what is fox news' fascination with natalee holloway?

[colonel odis]

i'm sorry as i can be that the poor girl's missing, and i can only imagine what her parents must be going through.

but c'mon .... teenagers disappear every day. here, on vacation in mexico, while traveling europe. what makes natalee so special? and how did the fbi manage to find time to fly down there the week of her disappearance?

the media's been all over this, but fox seems to be going with an all-natalee-all-the-time bent. is her stepfather, "jug," an important republican fundraiser? or are they just incensed someone would kidnap the flower of southern pride?

i even heard someone on there last week talking about extraditing those boys so they could come up here and stand trial. though that can't happen, given the hubris of the right-wing, it's easy to see how they'd want to.

just wondering what fox's obsession is.

[kliljedahl]

1. Anything to distract from the disaster in the White House

Keith’s Barbeque Central

[underpants]

2. BTW- TWO New York City residents were shot there last week

I heard this on Imus (Bo Dietl turned it into a racist rant as usual) but apparently two BLACK men from NYC were shot there last week. I can't find an article on it--no coverage

[lse7581011]

3. I've Been Wondering That Myself!

Over the weekend it seems they've turned to "All Natalie-All the Time!"

[babylonsister]

4. ...and MSNBC and CNN and... it's nuts! nt

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

5. Blonde, caucasian cheerleader...

... to keep the mouth breathers glued to the tube. E.D. is only on in the mornings.

[marmar]

6. Distraction, exactly...

Who knows, the FBI might have her tied up somewhere.

[jojo54]

13. and be assured that when she's finally released

she'll be brainwashed first and a new story implanted into her memory.

[Inland]

7. One thing you can't blame the GOP for doing or ignoring. nt

[BlueEyedSon]

8. White, blond, young, pretty and abducted/missing/murdered.

Any questions?

[Patiod]

9. She's missing b/c of a Smug Liberal Elite-driven moral decline

No kidding.

I was at the gym, and the only thing on was Faux and golf, and no staff to change the channels.

Faux had on some "Morals Expert" who explained that the "Smug Liberal Elites" (I think he had copyrighted the phrase "Smug Liberal Elites", because he kept saying it with capital letters) were trying to erase the word "evil" because it wasn't politically correct, and this Holloway girl was a victim of a society that wouldn't allow the discussion of evil. Plus the "Morals Expert" and the Botox Bitch Newsreader agreed she was the victim of a society that encourages teens to go to Aruba (unlike the good old days, when Expert and Newsreader weren't allowed by their Good Upstanding Moral parents to go to Aruba).

Not a mention of the fact that her parents are members of the notoriously liberal sect, the Southern Baptists.....

Then they had a piece on how some securities trader had spent $40K at strip clubs (accompanied by lots and lots of video of stripper) but that securities traders are generally Good Moral Upstanding Fellows who don't go to strip clubs, so we needn't worry about our money. Followed by a piece on how immoral Jessica Simpson's new video is, accompanying by lots and lots and lots of footage of this horrible immorality.

This is why I don't have cable. Sadly, asking to change the channel at the gym doesn't really help anyway, because CNN and MSGOP are almost as bad.

[BlueEyedSon]

16. In ARUBA (a Smug Liberal Elite-driven moral decline)?

[MadHound]

10. Let's see here

Downing Street Minutes picking up steam, finally. Iraq is an unmitigated disaster. Poll numbers are going south. Social Security "reform" is falling flat. Yep, the media is going to go into distraction mode in a big way. C'mon, out of the six media conglomerates that control ninety percent of the media in this country, four have direct ties to the military industrial complex, and the other two have indirect ties. Thus, for these people, this illegal and immoral war is bringing in obscene profits. Thus, they're fates are intertwined with Bushco's, and they will do everything in their power to prop up this misadministration.

And the reason that it is now Natalee 24/7 is because they're other distraction, like the Jackson trial, are gone. Thus, with a dirth of distractions, the media is forced to push whichever distraction is handy.

However, scary and sad as it might be, if these distractions don't work, and Bushco continues to receive flak, look for the nuclear option of distractions to be pulled out, another LIHOP/MIHOP distraction on the order of 911.

[Chichiri]

11. She's just one penis short of being the Republican Idol.

Hence the Fox News ejaculate.

[ovidsen]

12. Ratings

Faux nooz didn't become the #1 TV "news" service in the US by actual, honest, genuine reporting on real issues. It hooked viewers by offering more than rational people could ever possibly want to know about Natalee, Terri Schiavo, Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, etc.

Bread and circuses. And Rupert Murdoch is laughing all the way to the bank.

[ET Awful]

14. She's the new "Missing White Girl of the Week"

Fox needs a weekly MWGOTW to distract attention from any possible real news that might arise.

[goclark]

15. White Blonde and "All American" girl

I really feel sorry for her family but the media needs to focus on children of all races that are in harms way.

People magazine did a fine article on an African American mom who hunted down and found her daughter's killer. The police were clueless but Superwoman Mom found her baby's killer.

Now that is a story!

The Aruba story IMO, has a tint of racism to it for me. Sounds like the son of the judge "could not have done it because he is so wonderful" according to all his friends.

That leaves who? You got it, those "scary and brown/black" island guys!

[Democrat 4 Ever]

18. If Faux is not focusing on this week's "Missing White Girl" or the

latest "Pop Star Trial" or riveting car chase to nowhere they then might have to report real news. Like the war, the economy, the lousy administration, health care. Not only is that is something they AREN'T going to do it is something they CAN'T do. To discuss any issues meatier than what Michael Jackson had for lunch would require at least one talking head read up on a subject for discussion. (Combined IQ of the Faux News staff hovers around 46 - lower if O'Lielly has falafel on the brain that day.)

Right now all they have to do is get the faxed copy of this week's talking points from the White House, load them into the TelePrompter and they are good to go for 5-6 hours of broadcasting a day. Easy money without any critical thinking required - perfect for the Faux stable full of air-headed, pompous asses.

[Patiod]

23. they do report real news

Stock brokers spending money on strippers, and Jessica Simpson's salacious new video.

That's not real news?

[Jack Rabbit]

17. Things must be bad for Bush right now

Fox usually resorts to the tried-and-true Goebbels technique of the half truth. It's like the sportscaster telling his viewers that the local team scored six runs in the game just completed and showing film of the star slugger belting a 500-ft home run; he doesn't bother to mention that the other team scored eight runs and won the game.

The Bushies have nothing going for them right now. Every time Rummy or Cheney opens his mouth to say we'll soon be victorious over the terrorists in Iraq, the insurgents demonstrate that they're far from defeated and a half dozen or so American families go into mourning. That comes on top of the Downing Street documents that confirm what many of concluded long ago: the Bushies lied and lied deliberately while making their case for war against Iraq.

Any spin of the Downing Street documents sounds desperate. They don't reveal any thing new? No, they don't; but they confirm what is old and lay bare the web of official lies. Other inquiries laid to rest the issue of intelligence being manipulated? No, other inquiries attempted to whitewash the manipulation of intelligence, but never laid the issue to rest. They're fakes? What a hoot! They have been authenticated by the British government and American officials. Bush and Blair have been addressing them for weeks, denying that they say what they say in plain English, but never challenging their authenticity.

That leaves Fox with the CNN tactic: if there's no good news to report and the bad news is beyond spinning, just don't report the news at all.

[burythehatchet]

19. White, Alabama, Wet T-Shirt type Co-Ed

it a fucking trifecta for these scum.

[Zomby Woof]

20. She's Aryan

[Ioo]

21. Easy... it mean no real news...

Right now all eyes are on BushCo...

So this is the mass distraction, so they do not have to speak on the real issues...

[Tim4319]

22. Blond hair, blue eyes, & Downing Street Memos!

Reasons for obsession.

[KharmaTrain]

24. Dare I Suggest...Cause We Haven't Answered The Big Question

...was she raped? Sexually abused? Involved in some consentual deal with one or more of these boys? C'mon...this is the underlying current to this story. It's been milked before.

White, young, sexy...makes one wanna know the nitty gritty here. Why are people so fixated on Paris Hilton's Express Check-out? It's full-tilt titilation.

I'll bet Faux hopes a corpse turns up...this would send this story into hyper spin that they could milk for months. But the real deal here is if this "vestigal virgin" (assuming she's that flower of southern youth) has been violated. Now add violated by a black man and we have the makings of Faux orgasm.

[hemp_not_war]

25. i don't know

I saw that, and caught Hannity being a jerk to her aunt. He kept using every law trick in the book to get try to get her to make statements for the family on record to say she was drunk or things like that. The aunt was very intelligent and beautiful, held her ground. It was so bad, they cut to commercial, Colmes had to jump in and cut. It was wierd, guess they wanted to slander the girl for ratings.