Madeleine McCann: Slumdog Millionaire, Gaza, Tories And Demons

MADDIE WATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann - featuring: Slumdog Millionaire, Gaza, the Conservative Party and Demons…

DAILY HERALD: “We can’t gloss over the brutal abuse of children”

Colette Douglas Home has been to the cinema to see Slumdog Millionaire with her daughter.

Her daughter turns to her:

“Weren’t you upset by the child abuse,” she asked. That’s when I remembered the child abuse; and that’s why I’m feeling uneasy about my initial reaction to the film as well as its Golden Globe success.

Where were social services when Jamal needed them? And there have been others - many of them:

When a child was tortured in A Cook, the Thief, His Wife and her Lover back in the 1990s, I had to leave the cinema…

It comes into Angelina Jolie’s film, Changeling - the dramatisation of a true story surrounding a missing child…

In The Kite Runner, one boy is raped and another is held captive as a sex slave. Gone Baby Gone centres around, yet doesn’t focus on, a neglected child…

Look at Dickens. He ripped back a veil to show the plight of children in Victorian England. But he made the children his heroes and heroines. We all went hungry with Oliver Twist and shared David Copperfield’s sense of abandonment as he waited for a thrashing from the sadistic Mr Murdoch.

Something must be done to stop the portrayal of child abuse as entertainment. How many more actors must suffer? Eyes down for Tabloid Bingo:

Small terrified faces peer from our newspapers on a daily basis. Madeleine McCann is still missing, Baby P is dead and on Sunday a newspaper carried case histories of dead babies…

And that was just in the TV listings section. What can be done?

Focusing in an empathetic way on the plight of victimised children has validity. But it is verging on immoral to incorporate their abuse into general entertainment as a run-of-the-mill sub-plot…

It should be the main plot of all films. Of course, for Colette, it already is.

ARABIA (Saudi Arabia): “Gaza drowning in its own blood”

Well, not it isn’t. But Linda Heard goes on:

REMEMBER the endless media coverage devoted to one abducted British toddler Madeleine McCann and the outpouring public sympathy in terms of hard cash?

Yes. See above.

Remember the deserved global horror when 186 schoolchildren were murdered by terrorists in the Russian town of Beslan?

Yes.

People everywhere generally experience deep emotion when the life of youngsters is cut short by crime or conflict because they only have to look at their own kids to relate to the tragedy.

So Our Maddy is dead?

THE TIMES: “Christianity: A History; The Real Sir Alan; Demons”

Andrew Billen is watching the telly.

I still quite like Demons…That ITV risked a tongue-in-cheek drama about a young girl’s disappearance must mean, however, that the national anxiety over Madeleine McCann is easing. I just can’t decide if that is a good or bad thing.

Can we vote?

0800 BYEMADDYBYE
0800 NOMADDYNO

DAILY RECORD: “Letter: Your View - Sick Stunt”

TORY activist Matt Lewis has been rightly axed by the party over his grossly offensive “joke” of going to a fancy dress party dressed as Madeleine McCann…

Against this backdrop, the antics of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross seem rather harmless in comparison.

Madeleine McCann – a child is missing…

Anorak

Posted: 13th, January 2009 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, Media Comments (51) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink