Cobb: Fools Being Fooled by Foolishness

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May 01, 2005

Fools Being Fooled by Foolishness

My gut instinct was to file this under the heading 'Stupid White People' but sometimes my gut gives more than just me indigestion. Nevertheless there are several stupid whitefolks involved in two stories that I happened to be bombarded by over the past week.

Stupid the First
Three stooges, as reported by CNN found about $100k in old dollar bills buried under a tree in their backyard. The story was all over Headline News, 24/7. Every 30 minutes I heard the story. That's part of the pain of being on the road and not having a wide variety of progams to view on cable. Three days later, the men are arrested. It turns out that they just stole the money from the attic of some people they were supposedly working for.

Stupid the Second
250 dupes, as repored by CNN could not find anywhere in their Atlanta neighborhoods, a bride who was to be married. The local police official mumbled into the waiting cameras that foul play was suspected, and as was often reported every 30 minutes on CNN, the bride to be did not have 'cold feet'. Three days later, the bride is found in New Mexico taking a personal time-out. She said she was kidnapped, but that was just a lie.

Today is not a good day to be an editor at CNN.

But why bring up the whitefolks angle? Aside from the fact that I feel the distinct necessity of speaking from the gut, this series of unfortunate events can be seen through the lenses of racial equality, most clearly for the second story, but also for the first. To my way of seeing things, this says a great deal about access to the media and who gets what kind of attention for what reasons.

Call the Annenberg Center, but my guess is that over the past year you can count the number of human interest stories involving non-white, non-celebrity weddings on your thumb. And when is the last time you saw a story about some lucky chinese kids? I'm not the one to answer these questions because, thank God, I don't have to watch CNN that often. Pray for those who do, what a whitified world they must bear.

Posted by mbowen at May 1, 2005 10:22 AM

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Comments

Cobb, could the fact that white people comprise between 70 and 80% of the population of the country have to do with the fact that we're in the news so much?

Also, the Atlanta story didn't start out about a runaway bride - it started out with a bride being abducted in the week before her wedding. This is an emotional story, made more so when the reaction set in after it was learned that she had set the whole thing up and lied about it.

Posted by: Laura at May 1, 2005 05:09 PM

No it's more like that oddball part of American culture that gets on television is something like 97% white. The racial identity of Americans who watch TV has nothing to do with it TV content. This is all about the predilections of the liberal media, and the kinds of people who get to be writers and editors for TV shows and TV news. That's not just white, that's a whiter shade of pale.

Tell me, how many people do you know who skip the light fandango. Nothing like that ever happened where I grew up.

Posted by: Cobb at May 1, 2005 05:21 PM

C'mon Cobb. If three black dudes found a bunch of money burried under a tree they'd just keep it and shut the Hell up about it. Less said, the better. "What money? Don't know whatcha talkin' about."

Posted by: submandave at May 2, 2005 11:42 AM

precisely, what made these dudes think they could trick the media, and make them sympathetic? Pure stupidity or something else?

Posted by: Cobb at May 2, 2005 12:15 PM

I was nodding my head until I saw "liberal media." What? Fox didn't cover the rich white girl?

Posted by: Lester Spence at May 2, 2005 06:53 PM

I don't watch Fox or CNN. But the media is all liberal. They all think the public has a right to know.

Posted by: Cobb at May 2, 2005 07:40 PM

LKS is right. Fox News made a big deal of it as well.

Posted by: DarkStar at May 2, 2005 07:59 PM

"No it's more like that oddball part of American culture that gets on television is something like 97% white."

You're complaining that a disproportionate number of dingbats on TV are white? I think you need to count your blessings.

Posted by: Laura at May 2, 2005 08:29 PM

I've said it before, but not to you: please, PLEASE quit watching the teevee news. Nothing's going to change on those idiot-fests until nobody is watching them. Probably not even then, but it's the best hammer we have today.

Posted by: Scott Chaffin at May 3, 2005 08:48 AM