16.05.07
Pretty white girl lost
Please help us to find her. [edit: I've just been told off for intemperate views and language in this post. Pah.]
I’m nigh on incandescent with rage this afternoon. I just got back from the shop with my lunch to find a badly photocopied “wanted” poster on the practice door. I was torn between ripping the damn thing off the door or plastering a “For fuck’s sake!” sign over it.
Pretty much everything about this current media hype/overload is creepy and/or just plain wrong.
The moral outrage is appalling and misplaced. “But she’s an innocent little girl”. So are the 2 or 3 kids killed everyday on the roads but you’re still going to complain that you’re not being allowed to speed in built-up areas ‘cos speed cameras are “just another tax”. Are those kids worth less to you? Just because you don’t know them off the telly. [edit patient was whinging today that he got a fine when he was "only" doing 45 in a 30 zone]
The outrage that would have come about if she was a chav scum kid left on her own by chav scum parents would have been deafening. But no the parents are good middle class folk with a photogenic family so that’s good for sales innit?
But then we have nigh on everybody feeling sorry and wanting to help. Fine but shut up about it. Care more than a jot for anybody else’s kid. The only reason you give a shit here is because you’re being told to give a shit. Does it really take advertising to make you care about people suffering?
How appalling has our society become that a supposedly media savvy population is so easily manipulable by such outrageous and obvious tactics?
The person I feel most sorry for is the poor sod who’s been identified as a “suspect”. Chances are he’s got bog all to do about anything. But a reporter says she felt “creeped out” by him. So it must be him. And even if it isn’t we’ll wreck any chance of his having a decent life beyond this circus shall we. Good yes, let’s. This is what Chris Morris so ably punctured years ago. Why are we still victim to it?
Good on the parents here for managing to keep things in the public eye but for christ’s sake get some perspective people!
Tom said,
May 16, 2007 at 10:32 pm
I feel sorry for the bloke who’s been put as a suspect, despite them having no evidence against him. According to the headline of the Express, he “acted like Huntley”. It’s a good job he lives abroad, otherwise his house would’ve been ransacked by now.
alby said,
May 16, 2007 at 10:38 pm
His ex-wife and 4 year old child have already been harassed by the media.
Bastards the lot of them.