10th anniversary stories: both lunatic and sensible varieties

candyfloss wrote:

Andrew wrote:https://www.yahoo.com/tv/cnn-randi-kaye-revisits-unsolved-mystery-10-years-174732605.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw

More detail and write up here, it's on tonight CNN Special report at 10pm...


http://www.thewrap.com/cnns-randi-kaye-tuesday-1230/

".....Her beautiful little smile and those big brown eyes"
I've seen photos with two different Madeleine McCann but is there a third Madeleine with brown eyes?

The articles are still coming...

Today's Guardian magazine contains a piece by regular columnist, Hadley Freeman, a former fashion writer for the paper, discussing the McCanns and how we should really stop judging them because what happened to them could happen to any of us.

...usual ill-informed article. If anyone can post a link, thank you.

From Nick Cave to Kate McCann, it’s time we judged parents a little less
 
Hadley Freeman


Saturday 6 May 2017 09.00 BST

This is a story about missing children, and what happens to those who are left behind. Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a story told so many times it has taken on the form of a litany: Praia da Luz, the tapas restaurant, the open window. Madeleine vanished, but she is ever-present in the public consciousness, whereas thousands of missing children are just that – wholly missing.


There has been much hand-wringing in the media over this disparity: was it because Kate and Gerry McCann are white and photogenic? Or because Madeleine was blond and cute? Or because she vanished in a country where journalists also take their cute kids on holiday? To which the answers are yes, obviously, but this is to miss the point; the argument should be not that the McCanns deserve less attention, but that other missing children should get more. In an interview last weekend, Kate McCann said she felt “guilty” and “embarrassed” about the £11m spent on the search for her daughter. The only people who should be embarrassed are those who sneer that there should be some kind of cap on the amount of sympathy, or a time limit placed on a parent’s hope. In recent weeks, the tabloids have been eagerly publishing spurious decades-old sightings of Madeleine, seen crying for her mother in the company of “suspicious men”. It is hard to see what any of this is supposed to achieve, beyond torturing the McCanns.





The common take on the McCann coverage is that middle-class newspaper readers related to them and so cared more about the story than, say, that of Ben Needham, the British toddler who vanished in Kos in 1991. And yet in both cases the parents were instantly vilified: Kerry Needham for being working class, Gerry and Kate McCann for being too self-possessed and attractive. The parents of missing children are often demonised by a public that need to reassure themselves that this could never happen to them. Those parents were feckless, foolish, bad – not like us, the good parents. If anything, the relatability of the McCanns made them even more terrifying, and thus more necessary to condemn.

When Nick Cave’s 15-year-old son Arthur died in 2015, after falling off a cliff while on LSD, parts of the media were so keen to blame his father they became self-parodic. Much was made of the singer’s previous drug habit, as though no other parent on the planet had ever taken drugs, while the Times tutted that Cave had “an obsession with death” and watched “super-violent” films with his children. (The paper later removed the article from its website.) 

           


In an extraordinary interview in American GQ, Cave recently said: “I don’t want to give too much oxygen to the matter of responsibility because it raises a point that only someone who knows nothing about parenting, drug-taking or bereavement would suggest.” Even so, he added: “You can find yourself indulging in all sorts of irrational and self-destructive thoughts – self-pity, self-blame – because they form a direct connection to the small but present part of you that just wants to die.”



I have written a lot about missing or dead children: Etan Patz, the six-year-old who vanished in New York in 1979, and whose face haunted American parents in the 80s; JonBenét Ramsey, the six-year-old beauty contestant found dead in her home in 1996; Noah Pozner, the youngest victim of the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings. All very different stories, all connected by a vilification of the parents by a public so terrified of anything like that happening to them. A police officer once described it to me like this: “You know that moment when you lose sight of your child in a shopping mall? Imagine that feeling lasting for 30 years.” But there is no need for anyone to pull an Andrea “as a mother” Leadsom here; anyone can feel that fear, as if your arm has been ripped off your body and your heart pulled out after it.

The cynical take on Madeleine McCann is that she is gone for good: why are we still talking about this? “Her parents need to accept their share of the blame and let her go,” one notoriously bilious columnist wrote. There is a condescension towards parents of missing children and their magical thinking, their desperate hope that the family will one day be reunited. But it’s their critics who are engaging in the worst kind of magical thinking, believing that if they turn bereaved parents into the demonised Other, they will protect their own children. All they are doing, really, is revealing that they know the terrible truth: that this could happen to any of us, and we would never stop looking.





https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/06/nick-cave-to-kate-mccann-time-judged-parents-less

I do agree with her about genuine cases!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/06/nick-cave-to-kate-mccann-time-judged-parents-less

For example, there was the case of the two McLoughlin children who drowned in 1996 when their parents were sun-bathing on a beach and that of Leoni Keating who was abducted from a caravan in 1985 and murdered.

I seemed to be the only person in the world who sympathised with the latter's mother.

candyfloss wrote:From Nick Cave to Kate McCann, it’s time we judged parents a little less
 
Hadley Freeman

Patronising drivel.

Also, Hadley Freeman sounds like a PPI refund company.

I normally skip her articles as she has nothing interesting to say, just ramblings mainly. Hard to believe she gets paid for them. She should have stuck to fashion.

I've never heard of her before. She sounds like a mail order catalogue!

I'm not encouraged to read anything else of hers.

It's really sad that she lumps the tragic death of Nick Cave's teenage son in with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. There is a very real distinction here that she has completely ignored. The McCanns' daughter disappeared on May 3 2007, her disappearance was discovered at around 10 pm and by two minutes past midnight, the story of an abduction was being reported by the British press. Any magical thinking was on the part of the parents, who fed that story to the press within hours of her disappearance. In fact feeding the press a story of an abduction took precedent over searching for their daughter, who even if she had been abducted, could have been abandoned shortly afterwards leaving her scared, alone, vulnerable and in danger. One thing we know for sure, if Madeleine had been found that night it would not have been by her parents. Sometimes it's right to judge, not when someone loses their child in tragic circumstances but when they prioritise phoning friends and the media over looking for their daughter, absolutely yes IMO. I don't need some smug journalist to ask why shouldn't they still be looking when the real question is why weren't they looking on the night she disappeared?

In an interview last weekend, Kate McCann said she felt “guilty” and “embarrassed” about the £11m spent on the search for her daughter.

Really? If this had happened to one of my children I wouldn't give a flying (bad word) how much was spent! Sorry, but I wouldn't. Why on earth, would I feel guilty and embarrassed about the amount spent, unless of course I knew where my child was, then I'd feel guilty and embarrassed because of the money and time spent on it.
IMO

Very good post WUD, my presentment entirely.

Birdy wrote:Very good post WUD, my presentment entirely.

I agree, and what the "journalists" fail to mention is that the primary concern of most critics of the parents is what happened to their daughter, Madeleine. Another Guardian columnist, Deborah Orr, wrote a similar piece a few years ago.

I feel sympathy for Nick Cave, his wife and other son. I don't recall reading anything which blamed them for their son's death.

Thanks Birdy and Luna. I don't recall any public hostility towards Nick Cave either, or Eric Clapton when his son died tragically, I think people recognise a tragedy when they hear it and respond with kindness. This article is one of the nastiest IMO.

What's_up_doc? wrote:It's really sad that she lumps the tragic death of Nick Cave's teenage son in with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Yeah. At least I can be reasonably confident that Nick Cave actually had a son in the first place.

As has been said before, what universal condemnation has there been for most of the cases mentioned? Only the Ramsey one (with much justification) and to a lesser extent the Sandy Hook boy but that I think is a different situation because of the belief of many that the whole incident was a fake.

Unreorganised, do you think there is a chance then that Madeleine didn't even exist?

Ms Freeman is tweeting that we all make mistakes, blah blah. Anyone here on twitter?

Freedom wrote:
Unreorganised, do you think there is a chance then that Madeleine didn't even exist?

Well obviously you have to take certain things at face value, so not really really, no. It would just be nice to hear a bit more from third parties who knew her or the family before the disappearance.

I have half jokingly contemplated offering a cash bounty to anybody who can provide documentary evidence of a consultation with Dr Kate Healy GP before now though.

Luna wrote:Ms Freeman is tweeting that we all make mistakes, blah blah.  Anyone here on twitter?

My goodness - just looked at her tweets - she`s an extreme lefty through and through, spouting the sort of stuff that just makes my blood boil. A typically gullible establishment lefty. I wouldn`t give her opinions house room.

Just when you think it cant get any worse.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4480984/Tycoon-flew-private-jet-Africa-Madeleine-McCann.html

.     tycoon who flew by £1.5million private jet to Africa to find Madeleine McCann was left 'shattered' when tip-off about a lookalike blonde girl proved wrong  

Further on the fail tell us

Scotland Yard is still chasing a critical lead it believes could crack the case and it is understood they have returned to a theory that burglars were involved.

But the Portuguese police, who have previously accused the British of acting like a 'colonial power' in their country, say there is no evidence to back this up.

But, ten years since Maddie vanished, Carlos Anjos, the former head of the country's Policia Judiciaria officers' union, said the Met's theory that Madeleine was taken in a botched burglary is 'absurd'.

It could be worse. The comment absurd is being reported without the normal guidance to readers that these foreigners are not to be trusted.

Allowing their readers to make up their own mind about whether the idea is "absurd" is a small start, I would have thought?

mumof6 wrote:It could be worse. The comment absurd is being reported without the normal guidance to readers that these foreigners are not to be trusted.

Allowing their readers to make up their own mind about whether the idea is "absurd" is a small start, I would have thought?

I agree mumof6 we are hearing the counter argument now, which hasn't really been presented in the press before. Looking at the comments sections it looks like the public have already made up their minds.

I didn't remember much about Nick Cave's son; no widespread condemnation there.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3311680/Musician-Nick-Cave-wife-arrive-inquest-death-son-Arthur-15-died-falling-cliff.html

What a sad story indeed.

I know the term "colonial power" is supposed to have come from the PJ but did that come from a "source" or is it a direct quote from somebody?

Portugal used to be a powerful country with colonies in Africa and Asia so whoever made that quote is aware of England's colonial past but extremely ignorant of Portuguese history.

The term "colonial power" appears to be designed to whip up a frenzy of British patriotism in Sun readers while causing Guardian readers to gasp in horror emphasizing the don't trust the foreigners narrative pointed out by mumof6.

I would say that it was made up by the McCanns or the media in this country.

Portugal has come to terms with its colonial past and the reality of what happened in Angola and Mozambique. The 1974 revolution came about because of revulsion that Portuguese soldiers were dying to cling onto something that belonged to the 19th century. There isn't a nostalgia for empire in Portugal, it is associated with the Salazar dictatorship.

In this case I believe the quote to be genuine and reflective of disquiet with British interference in the case.

I think it's a fair analogy Poe because it stems from an era when the British felt they were culturally superior and needed to impose their  values on others, it includes a fundamental distrust of all things foreign and a sense of superiority. The media portrayed the PJ as incompetent, shambolic and there was constant reference to how things would have been done differently in Britain. The McCanns exploited this and played it quite brilliantly but using the term colonial doesn't advance their cause IMO - it actually exposed their game plan. I think the media have perhaps begun to realise that there are two sides to every story and that after 12 million pounds and no credible results by OG, maybe the PJ are not the incompetent half-wits the McCanns wanted everyone to think they were. That's how I see it anyway.