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Why We Destroy the White Goddess
Gabby Petito and America’s perverted relationship with the Divine Feminine
Whenever a story like the Gabby Petito case takes off like a California wildfire, there is probably an archetype at work. Yes, it’s about race. It’s about inequity, and it’s about privilege. But when you get millions of people emotionally involved in a story like Petito’s to the point of amateur sleuthing, there is something much deeper than the aptly named Missing White Girl Syndrome going on.
To be clear, Missing White Girl Syndrome is a thing. Although the term was coined by the late Gwen Ifill of the PBS NewsHour back in 2004, I witnessed it firsthand while covering the Patty Hearst kidnapping for the CBS station in San Francisco many years ago.
The amount of financial resources poured into that story by media executives everywhere was astonishing. Even when nothing was happening, my bosses kept me reporting live at the top of the newscast every night. Because they wanted to keep that story alive.
They were not driven as much by racism, I think, as by money. When a story captures the public imagination, there’s money to be made by throttling up the coverage. Ratings increase, newspapers fly off the shelf, advertising revenue skyrockets. There’s also a trickle-down effect. My salary…
