Breaking News: Suspect confesses to killing Hottie McWhite

[miajag81]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/10/missing.teen/index.html

[somethingstupid]

800,000 people died in Rwanda while politicans argued over the definition of genocide. It's too bad they were brown people.

[Unnecessary nh]

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800,000 people died in Rwanda

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nh

[Drunk Bob]

No tourists in Rwanda.

[Clarkmeister]

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800,000 people died in Rwanda while politicans argued over the definition of genocide. It's too bad they were brown people.

[/ QUOTE ]

Someone forgot to take their happy pills today.

[Cumulonimbus]

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800,000 people died in Rwanda while politicans argued over the definition of genocide. It's too bad they were brown people.

[/ QUOTE ]

Did a French General/humanitarian come speak at your college too?

[Dr. StrangeloveX]

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800,000 people died in Rwanda

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nh

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They aren't PEOPLE...





Let's see if I can get banned again for making politically incorrect jokes.

[whiskeytown]

it's a matter of perspective...

kill three quarters of a million black people and people go "meh?" and keep eating their TV dinners.

Kill a blonde haired white American and watch the incident get sprayed all over the National News (like it was in that Dru Sojdin case up north last year) -

you can't tell me there's not something [censored] up with that.

RB

[Michael Davis]

"Let's see if I can get banned again for making politically incorrect jokes."

I think you would have to make a joke (read: something funny) first.

-Michael

[Burt Reynolds]

what do you think happened to her ?

I got to say that when I first saw her on TV I thought she looked like a girl that is often up to no good and perhaps got in way too deep.

Maybe her and that van der sloot fooled around and he went too far and violated her then she started bitching and she smacked him and hit him a little then he started fighting back and killed her.

[hoopsie44]

And if it was your daughter or sister who was missing, I assume you would feel the same way.

[Paluka]

I also find it pretty ridiculous how much press this got. The media is pretty digusting.

[miajag81]

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I also find it pretty ridiculous how much press this got. The media is pretty digusting.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah. Though, would the media cover it if the public weren't so fascinated by this stuff? Of course, you can also argue that the public only cares because the media covers crap like this so much. Chicken or egg?

[mmbt0ne]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">En réponse à:</font><hr />
And if it was your daughter or sister who was missing, I assume you would feel the same way.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why should my daughter count more than anyone else's? Because I'm white? Because I'm in America? Because it was a random crime, and not part of a mass killing?

[poker-penguin]

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The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.

[/ QUOTE ]

[trying2learn]

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The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.

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[/ QUOTE ]

I think this is an important distinction...one person is more personal. It's easy to sit back and critique the press - but the first thing we've all done is post and discuss it...there aren't any ruwanda threads last i looked.

hypocrisy is tough to judge without also being a hypocrite.

[Diplomat]

Thanks Stalin. /images/graemlins/crazy.gif

-Diplomat

[The Stranger]

I loved you in Smokey and the Bandit.

[poker-penguin]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks Stalin. /images/graemlins/crazy.gif

-Diplomat

[/ QUOTE ]

No worries. Uncle Joe may have been a crazy totalitarian dictator, but I think he's spot on here.

It takes movies like Hotel Rwanda (although it will never be a Schindler's List - several reasons; Africans just don't seem to register on the world's tragedy scale, the bad guys didn't fight a war against the US, it's not got star power). to try and humanise the events. But it ain't going to happen.

Most people just can't care about such immense suffering, or they'll get emotionally crushed. Small scale disasters, especially where the victim is someone you can identify with are a way of getting rid of empathy / sympathy without feeling overwhelmed.

[player24]

I think it is important to consider the extremely poor judgement shown by Natalee, her parents and her friends.

The girl is 18 years old and probably has little or no experience traveling without her family, drinking or going out to bars. Yet her parents decided it would be okay for her to go bar hopping in a foreign country? I don't want to hear about her rights - it is her parents responsibility to protect her from this sort of danger.

And what happened to her girlfriends? When girls go out in groups they make sure that one of them doesn't end up in this type of situation. Her friends let her down, in my opinion.

These guys (animals) probably tried to rape her...she probably resisted and threatened to call the police. Now, she is dead and her body may never be found.

[Dangergirl]

[ QUOTE ]
I think it is important to consider the extremely poor judgement shown by Natalee, her parents and her friends.


[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with you here.

[mason55]

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[ QUOTE ]
I think it is important to consider the extremely poor judgement shown by Natalee, her parents and her friends.


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I agree with you here.

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I agree with her and her friends but what did her parents do wrong??

Also, obviously the media cares about this, she was an American and we're in America. Just like that Aussie in Bali, that was in the press there just like this, but it didn't register outside Australia for more than a day. Plus, what are we going to do in Rwanada? Send in troops? Then people will complain that we're "nation building" and bitch for months and months.

PS this is getting dangerously close to politics.

[Dangergirl]

Sorry, I didn't mean to include the parents. Her friends though should not have let her go. If it was my friend I would have said..WTF?? you are going to leave with 3 guys that you just met??

I would have tried to stop her, but then again we really don't know this girl. We only know what people say about her. Besides being apparently drunk, she could have been strong willed and refused to listen to what anyone else said to her.

[player24]

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I agree with her and her friends but what did her parents do wrong??

[/ QUOTE ]

Her parents were wrong in the same way that the parents of Michael Jackson's victims were wrong. You do not send your children to the residence of a 40 year old man who likes to play with toys and children...and you do not serve up your naive 18 year old daughter to the bar scene in a foreign country.

I understand, as an 18 year old she is a legal adult. But who among us really believes that an 18 year old under the influence of alcohol is fully capable of making correct decisions?

At one end of the spectrum, maybe her parents should have denied her the permission to go on this trip. Maybe they should have asked her to pledge not to consumer alcohol...or to avoid bars...to be back at her hotel by dark...to never leave the company of her friends...to call home every night at 10PM...whatever... Again, we don't have all the facts, so I don't want to condemn her parents unfairly. But, I think 18 year old girls need a certain amount of parental protection...and it may have been somewhat lacking in this case.

[JoeC]

I loved him in Celebrity Jeopardy.

[Inthacup]

Your post is laden with so many irrelevant and unrealistic statements that it's hard to view it as anything other than a farce.

[player24]

nh

[dr. klopek]

[ QUOTE ]
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800,000 people died in Rwanda

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nh

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This is, by a wide margin, the best gimmick account and only good one ever.

[ChipWrecked]

She graduated from Mountain Brook High, a wealthy Birmingham suburb. The senior class from that school has been making this trip for over twenty years.

Trivia: This is Courtney Cox's high school.

Maybe the fact that her family is rich has something to do with the coverage... but I blame 24-hour cable news.

[player24]

I am not aware that people that young girls who come from wealthy suburbs are somehow better prepared to accept the risks associated with boozing it up while traveling in a foreign country. I would argue that, in this case, complacency has led to negligence which has resulted in tragedy. Let me be clear, the killers are reprehensible and deserve 99.999+% of the blame. But, had Natalee been less negligent, this crime might have been avoided. It is possible that Natalee's parents did in fact help her by explaining the risks she was confronting on this trip to Aruba and reminding her of her priority to remain safe -or maybe they were overly complacent.

I don't expect most teenagers to agree with my point of view. I probably had different views when I was a teen (cannot remember back that far...), but as a parent, I will do what I can to have my teenage children balance having fun with staying safe.

[ChipWrecked]

[ QUOTE ]
I am not aware that people that young girls who come from wealthy suburbs are somehow better prepared to accept the risks associated with boozing it up while traveling in a foreign country.

[/ QUOTE ]

What I meant, and obviously wasn't clear, was that this is a tradition in the school, it wasn't just some lark of this girl taking off into the world unprepared.

Maybe the fact that it's been done so long by these folks contributed to lax watchfulness. I have to wonder, where the hell were her friends and/or chaperones, while she was taking off with island locals while blind drunk?

[trying2learn]

what are the odds this tradition continues now?

aruba is going to take a huge tourism hit for this - pretty scary considering that's their main commodity.

[ChipWrecked]

My wife and I were just saying the exact same thing.

[Ulysses]

I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of the fact that her girlfriends let her take off w/ three random local dudes from a nightclub in Aruba.

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of the fact that her girlfriends let her take off w/ three random local dudes from a nightclub in Aruba.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why would there be? Obviously the girl wanted to get her freak on and her friends didn't want to stand in the way.

[tbach24]

[ QUOTE ]
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The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.

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[/ QUOTE ]

I'm pretty sure Stalin said this...

Edit- I guess someone already said this

Whatever, it's a gigantic joke. Think about hundreds of thousands of people dying...it's terrible. One person killed basically because she make a dumb decision or w/e isn't nearly as big a deal, although still bad.

[miajag81]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of the fact that her girlfriends let her take off w/ three random local dudes from a nightclub in Aruba.

[/ QUOTE ]

Her parents' insistence that she was a perfect little angel who would never get involved in a bad situation is hilarious.

[trying2learn]

hilarious isn't necessarily the word you're looking for i don't think. at least i hope not.

[Burt Reynolds]

Have you ever thought that you could tell what a person is like by looking at their picture ? I saw that girl on TV and all I thought was "Bitch". That girl is probably a huge bitch. Ever thought that maybe her friends didn't like her too much ? Her eyes just say bitch to me. She just looks like every girl I hated in high school. Or the ones that I wanted to have sex with but only with Duck tape over their mouth.

Do you think she wanted to get her freak on ? She must have or she wouldn't have gone with them willingly. Maybe she went with them then they started getting it on and she didn't like it and then got so pissed that she threatened to call the police. Drunk people ,especially ones that are new to alcohol have a hard time talking without putting their foot in their mouth.

[Los Feliz Slim]

[ QUOTE ]
Drunk people ,especially ones that are new to alcohol have a hard time talking without putting their foot in their mouth.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you're saying you're drunk right now?

[trying2learn]

that was pretty funny...

[ltb]

Darwin rejoices...

[maryfield48]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Thanks Stalin. /images/graemlins/crazy.gif

-Diplomat

[/ QUOTE ]

No worries. Uncle Joe may have been a crazy totalitarian dictator, but I think he's spot on here.

It takes movies like Hotel Rwanda (although it will never be a Schindler's List - several reasons; Africans just don't seem to register on the world's tragedy scale, the bad guys didn't fight a war against the US, it's not got star power). to try and humanise the events. But it ain't going to happen.

Most people just can't care about such immense suffering, or they'll get emotionally crushed. Small scale disasters, especially where the victim is someone you can identify with are a way of getting rid of empathy / sympathy without feeling overwhelmed.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think it's a question of scale. The Asian tsunami evoked a huge response worldwide.

I think it's more to do with a feeling of how commonplace something is perceived to be. Tropical paradise, young woman having a good time, on holiday, all goes horribly wrong.

It's like dog bites man is not news, but man bites dog is a headline.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
it's a matter of perspective...

kill three quarters of a million black people and people go "meh?" and keep eating their TV dinners.

Kill a blonde haired white American and watch the incident get sprayed all over the National News (like it was in that Dru Sojdin case up north last year) -

you can't tell me there's not something [censored] up with that.

RB

[/ QUOTE ]

Works the other way, too, though. On the same day Sherrice Iverson, the little black girl, got raped and killed by a white guy in a Las Vegas hotel, making national news, a black man ran screaming through a neighborhood screaming anti-white racist obscenities, grabbed a young white boy off his front lawn, and while continuing to scream murderous threats against white people, slit the boy's throat and stabbed him repeatedly.

The story never made the national press.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
800,000 people died in Rwanda while politicans argued over the definition of genocide. It's too bad they were brown people.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well said.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
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I think it is important to consider the extremely poor judgement shown by Natalee, her parents and her friends.


[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with you here.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. I've seen all too often women put themselves in dangerous circumstances, blithely assuming they are somehow invulnerable. Often that means that their friends are no less stupid than they are for allowing or even encouraging such behavior. I've seen analogues numerous times even among males on this forum -- a willful desire, and even insistence, that the world not be what it is and that all of it is both easily manageable and known, despite an enormous absence of experience, that needs to be.

All friends aren't created equal, and the young tend to be glibly prideful and ignorant. Merely having friends in these circumstances doesn't necessarily mean much. I agree that some of the blame could perhaps be directed back at the parents. Their kid was, after all, still a child. And all she had to rely on was other children.

[bdk3clash]

[ QUOTE ]
Let's see if I can get banned again for making politically incorrect jokes.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm more offended that they generally aren't funny.

[player24]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think it is important to consider the extremely poor judgement shown by Natalee, her parents and her friends.


[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with you here.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. I've seen all too often women put themselves in dangerous circumstances, blithely assuming they are somehow invulnerable. Often that means that their friends are no less stupid than they are for allowing or even encouraging such behavior. I've seen analogues numerous times even among males on this forum -- a willful desire, and even insistence, that the world not be what it is and that all of it is both easily manageable and known, despite an enormous absence of experience, that needs to be.

All friends aren't created equal, and the young tend to be glibly prideful and ignorant. Merely having friends in these circumstances doesn't necessarily mean much. I agree that some of the blame could perhaps be directed back at the parents. Their kid was, after all, still a child. And all she had to rely on was other children.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well said. Sad but true.

[Subfallen]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of the fact that her girlfriends let her take off w/ three random local dudes from a nightclub in Aruba.

[/ QUOTE ]

Aruba is rigged! RIGGED I tell you.