Another Disease Plagues the Country

Dammit! As if dealing with Covid-19 isn't enough, and just when many of us were finally recovering from years-long severe cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome, a brand new affliction comes along and wallops everyone. Missing White Women Syndrome (MWWS), a highly contagious variant of White Supremacy, is now running rampant across the entire country. 

Fortunately it's mostly contained within the field of journalism, although the intense coverage of missing white women can easily infect Americans from all walks of life, causing them to discuss the particular case in the news with their friends and families even though they've never met the woman who's missing. I admit that I suffer from a bit of MWWS, but I try to tamp it down by avoiding the news. 

Still, I find that my interest in a beautiful 22-year-old white girl who was likely murdered by her 23-year-old boyfriend is of more interest to me than a Native American woman missing since last November. And yesterday's discovery of the body of a young black man who vanished a month ago is a big yawn in compared to last weekend in Chicago when eight black men and one infant were killed, yet nobody cares to know who they were. Their names are not announced, their pictures are not broadcast.

Of course, deaths like that occur every single weekend in Chicago, more or less, and still Joy Reid, Maxine Waters, Don Lemon, Barack Obama, Van Jones and Al Sharpton never bemoan the loss of those people. Heck, I don't even know if they get proper burials or if the city of Chicago just sweeps them up every Monday morning after the violence is over. 

I suppose the condition of being "missing" is more interesting than being "dead." Death is so final, with no follow-up stories. And really, that's where the big money is.