The Always Present "White" Woman
Recently a woman somewhere named (Something) Anthony was tried on the charge of having killed her baby girl. I noticed that this trial was getting a huge amount of media attention, and the more headlines about it that I saw, the tighter I stuck to the vow I had made from the beginning not to pay the slightest attention to the case, except to wonder what was so special about it that called for that much hoopla.. Now the trial is over and the jury voted the woman not guilty, and the land is awash with howls of outrage. (After all, she was charged, so she must've been guilty, right? And forget all that garbage about how a person is innocent until found guilty. Not in today's hard-bottomed America..) But still there's been no answer to that question about what was so special about that case to start with, compared to the large number of quite similar cases.
That attitude expressed by the community at large is what has been behind the undying hatred shown toward the admittedly hapless, former football hero O.J. Simpson, after he was tried on the charge of murdering his wife. It's been pointed out, but to little avail, that people feeling so righteous and infuriated about Simpson having been found innocent would have had nothing to say if the victim had been his "black" first wife instead of his "white" second wife. And another sports hero, Tiger Woods, only missed getting as much opprobrium because his Swedish wife was still very much alive. Still, he had committed the almost as serious crime of having not only been unfaithful to her, but also he had done it with a succession of other beauties, most if not all of whom (and this is what made his actions so horrible though it was left largely unsaid) appeared to have been "white."
With reference to Ms Anthony a thinker in Tennessee named Stephen Shirley hits on this point and calls it the "Missing White Women Syndrome--"
where the media and public tend to focus on "damsels in distress." These damsels, most often young, attractive, white females, often receive incredible amounts of coverage while cases involving minority females or even boys of any ethnicity are often overlooked.
That hits the nail right on the head, and he makes a lot of other points in his article that also greatly needed to be said -- and I would only like to say that it might've been better for him to have substituted "usually" or even "almost always" instead of using that last "often" for the third time in the same sentence.. And while I'm at it, I might as well also question the name he gave to the syndrome. It seems even better to call it, the "Always Present White Women Syndrome," because that is what gives the syndrome its punch, their mere presence.
It's true that "white" women, on the whole, are an impressive bunch, but so are other women of all the other hues and persuasions. The gender is what is so special, and not the melanin count.
Meanwhile I found it something of a huge coincidence that if you scroll down a little on the right of the Shirley article, you will find a link (it might not be there now but here is another one) to a report that after Tiger Woods' badly betrayed "white" wife had packed the kids up and had apparently taken herself and everything else back to Sweden or wherever in a state of high dudgeon after she found out about his perfidies, she has now changed her mind and is moving back in with him. The righteous among us will not be happy to hear that. If true, I think it's great myself..
....
That attitude expressed by the community at large is what has been behind the undying hatred shown toward the admittedly hapless, former football hero O.J. Simpson, after he was tried on the charge of murdering his wife. It's been pointed out, but to little avail, that people feeling so righteous and infuriated about Simpson having been found innocent would have had nothing to say if the victim had been his "black" first wife instead of his "white" second wife. And another sports hero, Tiger Woods, only missed getting as much opprobrium because his Swedish wife was still very much alive. Still, he had committed the almost as serious crime of having not only been unfaithful to her, but also he had done it with a succession of other beauties, most if not all of whom (and this is what made his actions so horrible though it was left largely unsaid) appeared to have been "white."
With reference to Ms Anthony a thinker in Tennessee named Stephen Shirley hits on this point and calls it the "Missing White Women Syndrome--"
where the media and public tend to focus on "damsels in distress." These damsels, most often young, attractive, white females, often receive incredible amounts of coverage while cases involving minority females or even boys of any ethnicity are often overlooked.
That hits the nail right on the head, and he makes a lot of other points in his article that also greatly needed to be said -- and I would only like to say that it might've been better for him to have substituted "usually" or even "almost always" instead of using that last "often" for the third time in the same sentence.. And while I'm at it, I might as well also question the name he gave to the syndrome. It seems even better to call it, the "Always Present White Women Syndrome," because that is what gives the syndrome its punch, their mere presence.
It's true that "white" women, on the whole, are an impressive bunch, but so are other women of all the other hues and persuasions. The gender is what is so special, and not the melanin count.
Meanwhile I found it something of a huge coincidence that if you scroll down a little on the right of the Shirley article, you will find a link (it might not be there now but here is another one) to a report that after Tiger Woods' badly betrayed "white" wife had packed the kids up and had apparently taken herself and everything else back to Sweden or wherever in a state of high dudgeon after she found out about his perfidies, she has now changed her mind and is moving back in with him. The righteous among us will not be happy to hear that. If true, I think it's great myself..
....
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:34 AM
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