Updated 2 years ago
With all due respect toward the dead, but the last few weeks in the news left a bad taste in my mouth. The media focus is very odd and anachronistic. I thought we were in the 21st century, and that our old school tabloid years were well behind us.
~55,000 people go missing every year. How many missing minorities, and other people that are not attractive blonde young females are out there, that go missing or get murdered every day, that don’t make the news, that don’t become the object of media obsession?
Consider the broad and historical context. This is exactly the type of grievance story that used to lead to lynchings, that got black men like Clarence Brandley wrongfully on death row; and worse, today it tacitly sends a message to murderers (usually white men) that they can get away with targeting the forgotten unattractive or darker-skinned women.
I admit that whenever a beautiful white woman meets an unsavory end in the media, as a white man I feel a hint of righteous indignance, and a thirst for revenge – and, if minorities are involved, a brief flicker of a racial animus.
And I actively work to keep those dark feelings in check. No telling what an average neanderthal feels! Still, there seems to be a tacit understanding that if POC just murder their own kind, then white people won’t get too bent out of shape about it. Selfishly, I would be Ok with that. But we don’t live in bubbles. COVID has shown us that what happens to one eventually happens to all. And Donald Trumnp, bless his heart, woke me up to the fact that getting mad at the Central Park Five is only going to lead me down a dark path.
Ironically, CNN, one of the many perpetrators, tried to play it both ways (for views) and in a stunning look in the mirror, acknowledges this:
I’ve been covering another case that is far more deserving of media outrage and actually has far more profound, thought-provoking implications – it makes OJ seem prosaic – yet it has gotten nowhere near the coverage or scrutiny that this one has: Akshaya Kubiak, the egomaniacal jackass from Showtime’s Gigolos that murdered a young beautiful Sikh woman, Herleen Kaur Dulai.
I pray he gets life:
Akshaya Kubiak Part 1: The Leadup to the Murder of Herleen Kaur Dulai
Hammurabi had it correct. The price for taking a life should be a life, whether behind bars or the chair.
The subtext of all of this is that you can practically walk away from murdering women that aren’t young white and attractive.
