5th -- Madeleine: Police lied to parents over "clues in car boot." 6th -- Madeleine: I saw her in my shop 7th -- Madeleine: She could be alive 8th -- Madeleine: I saw her on a tram 9th -- Madeleine: I saw her on Monday 10th --Is this who took Maddy?
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Yup, Maddie is in the bottom right of front page today, with "Weather" as the main headline.
Meanwhile, the Sun runs with "Woman seen in shopping mall with child", and the Daily Mail descends into self parody:
"The security guard, who has not been named, did not believe the woman with the girl was her mother because they did not look alike. She was dark-skinned, apparently North African or Arabic, and wearing a hijab head-dress and spoke in a different language."
Some say they saw her at the Great Lakes Some say they saw her off of Florida My mother said she saw her in Chinatown But you cant always trust your mother....."
Sorry. It keeps going through my head every time I see a tabloid at the moment.
Does anyone from Foriegn feel we're being a little callous, I wonder? Or has Maddiemania reached Abroad? I'm afraid I look at it a little like "twelve months ago a little girl, very sadly, died, and the papers are colluding with her family in maintaining the fantasy that she's still alive: ridicule seems the best response." (It's a lot like that TV show in which a large sum of money is distributed by a lottery, and Noel Edmunds encourages the punters to participate in a fantasy whereby "the money would have been in your box if only you'd believed it more strongly." I can't believe a Jew or a Christian would be allowed to use a game show to proselytise their faith, so it isn't clear why Edmunds should be aloowed to proselytise his.) But it occurred to me that someone who hasn't had to read the same news story every day for a year might think that we were making rather light of a kidnapping and probably murder.
The case made some news when it first broke here in the States, but I think it's been entirely ignored since. I'd guess fewer than 5% of Americans would have any idea what you're going on about.
If you subscribe to the kidnapper theory (and it appears you do), then I'm not sure why you're so pessimistic about her chances of being alive. Elizabeth Smart went missing for nine months before being found and there are other such cases. Only about 40% of stranger child abductions end with the death of the missing child (including those where the child is never found). Granted, that number probably is much higher after the child's been missing for as long as Madeleine has, but there certainly are cases of children being abducted by people to raise as their own where the child isn't found for years.
That Madeleine is probably dead, I think we can all grant, but she's certainly not certainly dead (assuming we believe the kidnapping theory).
As an American, the actual case of Maddy is unknown to me (although technically, I was living in the Middle East most of the past year), but the whole news-outlets-inexplicably-and-endlessly-obsessing-on-random-horrible-child-murder-to-the-point-of-numbing-the-audience-into-insensitivity phenomenon is an international one, I'm afraid. So we get the idea.
Hardly worth bothering unless they think they can string the story out until Christmas.
ReplyDeleteDo you want to play some sort of "buzzword bingo" on "how many consecutive Maddy's will there be?"
ReplyDeleteKnife crime is the new Diana.
Well that would mean Maddy taking a break tomorrow. Though I guess they could have the main knife crime story and Maddie in dead blondes corner.
ReplyDeletePSA: You've been nominated by another blogger for an award. The actual voting will begin soon, but until that point, if you'd like to check out what you have been nominated for, and maybe even snag a banner to tell everybody, click the links!
ReplyDeleteIf you're not interested in awards then just ignore it, or if you're utterly against them, let me know and I'll remove you from the longlist.
Thanks!
Yup, Maddie is in the bottom right of front page today, with "Weather" as the main headline.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the Sun runs with "Woman seen in shopping mall with child", and the Daily Mail descends into self parody:
"The security guard, who has not been named, did not believe the woman with the girl was her mother because they did not look alike. She was dark-skinned, apparently North African or Arabic, and wearing a hijab head-dress and spoke in a different language."
Some say they saw her at the Great Lakes
ReplyDeleteSome say they saw her off of Florida
My mother said she saw her in Chinatown
But you cant always trust your mother....."
Sorry. It keeps going through my head every time I see a tabloid at the moment.
Does anyone from Foriegn feel we're being a little callous, I wonder? Or has Maddiemania reached Abroad? I'm afraid I look at it a little like "twelve months ago a little girl, very sadly, died, and the papers are colluding with her family in maintaining the fantasy that she's still alive: ridicule seems the best response." (It's a lot like that TV show in which a large sum of money is distributed by a lottery, and Noel Edmunds encourages the punters to participate in a fantasy whereby "the money would have been in your box if only you'd believed it more strongly." I can't believe a Jew or a Christian would be allowed to use a game show to proselytise their faith, so it isn't clear why Edmunds should be aloowed to proselytise his.) But it occurred to me that someone who hasn't had to read the same news story every day for a year might think that we were making rather light of a kidnapping and probably murder.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking from Antipodean Foreign, some of the Murdoch-owned press still reports on "Maddy" regularly on page 5 or 7.
ReplyDeletePerhaps this is something to do with having a smaller population, and therefore less news to fill a paper?
The case made some news when it first broke here in the States, but I think it's been entirely ignored since. I'd guess fewer than 5% of Americans would have any idea what you're going on about.
ReplyDeleteIf you subscribe to the kidnapper theory (and it appears you do), then I'm not sure why you're so pessimistic about her chances of being alive. Elizabeth Smart went missing for nine months before being found and there are other such cases. Only about 40% of stranger child abductions end with the death of the missing child (including those where the child is never found). Granted, that number probably is much higher after the child's been missing for as long as Madeleine has, but there certainly are cases of children being abducted by people to raise as their own where the child isn't found for years.
That Madeleine is probably dead, I think we can all grant, but she's certainly not certainly dead (assuming we believe the kidnapping theory).
"Or has Maddiemania reached Abroad?"
ReplyDeleteHer saga has reached the frozen seas of Scandia, and we no longer hold to neither the Anglian nor the Saxon tongues.
So, yes, your over - exposure is indeed objective.
As an American, the actual case of Maddy is unknown to me (although technically, I was living in the Middle East most of the past year), but the whole news-outlets-inexplicably-and-endlessly-obsessing-on-random-horrible-child-murder-to-the-point-of-numbing-the-audience-into-insensitivity phenomenon is an international one, I'm afraid. So we get the idea.
ReplyDeleteAaaaand voting is open, and you already have some votes.
ReplyDelete