Racial Profiling?

"Now, the disappearance of Alabama high school student Natalee Holloway, 18, in Aruba is getting lots of airtime on the cable news networks and morning news shows. Those networks, which drive such stories, are being asked a tough question: Do they care only about missing white women? . . .

"Tamika Huston is black."

Here are some useful statistics from an AP report:

"Most of the missing adults tracked by the FBI are men. More than one-in-five of those abducted or kidnapped are black. But you might not get that impression from the news media. . . .

"Television executives, who receive much of the criticism, defend their coverage. They stress that cases such as the recent disappearance in Aruba of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway of Alabama are extraordinary, and would be newsworthy no matter her background."

But: "'To be blunt, blond white chicks who go missing get covered and poor, black, Hispanic or other people of color who go missing do not get covered,' said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism. 'You're more likely to get coverage if you're attractive than if you're not.' "

Memo to ugly people: Be extra careful.

WashPost columnist Gene Robinson has been deluged with e-mail since writing this piece on missing-women stories:

"A damsel must be white. This requirement is nonnegotiable. It helps if her frame is of dimensions that breathless cable television reporters can credibly describe as 'petite,' and it also helps if she's the kind of woman who wouldn't really mind being called 'petite,' a woman with a good deal of princess in her personality. She must be attractive -- also nonnegotiable. Her economic status should be middle class or higher, but an exception can be made in the case of wartime (see: Jessica Lynch). Put all this together, and you get 24-7 coverage."

Poll after poll brings bad news for Bush -- we're now at the point where only a good-news survey would be surprising. The latest numbers from the New York Times:

"Increasingly pessimistic about Iraq and skeptical about President Bush's plan for Social Security, Americans are in a season of political discontent, giving Mr. Bush one of the lowest approval ratings of his presidency and even lower marks to Congress, according to the New York Times/CBS News Poll.

"Forty-two percent of the people responding to the poll said they approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling his job, a marked decline from his 51 percent rating after of the November election, when he embarked on an ambitious second term agenda led by the overhaul of Social Security. Sixteen months before the midterm elections, Congress fared even worse in the survey, with the approval of just 33 percent of the respondents, and 19 percent saying Congress shared their priorities.