White women and their media enablers just have to learn to make room for the "feelings" of everyone else who thinks that they are "victims" too

 

Last week the Bay Area San Jose Mercury News informed us that

KTVU news anchor Frank Somerville again has been removed from the air, but this time a newsroom spat…According to station sources, Somerville, 63, has been “suspended indefinitely” by Channel 2 management after a disagreement with news director Amber Eikel over coverage of the Gabby Petito homicide case. The disagreement, said sources, occurred earlier in the week after the body of Petito was discovered in Wyoming…KTVU was prepared to air a news report detailing the latest developments in the case.

Somerville wanted to add a brief tagline at the end of the report that questioned the extraordinary level of media coverage devoted to the story. Sources said he wanted to point out that the U.S. media often disproportionately covers tragedies involving young white women, while largely ignoring similar cases involving women of color and indigenous people. Somerville is the adoptive father of a black teen daughter. The veteran anchor was told that the tagline was inappropriate and he apparently pushed back on it. There was no word on how heated the discussions got. Sources say that Somerville was informed by station management the next day he was being suspended.

First off, let’s point out that it would seem “odd” for a California television station to treat a case like it was “local” when the victim’s body was found in Wyoming, and her home was in Florida, not California. Why was the news director so fanatical about treating this like headline news locally? And why was she so upset about the frankly true observation that white women—especially attractive blonde ones—are treated more “special” than other people who are victims of crime? It should be pointed out that white women are the demographic least likely to be a victim of violent crime by population rate, but it just seems like a lot more because, because the national media treats every one they can get their hands as “national” news. Black men are 23 times more likely to be the victim of homicide than white women, although there are “reasons” why people avoid the “whys” of that issue.

Of course in this gender victim-obsessed society we live in, where white women control how their news is reported, and complain loudly and often if it suggests any variation on the victim theme (except with embarrassing far-right racist politicians); arrogance and ego always justifies personalized outrage. Film and television also feeds into the white woman victim narrative; I always have disliked shows like Law & Order because the only time police and prosecutors didn’t get the "right" man—literally—was because of a “technicality” or a dumb jury. But with its “Special Victims Unit” shows, it just became a sandbox for white female victim mythology, because the only thing required to be a “special victim” was to be both white and female. This permits them to avoid examining their own failings as human beings.

Of course, the Black Lives Movement also has similar pretensions, but it generally focuses on one individual (like George Floyd) and makes him or her the “face” on a recurring theme of police abuse—although this also avoids the subject that the vast majority of black homicides are committed by other black people (by the way, a truck advertising Snoop Dogg’s “19 Crimes”  wine just passed by; why do these “role models”  have to “celebrate” crime?). White female victim advocates don’t seem to understand or care that other people have their own problems, even white men. With all these paranoid, racist “Karens” around—including politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and media figures like Laura Ingraham, both of them blondes—why shouldn’t minorities also see self-absorbed white women as a part of the victimizer class, when in this society they are frankly “1B” to white men’s “1A”?  

Meanwhile, Bolden Day, the father of then still missing Illinois State graduate student Jelani Day, who is black, spoke out against the lackadaisical treatment of his son’s disappearance by police and the media compared to that of Petito. In an NPR report Day noted that “Petitio’s face was ‘plastered everywhere’ and the FBI got involved after she had been missing for two days,” but his son “didn’t get that same attention after being missing for longer.” Jelani Day was identified earlier this month as the remains found in the Illinois River.

NPR also noted the case of Daniel Robinson, a 24-year-old geologist who is also black. Robinson went missing during a field expedition in the Arizona desert. His wrecked vehicle was found but not himself or his body. In contrast to efforts to locate Petito, Robinson’s father claims that has done more than the police (the FBI, of course, is not involved) to find his son. He claims the police are simply working on assumptions that justify “non-action” on their part.

To the point that minority women are missing without the interest of the media: that is quite true, although most (like most “missing” white females) are so because they want to be. Native American women are frequently stated as being “missing,” with the strong suggestion of “foul play.” The reality is that contrary to popular belief, Native Americans (unless retired or disabled) do not receive a monthly check from the federal government; unless there is a profitable casino on the reservation, joblessness, poverty and homelessness are seemingly insurmountable problems. Thus it should come as no surprise than many Native Americans—both men and women—go “missing.” Take the recent case of Reatha Finkbonner of the Lummi Nation in Washington; she was “found” in Las Vegas, determined by police not to be in “danger” and apparently there to have a good time, without telling anyone back home.

Why does the media ignore complaints about its coverage displaying absolute devotion to white female victims when they are the demographic least likely to be the victim of violent crime? Why is it “inappropriate” to even mention it, as seen in the Mercury News story? Because it “sells.” Many white female viewers feel a “vicarious” connection with other “victims,” and that draws them in waiting for the next updates, which of course helps ratings—and CNN, which has been treating the Petito case as expected, is in desperate need of a ratings boost.  It is the “feeling good about feeling bad” syndrome, nobody else matters; the problem, of course, is that all crime victims think they “matter,” and white women (and blacks and LGBTQ as well) just have to learn to make room for the “feelings” of everyone else.