Was Natalee Holloway abducted by aliens?

If the title of the article bothers you, fine! It is supposed to! There is hope that I am not alone. If you don’t mind and are actually hoping to learn something or if you’re one of those “alien abduction” types, stop reading now. In fact, stop reading, period!

The title really demonstrates a callousness that borders on simple evil. Probably more callous than the nightly barrage of angles and discoveries and the heap of “what you need to know” garbage that the media served up for months about Natalee’s disappearance. Perhaps a little more upsetting than Dr. Phil’s recent claim to have “inside information” (which, of course, he can’t reveal) that leads him to believe Natalee is a sex slave in Mexico. I guess the title is more disturbing than anything Nancy Grace, Sean Hannity, Matt Drudge, Larry King, Geraldo Rivera and the rest have proclaimed.

So why the evil? It’s pretty simple. I am really angry. I thought the shameless exaggeration of this horrific Holloway nightmare was finally receding from high definition cable ‘news’ shows, front and center, to the back pages of supermarket tabloids. But like so many other things, I was wrong! I just heard Rita Cosby’s thirty-second commercial from her late-night MSNBC show brazenly claiming a “shocking announcement” resulting from an exclusive interview (undisclosed interviewee) that could change the way one thinks about the Halloway case. Her harsh statement put me over the edge.

Let me make this very clear. The Natalee Holloway case is a terrible, terrible personal tragedy. So too, Terri Schiavo’s endless vegetative state was a sad, sad family tragedy. Do you remember Nicole Simpson, Ron Goldman, Jon Bonet, Chandra Levy? Personal family tragedies of the most appalling kind. The list goes on and on. They are all painful stories whose consequences in their respective families are unimaginable to me.

And aside from making these tragic stories public in an effort to help investigators or raise awareness, they are all private matters for families, friends and loved ones.

It would be one thing for such terrible events to encourage the same media to pursue a public discourse about improving laws or improving social/criminal systems or raising awareness or inspecting our values ​​or developing more effective investigative techniques, but that’s just hot air; serious monitoring is rarely the case. Instead, we get a night full of egotistical, self-promoted, prime-time wannabe detectives; each with their usual line of lackeys, all dropping a clue here, a twist there, a suspect everywhere.

Even more disturbing than the detective work of shoddy TV personalities, I find such ‘exclusive’ interviews with troubled relatives to be the lowest form of ‘journalism’ there is. Just as troubling is the public’s insatiable fascination with the private torment of others. The two evils create a vicious circle of ever-deepening sensationalism, fueling this reporting engine that acts like an addictive narcotic, indulging the itch of a communal voyeuristic rash.

That’s not to say that some really good ideas haven’t come out of the worst of the worst atrocities. There are many: “America’s Most Wanted”, “Amber Alert”, “Megan’s Law” and many other great solutions resulting from horrible crimes. But in each case, it was the hard work of individuals, long after the cameras and talking heads had moved on to the next heartthrob, who turned those intentions into realities; not the late-night “news” celebrities who bowed to ‘sweeps’ and Neilson.

I don’t really offer any solution. Well, yes I do: stop the blatant sensationalism! But that’s not going to happen any time soon given the thirst of the public and the media’s aim to please. I wonder what happened to traditional ethics like personal dignity and respect for individual privacy; Noble qualities that seem left out in the “you heard it here first” hoarding.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. But I’m sick of useless tabloid ‘hooks’ and empty reporting at the expense of someone’s private tragedy. Who needs the National Enquirer when you have CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC, CNN and all their cable brethren?

Anyway, I’ve emailed Rita Cosby with these thoughts. Maybe she can explain to me why my anger is unjustified and misdirected. She would welcome that.