I see this story on the news allll the time, on many different channels. Is this really the current “big” case? I don’t ever hear anyone talking about it in real life. Compared to big cases of yesteryear (OJ, the Menendez brothers, even Susan Smith) the public seems extremely apathetic. So either I’m out of touch and the public really is interested, or TV news is out of touch and no one particularly cares. Which is it?
Of course we care. She was a pretty, white, blond girl…
I’ve never heard of her. What has she done?
Only the Jerry Springer watching types.
She was a pretty, white, blonde girl who went missing on a trip to the Caribbean. I don’t know if they found a body and conclusively proved she was murdered or not. I get the impression that they think some schoolmates of hers were involved, but I might be wrong. (I change the channel when it comes on, so what little I know is from a few seconds worth of headlines and news bulletins at a time.)
I’m not aware that there are any particularly intriguing twists or explosive issues involved in the case. At least in past famous cases, there was always something – the girl who was killed before 9/11/01 was involved with the Congressman; Susan Smith lied about a black guy killing her kids; that woman in Texas killed all of her young kids, etc. The Duke rape trial has race, class, sex, education, etc. All this one seems to have is that…well, that she was pretty, white, and blonde.
I don’t think this story is on the level of OJ as far as public attention/emotions…but, personally, I do find it rather sad and I guess you could say I care about it, even though I seriously doubt we’ll ever have any definitive answers about it. It seems most likely to me that her body was dumped in the ocean and swept away long ago, so I’ll be very surprised if the whole thing is ever truly resolved.
Even though a lot of people obviously attribute the attention paid to it as being due to the “pretty white blonde girl” phenomenon, I think the reason the media latched onto it is more about the mysterious nature of her disappearance than anything else. Besides, the media loves to play on fears and emotions, and I think most parents are fearful at the idea of their own teen meeting such a fate on what was supposed to be a fun, harmless little vacation.
I’m sure those who are tired of hearing about the story will get their wish and the media will find a new obsession soon, leaving this whole thing forgotten. For so long, all we heard about was Chandra Levy, and now she’s just “the girl who was killed before 9/11/01”.
I don’t think it even got much attention when they finally arrested a suspect in the case (I know I didn’t hear anything about it until I randomly decided to do a websearch on it many months later).
Stupid girl that goes off with strange men? I think the outcome is pretty obvious. No, I really don’t care.
Yes, the event itself was indeed sad, and I didn’t mean to sound too flippant about the girl’s death.
This was my response as well.
Screw and don’t be surprised if you end up murdered, In other words?
I’m intrested in the Natalee Holloway case, as a socialogical phenomenon. It’s a perfect morality play- sex, alcohol, foreign countries, race. The moral is that if you have sex you may well die. And that danger awaits us if we step outside of America, no matter how innocent or familier the place we are gong may be. Natalee Holloway is Doris Day gone bad, and the result is held up as an example of why we should remain chaste and pure and avoid drinking and men.
You’ll also note that interest in the case died down after it was revealed that the main suspects where white men- that revealation made the whole thing a little less compelling as it was before. We really havn’t come so far since “Birth of a Nation” was a hit.
I occasionally subject myself to Bill O’Reilly (I think I’m a closet sado-masochist). He and the whole Fox News team are obsessed with her, and someone’s watching to give those huge ratings. Ergo, people must care.
It’s a shame that she disappeared, but I’ve never undestood why this has ben a story for months. :shrugs:
I don’t care in the least. So long as I don’t get caught.
I’m a little curious about the outcome, mainly because of the mystery aspect. There have supposedly been thousands of people with lots of technical resources searching for clues and/or a body, and nothing’s been found.
Maybe I’ve watched too much CSI, but no trace of Natalee makes me wonder what happened. It’s also curious that nobody’s said anything to implicate anyone. Don’t murderers eventually talk, to somebody? If it was more than one perp, how are they managing to keep their secret?
But who she is (young white blonde female) isn’t a factor. I’d be just as curious, no matter who was missing. How do they do that? Was she shark bait? Sold to slavers?
I have a couple of problems with this case.
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Many people go missing everyday. Why is she getting all the attention? She is a pretty, rich white girl.
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Her mother seems to have this idea that her wonderful, beautiful daughter “would never do anything like leave with a strange guy, etc” After all, she teaches Sunday School, blah, blah, blah. The thing is, she would and could do something like have sex even though it would shame her family. I personally don’t think Joran VanDerSloot did it. I think she is one of the reasons that the investigation was botched. She concentrated (and had everyone else concentrate) on that kid so much that other leads were not followed.
I do have alot of sympathy for her. I can’t even imagine her pain but…
I occasionally get the perverse thought that Fox is holding onto this because they secretly hope that it will turn out that Natlee was kidnapped by gay terrorists.
I can’t blame her parents for trying to keep media attention on this story and doing whatever they could, from the beginning, to get help in finding their daughter.
But I can’t imagine how frustrated the parents of thousands of other missing children must feel every time they see still more coverage. The story sort of feeds itself.
In fact, Fox has more reporters in Aruba than in Baghdad. At last count they had 15 reporters in Aruba they do not even maintain a bureau in Baghdad.
How many are highschool students who go missing while visiting foreign countries?
She’s not rich.
She is white though, I’ll give you that.
I don’t give two shits about her or this case. But I think all the outrage that so many other missing kids doesn’t get media coverage is offbase. Her case is rather unique. There are more things that set this case apart from other missing kids besides her being an attractive white girl.
Hell… who can blame them. Aruba? or Iraq? Island Paradise? Desert Wasteland? Hmmmmm…
And, if ya think about it, THIS is the most likely reason that she is still in the news. These reporters are living it up on vacation… errr I mean assignment in Aruba. They’re living on company dime and the summer is coming. They need to justify their being there. If they don’t keep the story in the news or show some progress or changes in the case, then they’ll be forced to come home and have to go back to work.
So you think that if this girl was black, we’d still be hearing about it? I don’t think so. Sure there are some interesting elements to the story that make it unique. But I have a strong suspicion that had this chick been black, none of us would know who she is.