public displays of grief

[Garnet]

"join this group to show you care", "tie a ribbon round a gate", "put a picture of a missing child i do not know up somewhere"

No! I'm sick of this, tabloids are not just to blame, people are doing this for their own ends ("oh i'm such a caring person"), it's shallow

Of course we all care we're human, I don't need to do pointless gestures to prove it.



[hr]

so alive, so full of fire and music!

[Dom]

Put a sock in it

[rob 'f*ck off' wine boy]

Hurrah for badgers!

[A66]

It's all Diana's fault. And it is sickening. If you get get abducted try to be from a white middle class background, from a village or small semi rural town, with a church where ribbons can be tied and prayers said then the media will fall all over you, so long as you do it in slow news week. When have you ever heard and prayers are being said at their local mosque for a missing child. If this had been a working class black family in Portugal we wouldn't have heard any more about it this week.

A few years ago I was at football match with a silence for the Soham girls, a week later a local child was killed (in similar circumstances) however, because it wasn't as a high a profile case our clubs request for a silence before our game was not allowed.

[gringo]

I happen to agree. I do realise that this is something of a delicate issue - when they involve kidnapped children, or brutal killings etcetera they always are - but I do think there exists a horrible degree of double-standards in our press.

This week the m.p's in the house of commons all wore yellow ribbons for the kidnapped girl Madeleine. Why? To show they are supporting and thinking of the parents? Well, anyone who's human could not (or shouldn't) fail to feel compassion, at least to some degree.

But why do the British press deem some issues more important, more tragic, than others? The journalist Alan Johnston has been missing for weeks, but no one wore ribons for him, or even mentioned him yesterday - his birthday.

The whole thing confuses me, one person's life can be deemed more important than anothers. I know the missing girl is/was a defenceless little child, and i do feel for the parents, but it seems like the media just picks and chooses when they want to go all out on certain stories, and then subject us to the same story time and again. Yesterday, for instance, there had been no new revelations on the Madeleine story but it still dominated the news programmes.

I really do think it's terrible what has happened in Portugal ( and i suspect that this issue is what inspired this thread).

I suppose this media problem is of our own doing, as a society - to make everyones business our own; everyone's tragedy our issue; and appear as, or more, caring and compassionate than any other nation, as if, in some way, to prove our humanity.

There is no real soultion, only bafflement and tolerance.

[maenad]

"Find Madeleine".

What, on Facebook?

[hr]

Tommy can you hear me?

[thePontificator]

Beyond being sorry for the family (I'm sorry you left your kids on their own in a downstairs apartment while you had dinner in a holiday complex that had its own creche facilities, but even if you are slightly dumb no-one deserves that to happen to them)there isn't a lot people can actually do.

And you may have noticed that there's never been a newspaper headline along the lines of 'Ugly loner kid dies, public ambivolent'.

[hr]

IMAGE:userpic.livejournal.com/58288716/4933128

[[James]]

I will do as I always do when the media latches on to something like this - turn the table on the blame merchants and blame the Daily Mail brigade themselves. I feel sympathetic towards the parents, but it ends there. This is not something that deserves to be the headline every day for 2 weeks. If the media and the public felt genuine human compassion (above simple sympathy for one's own middle-class countrymen) virtually every headline of every day would be on genocide, poverty, starvation, AIDS, and so on. But of course, white middle-class child-related tragedies sell.

[Mehmsy]

It's such a double-standard. The attention shown to isolated cases of violence and crime (like the kidnapping of Madeleine) is monumental in comparison to the attention given to important conflicts like what's going in the Middle East.

[hr]

http://standrews.facebook.com/profile.php?id=37106593

[Raindog]

At least the tabloids are concentrating on something important instead of which drunk minor celebrity is falling out of a nightclub. If you don't like it don't buy it. People who buy tabloids deserve what they pay for anyway.

[Frank]

In discussion mentioned on another forum/message board, it was noted that there were somewhat suspect circumstances involving her disappearance/abductance anyway.

That is:
- Left alone in Villa with two *younger* siblings
- Parents out having a meal, checking every half hour
- Distance to restraunt was only ~300yrds
- Weren't using the local child-minding/creche facility provided by the complex

Whilst I of course feel extreme sympathy for the parents, and hope to anything that the girls okay, I do think it is perhaps not proper to forget about the (allegeded) circumstances above!

I don't know the details though, and I do find the phenomenal amount of public grief somewhat disheartening. That's right: Wear yellow ribbons. Why?

Why not do something *useful* with the resources? Something productive, perhaps?

[hr]

"There is only ever one truth. Things are always black or white, there's no such thing as a shade of grey. If you think that something is a shade of grey it simply means that you don't fully understand the situation. The truth is narrow and the path of the pursuit of truth is similarly narrow."

[Malcolm]

Quoting Frank from 19:12, 18th May 2007
That is:
- Left alone in Villa with two *younger* siblings
- Parents out having a meal, checking every half hour
- Distance to restraunt was only ~300yrds
- Weren't using the local child-minding/creche facility provided by the complex

Yes, father, I do actually think if it had happened in the UK the parents would have fallen under the spotlight and been done for negligence. But because it's happened far away it seems to be different somehow. It needs to be said; what's happened is a terrible thing and I can't imagine how her parents are feeling, but it was pretty irresponsible to leave the children like that.

Surely, if they were continually checking on them, this might narrow down the window as to when the alleged abduction occurred? I don't know if it was abduction, why didn't the abductor take all three children? They were younger, they wouldn't have put up much of a fight surely?

The general idea is keeping it in the news might jog someone's memory or indeed the perpetrator's conscience.

[Steveo]

Reckon there are any bookies taking bets on the parents having done her in?

[hr]

Get off my internet.

[Raindog]

Quoting Steveo from 20:31, 18th May 2007
Reckon there are any bookies taking bets on the parents having done her in?

[hr]

Get off my internet.

Subtle mate, subtle

[Steveo]

You pays your money you takes your choice. I want to make some money here.

[hr]

Get off my internet.

[god_hand]

Well isn't this thread inappropriate? It's a fucking shame that the advent of internet message boards seems to have negated the idea of saying nothing if one can't find anything nice to say.

But whatever you like! I guess we'll see you lot selling ribbons outside of the union once Madeline is finally found raped and dead; washed up on the bank of the Douro! I'm glad to see St. Andrews is, as ever, producing upstanding human beings.



[hr]

http://kincadeontheoldcourse.blogspot.com/

[Raindog]

here here, sick bastards

[thebrookster]

Quoting god_hand from 00:09, 19th May 2007
Well isn't this thread inappropriate? It's a fucking shame that the advent of internet message boards seems to have negated the idea of saying nothing if one can't find anything nice to say.

But whatever you like! I guess we'll see you lot selling ribbons outside of the union once Madeline is finally found raped and dead; washed up on the bank of the Douro! I'm glad to see St. Andrews is, as ever, producing upstanding human beings.



[hr]

http://kincadeontheoldcourse.blogspot.com/

Well!

Glad to see that we still get flamed for voicing opinions on The Sinner. Just because some people have alternative reactions to the "right" reaction does not mean that they should not voice them. You may not agree with how other people view different events, but that does not mean that they are not allowed to give them.

[/end of rant in good old sinner fashion]

[Malcolm]

I still think she either:

a) wasn't abducted, but disappeared/died through some other reason

b) was abducted by her parents as some kind of grotesque publicity stunt.

[Raindog]

There is voicing opinions and there is being just out of fucking order, i mean come on taking bets on a girls abduction, joke or not still fucking sick. get a fucking grip. arseholes. voice your opinion but have some sort of tact. Just signed up for the sinner to see what it was like but with these sort of sick fucks on line you won't see me for dust. revel in your own filth you sick fucks. nice meeting you. so called students. get more of a sensible opinion on the fucking building sights. students. i shit them.x