Wednesday, September 12, 2007

A rant, following a recent visit to the BBC News site

Why the hell is this Madeleine McCann shit in the news?

Please understand, I mean to use the word 'shit' in reference to the story, not the person. I bear no ill will against the kid herself, but I'm a bit peeved by the story.

I just want to know: how the hell is this news? News agencies around the world have been running stories about the McCanns since May. This is worth 5 months of news? Really? And not just news, but big news. BBC has a special "features and analysis" sidebar on Madeleine, like they do for, say, Zimbabwe or N. Korea. There are maps of where Madeleine disappeared, like the maps showing attacks around Baghdad.

The McCanns got to go to the Vatican. While there they stayed in an ambassadorial suite. They were invited there by the fricken Pope. So, OK, the McCanns are Catholic, but is the Pope meeting with every Catholic in the world who has a missing kid?

I used to get a flyer in the mail every week or two about some missing kid or another. It turns out there are a lot of them. None of those kids got 5 months worth of international news coverage. Of course, a lot of them were not very photogenic, probably came from fairly poor families, and were also frequently black or hispanic.

(Hm, would I not be so pissed off if Madeleine were a poor black kid? I dunno.)

No comments: