He killed a WHITE woman. Is there anything more to say? The fact that he's Mejicano just makes it that much worse and evil... in the media's eye.

How many women are killed everyday? I don't know. But for this woman we will put out a "Global" bulletin, if I remember a CNN headline early in this investigation.

Now, to me, it seems like this mo-fo did it. I'm not saying he shouldn't stand trial. But if they went after Osama like they're going after this guy, we'd have caught him, I bet, a long time ago. Osama killed a lot of white women. And, he aint even white!

you said it.

and i hope its understood that my highlighting the media's sleazy mannerisms as related to México and Méxicanos in no way is a comment on the guilt of this man, or any potential moral judgment due him.

While I hate the Missing White Woman Syndrome that's afflicted the US news media, I think that without the emphasis on the alleged killer's race, this story actually deserved media attention. Even if the media isn't playing the story the way I want to see it, I've seen lots of good discussion, even among people who are not otherwise progressive in any way, about how Lauterbach's death, at the hands of a fellow soldier, reveal some really distressing anti-woman attitudes in the military, and how little care we give soldiers when they come home.

Which is not to say that the constant drumbeat of "Look at the MEXICAN who killed a white woman and fled to MEXICO to stay with his MEXICAN family" is in any way appropriate at all. It's really disgusting.

When I heard about this case, and the hunt for the Latino soldier, I did think
'oh, great. this is bound somehow to turn into some kind of immigrant bashing.'

The truth is media have many issues they screw up in disproportionately portraying minorities as criminals.

But, I have to say this is media frenzy stuff because of the SEX/VIOLENCE appetite of American media consumers -- and those who sell the stuff.

In the case of the guy fleeing to Mexico, to Mexicans it is accurate,right? I think if there is a fugitive in a murder case like this, its only natural for the media to report where police believe he fled, how he has a connection to that area, and so on.

This is getting press because of the sex/violence angle. Where I work, our online dept. tracks the most popular news headlines clicked for each month. Every time. Every time, the top 10 have something to do with some quirky, or morbid sex or violence (and often some combination of the two.)

Look at the serial groom/widower Drew Peterson case in Chicago, or the Texan who killed then, cooked his girlfriend. A pregnant woman killed, that's the attention. Remember Lacy Peterson? AND she's military, so its double the attention.

Don't get me wrong. The U.S. media definitely loves the white woman hurt/missing/killed by a minority bit. I agree. I'm just saying, in this particular case I believe this would've gotten the same press regardless of the guy's ethnicity.

you may very well be right. its a valid observation you offer.

but i couldnt help but find it funny how many times it is possible to stick the word "mexico" in a couple paragraphs.

This story has way too many sensasional factors to make for a very clean example of race-in-media concerns, though you can make the case. Pregant woman, sex, murder, get you far here, but I will observe that a black victim could never get the impact you get here. Why? Because it's happened before. IIRC, it's the race of the victim that has the most impact in criminal trials, not the race of the accused. Kill a white woman and you'll get more years in prison than if you kill a black woman, regardless of your own race or gender. It's just how whites in our society, in the aggregate (not the specific) view the loss.

What you'd really need to do is compare this dead-pregnant-woman-veteran case to other dead-pregnant-woman-veteran cases. Don't worry: there will be plenty soon enough, you can be sure.

God damn Bush and his war. I mean that literally.

good points. tho i'm not trying to make a "clean" case of it. it is there. i watch enough "mexico in the news" stories to see what they love to highlight. that being said, i agree with you in the end. there are too many other factors to glean anything big about any single one. its a big mess.

and i agree with your curse.

There have been hundreds of cases of soldiers (mainly male, mainly White) coming back from their first, second or third trip to the Middle East, losing their minds and killing somebody (often women) or themselves. If we folded in all the legal charges of aggression in one form or another, the number would be in the thousands, I'm sure. For the government/military to admit the number and take a hard look at it would be to admit that these soldiers (and their victims on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean) are expendable to the Powers-That-Be, so long as the military machine moves forward and money keeps being made. The only thing that could trump the need to keep all that on the down-low, of course, was the opportunity to slam a particular soldier because he happened to be Mexican. The fact that the woman he killed was White was just gravy. What a tragedy every element of this war is in every direction!