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Anorak News | Madeleine McCann: Tabloid Columnists On Harry Potter, Frtizl And Bile

Madeleine McCann: Tabloid Columnists On Harry Potter, Frtizl And Bile

by | 30th, April 2008

hotair.jpgMADDIE WATCH – Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to the columnists’ views on Madeleine McCann and family:

JANE MOORE (Sun): “Silence is not an option for the McCanns”

“Just suppose little Madeleine is trapped in a cellar somewhere, hidden from view while her warped captor conducts a seemingly normal life upstairs.”

Like Elisabeth Frtizl? It’s Tabloid Bingo. Eye down…

LORRAINE KELLY (Sun): “They deserve sympathy, not condemnation”

Since my daughter Rosie was a baby, she has always come everywhere with us when we go on holiday, especially to child-friendly countries such as Portugal, Spain and Greece. We wouldn’t have dreamed about leaving her behind to go for a meal because we go away to spend as much time as possible together as a family.

JON GAUNT (Sun): “I have little support for them”

Do you remember when you put your first baby to bed with a listening monitor and sat downstairs watching the box almost with subtitles on so you could hear every heartbeat?

If you heard an unexpected cough or belch you would sprint up the stairs faster than druggy Dwain Chambers on steroids to check on your little angel. That’s called parenting, isn’t it?

I wonder if the McCanns were as casual with their passports and valuables when they went out at night because as far as I am concerned there is nothing more precious than your child and they appear to have had scant regard for their safety.

ALLISON PEARSON (Mail): “The McCann campaign must NOT go on for ever”

Since May 3 last year, how many parents have mentally run the “Maddie safety test|” before daring to turn away from their children even for a moment? That may be her lasting legacy and our greatest burden.

Still, my small boy is not satisfied. “Maddie” is the big story of his childhood, bigger even than Harry Potter and infinitely more disturbing.

Harry Potter is Madeleine McCann? It’s all just stories. Any others?

There is a fascination in a momentary mistake that can never be undone, no matter how much a mother persecutes herself. In Greek tragedy, Antigone, the daughter of King Oedipus, cannot rest until she has recovered the body of her brother after his death in battle and given it a proper burial. One suffering leads to another. And there is some of that obsession, and that remorselessness, in the case of the McCanns.

But:

Do the two doctors really deserve two whole hours of prime-time when so many other people’s kids are lost and thousands are dying in Zimbabwe? Even those, like me, who have never doubted Gerry and Kate’s innocence must feel a flinch of unease.

Madeleine McCann: A year of easy copy



Posted: 30th, April 2008 | In: Madeleine McCann, Tabloids Comments (544) | TrackBack | Permalink