For real, y'all hijacked my f*cking thread, dammit.

Being a parent myself, I think it is great news. I don't care if we only hear about rich white kids or not, one had a happy ending and that is what is important. Something happy has happened in the news, it's about f**king time.

Oh, I'm with you, and I didn't mean my comments to undermine the good news that she is alive and somewhat well. I just think there are a lot of other good similar stories that don't ring as loudly among the media because of the factors I've mentioned above.

I am also very happy she's okay, and hope the media fscking leaves the girl alone. But I know better.

agreed, it still a pretty remarkable case despite all the stuff we said.

she'll be on the talk show circuit soon enough i'm sure for further scaring.

It is a shame that more of the stories don't get the national attention they deserve because I'm sure that it helps to solve the cases. After so many bad endings over the summer, it is good to know one had a good ending.

My parenthesized statement was a paean (paean?) to the BBS gods to make them work.

Is anybody clever enough to do an analysis of all the posts on this bbs and determine which of us has introduced the most new words? For instance, Bitt is the first one to use the word "paean". Rob Schofield used "hygroscopic" before anybody else. I think I am the only person so far to mention Avogadro.

Any takers?

tanstaafl.

Living here in Salt Lake (about 6 miles from where she was found) I'm seeing just how this affected the community. I think one reason that this became so big and all over the news is due to the Smarts hard press of the media. They were all over the media. There were billboards up, flyers in just about every business, things everywhere. In fact as the news is on now, it is about 90% Elizabeth Smart. A big deal was made about this case, and that is what brought her home to her family. If there was just the normal humdrum about it, people wouldn't have noticed them walking on the street and called the police. Like Ed Smart said, the public and media is what got his daughter back. It's just too bad we don't see the same amount of attention for every kidnapping case. Anyhow, Salt Lake is celebrating, and an abducted girl has been returned home.

I may need to get a supracrestal fiberotomy.

Well, most of the cases don't get any national coverage, but they almost always get a lot of local coverage. Several months ago a little girl was missing around here and they found her alive 30 days later - she got plenty of local attention, but the national news didn't touch it. Then there's the baton rouge serial killer who's still on the loose and is a pretty big deal over here, and it only made it a little on national news.

To me it's pretty obvious why only rich white kids that are kidnapped get coverage... Their parent's peers control the media.

There are not a whole lot of prominant black media moguls in the world. And the fact still remains, if you don't have money, you're not important.

The balance of power is very white in this country. No one cares about the 14th poor black girl that was killed this year, her parent's votes don't count anyway, and they definately ain't contributin' to no campaign.

[rant]
while I am heppy that this girl was found and returned, I do have a few problems with the reporting of the story. As has been said earlier, this appears to be the product of those in high places tub tumping around to get attention to their plight, while there are THOUSANDS of people who go missing daily without this kind of coverage. I'd like to see more coverage of the success stories.
But why did I see this story in prime-time news in Australia??? Many kids go missing here too. Very few are reported on. but some bugucking GENIOUS in the news broadcasting room here has trapped this off the wire and run with it like it's the first time it ever happened.
Let me state again that I'm glad the girl is OK.
But what other stories of actual importance and interest to me, here, were sacrificed in order to run with this irrelivant filler?!

There's been a big scandal over here where an government official has resigned in because he couldn't tolerate our government's war stance. In a radio talkback prog, a guy called up to say that he quit his news editing job because he couldn't tolerate the way the stories were re-cut to make the time slot available. Important facts were being left out just to make the time slot. I'm glad a few people have a soul in that industry.

[/rant]

thankyou for your time, I should get out more.