTICE MINISTRY OFFICIAL. Have we seen HIS FACE yet? According to a story on Google News lawyers for the black security guards are asking for their release and even Natalee's "girls gone wild" mother has said she believes they are innocent! Now aint that a bitch.

Admin said...

PS, the more I think about this shit the madder I get. I know people will remember the Susan Smith story from a few years back where she killed her 2 little boys in SC and blamed in on a black man. Oooooh, it just makes me so freaking mad. I hope Amnesty Intl gets involved and sues the Aruban government over this shit.

Jessica said...

I was gonna say.
The same news cycle that sees Emmett Till exhumed supports this sort of yellow journalism?! Feh.

Anonymous said...

I feel sorry for Natalee's family. However, you would think from watching the news that the only people who go missing in the United States are middle-to-upper class white females!

At about the same time Natalee disappeared, there were three other people who went missing in Birmingham, AL: an African-American high school assistant principal (whose body was just recently found), a middle-aged African-American female who was a cafeteria worker, and a 12 year-old white girl who was from the wrong part of town. I did not see any of them on CNN.

Natalee, BTW, was from Mountain Brook, a very rich part of Birmingham. The income per capita in Mountain Brook is higher than that of Beverly Hill, CA.

The last I heard, the governor of Alabama has offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to Natalee's whereabouts. Meanwhile, an African-American family of three--a young man and his grandparents, disappeared within the past month. Governor Riley has offered a mere $5000 for information about them. So, three African-Americans are worth a tenth of one rich white girl.

I find this disgusting.

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