The bloated, rotting corpse of a teenage queen, starring Miss USA Natalee Holloway

So it seems that the Dutch investigative journalist Peter R. de Vries (English site) has cracked one of the biggest mysteries in the U.S. media since 2003. No, he didn't find Saddam's WMDs. In stead he claims to have solved the Natalee Holloway case. There has been considerable buzz about this since he announced last night that he would reveal the solution this Sunday during an extra long broadcast of his program on the Dutch SBS 6 network. Until then, de Vries will reveal nothing, although he has confirmed that Natalee is dead.

For those of you that weren't watching the news in America for the last 24 hours, you've just gotten all caught up. Understandably, as I am back on the Continent, my access to American news networks is limited to what I can get over the Interweb, but the hype seems to be catching on over there more so than here. Nonetheless, the NOS and NOVA picked up the story in no time flat, and speculation ran on into the night.

The item still remains a top story on NOVA's site, and the NOS already has a story about the reaction from the van der Sloot camp. It sure is all fast-paced and thrilling for the media about this, largely thanks to the decision on the part of de Vries to make his announcement more than three days in advance of actually revealing his solution to the puzzle. Now everybody gets a chance to get hyped up about it, there's plenty of time for word to spread around, and hopefully everybody is going to watch de Vries' program on Sunday night.

Pretty shrewd move, if I may say so, and there's plenty of room on his coattails. Holland, mind you, is relatively small with only 16.5 million potential television watchers. The story, however, is America-sized. This decision on de Vries' part benefits American news networks as well, as everybody eagerly glares at their television screens in anticipation of a sure thing.

I won't be the first to point out that everybody is riding a (now confirmed) dead girl's corpse on this one. As Oliver de Vries (no relation to the crime reporter) pointed out in Equivocation Nation, it really is the "missing-white-girl-media-circus" that has gotten everybody so interested. Just look at the comments to that post. Jimbo Banks thinks Natalee was a hottie. And I'd be very surprised if pictures of her slack-drunk face and a vomit-speckled bikini top would garner much media attention. That's what we have Britney for.

Aside from the shameless use of a yearbook photograph to portray a teenager on vacation, America's obsession with their teenage queens doesn't start or end there. Think of the recent flutter of reports about the Miss USA pageant. Sure, numbers were dropping, but there is also a hardcore and loyal following, and that has set itself up for some serious growth. with the revamp to a reality TV style show in Vegas, the idea is to indoctrinate a new generation with the artifacts of the older ones: the blond hair, the Colgate smile, and the sweet on-stage demeanor. Whatever bone the organizers have thrown to ethnicity and skin color should not be lost on the fact that certain traits make for good television.

Essentially what has happened is that America--led by Natalee's mother and Dr. Phil--have in effect created the new Miss USA. Nobody knew who she was before she disappeared, and when that happened most people only knew her through what the news showed them. That is: the yearbook picture, photos of her laughing, pictures of beautiful Aruba sunsets. Again, go back to Googling her name, and you'll see what I mean. Those pictures are what Natalee has become, more so now that she is confirmed dead. Nobody will think twice about the mischief that high school students get up to when they go out, and certainly nobody (especially not the aforementioned Jimbo Banks) would expect someone like her to be involved in drugs, sex, and alcohol. The dream was--until last night--that she might even still be alive.

In the same way that Coalition forces in Iraq had to publish photographs of the mutilated remains of Uday and Qusay Hussein and leak footage of Saddam's execution, nothing short of front page photographs of Natalee's rotting corpse will dispel the myth of her purity and finally let everyone into the dark secret of her world: she was a real, mortal, human teenager subject to the vices of the modern world (I'll stop short of calling her a drug-addled slut, because a) I don't know her, and b) not ALL Americans on vacation are like that).

Since the Peter R. de Vries updates on the Natalee Holloway case, Equivocation Nation has experienced a fourfold increase in web traffic as a result of the updates on the case. I figure it was only fitting that I try and jump on the Internet bandwagon and try to glean some hits from my esteemed colleague's site. Hopefully the clickthroughs will eventually lead to the first steps of a true cultural revolution, one where we remove our false gods from their pedestals and declare war on our media-based reality.

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