Madeleine-hysteria.com

«In these days of mass media sophistication, no one needs it explaining to them that where a child who gets kidnapped is news, a pretty child who gets kidnapped is headline news and a pretty child who gets kidnapped and whose parents save lives for a living and go to church is rolling news. Even so, in the days since she disappeared, the Madeleine campaign has, for scale of involvement, outdone anything we've seen before. (...)

There have been mutterings that this is a post-Diana thing. But much of the response seemed to have more to do with the News of the World's erstwhile anti-paedophile campaign, and the general hysteria that governs "right" versus "wrong" parenting. (...)

No wonder the stampede to share the McCanns' pain has been so thunderous - although before the family's impeccable credentials became clear, one imagines there was a conflict in some tabloid newsrooms over Parents who left their kids alone while they had dinner, versus Evil Paedophile Under the Bed, he's coming for your kids next. (...)

Of course, at root, people only want to help. But their exaggerated responses look from some angles like self-gratification. "Help us," wrote one group of people who had never met the McCanns, to another group equally remote from them. (...)

This is not how it came across, however. At this stage, we are so absurdly far removed from the point of the exercise that it is is only a matter of time before someone superimposes a big cartoon tear beneath it and, appealing for further help in a world that doesn't exist, posts it on Second Life.»