Lure of the 18 Year Old, 5-foot-4 Blonde Cutie

Maybe it's the approach of the summer doldrums. Maybe it's because I'm a little lightheaded from the heat and humidity. Or that second pina colada. But I have to admit that I have finally succumbed to the Lure of the 18 Year Old, 5-foot-4 Blonde Cutie.

Whatever the reason, I'm going to do something I swore I would never do.

Blog about Natalee Holloway.

Natalee, of course, is the lass from Alabama who a year ago Tuesday skipped out on her classmates and chaperones on a senior class trip to Aruba, got drunk at a bar, had sex with at least one and possibly three locals and then vanished off the face of the earth.

Natalee has been the stuff of cable TV news shows for the past year not because she was a precocious slut who made some bad choices and, according to my own theory, probably fell from one of Arbua's storied oceanside cliffs and ended up as shark chum, but because she is an 18 year old, 5-foot-4 blonde cutie.

The Missing Blondes News Channel (aka CNN) coverage of the anniversary nearly overshadowed the White House announcement that Henry Paulson had been named Treasury secretary. The network took pains to justify its breathless team coverage of One Year Without Natalee but was unwittingly outted by a member of its Natalee Posse -- a Philadelphia lawyer by the name of Theodore Simon:

The unfolding investigation had all the dramatic elements needed to captivate television audiences, said Simon, who has commented widely on the case.

"An American on an idyllic island supposedly celebrating her graduation goes missing under less than clear circumstances," he said.

Whe-ew!

Moving beyond the obvious -- that there would not have been an orgy of anniversary stories on MBNC if Natalee had been a pimple-faced wallflower from Kankakee who disappeared pedaling her Schwinn home from a Kwiki Mart -- are there any lessons in this morality play?

Yes, two to be exact:

First, while sympathy is in order for any parent whose child disappears, even a parent like Natalee's stepmom who has turned her grief into a cottage industry, a reasonable person might ask if an exotic Caribbean isle is an appropriate place for ill-supervised teenagers to celebrate their high school graduation?

Second, the next time the White House needs to fill an important post, it should find a 5-foot-4 blonde.

Can you say Defense Secretary Britney Speers?