Here are some lines from The Sun's front page report today on another "Madeleine sighting": "The guard told detectives the blonde blue-eyed girl looked just like Maddie" "She was with a woman the man did not believe was her mother because they were very unalike." "The woman is North African or Arabic with thick black eyebrows." "The dark-skinned woman, wearing a hijab headdress, spoke in a different language, possibly broken French." Does anyone else feel queasy reading unsubstantiated and highly speculative stuff like this?
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Yeah,right mate. Has this bloke ever been to North Africa? He does know that the French, Spanish, Italians, Germans, British and Americans each spent more than a few years/decades swanning around there killing each other and the natives, getting drunk, getting laid and having kids? An awful lot of them blond and blue eyed?
Other than that he probably just wants to see himself in the papers or on the telly.
Posted by: flipped | Monday, 11 August 2008 at 05:02 PM
They're just trying to sell newspapers to those sad (as in pathetic) enough people who've been reeled in by the whole Madeleine drama.
The fact is that hundreds of parents throughout the country have approx 5 madeleine sightings on their way to drop their kid off at school in the morning.
The only difference is (thankfully) the majority of people seem to have sense and don't report every small blonde girl they see to the Sun. Then again I would not be surprised if the Sun just made it all up.
Posted by: Sharon | Monday, 11 August 2008 at 08:08 PM
Reminds me of the Julie Maynard case: surrounded by terror police at the Channel Tunnel and falsely accused of child trafficking because the child's skin colour didn't, they said, match hers.
Posted by: George Hale | Monday, 11 August 2008 at 10:19 PM
The last blond child sighted in North Africa turned out to be a local kid. People need to realize that there are light haired/eyed/skinned people outside Europe. And no, there's no need for elaborate explanations involving drunken European men either. The problem is - this seriously affects the narrative laid down by segments of the media. Namely "Let's neatly segregate the world into "light" and "dark" and blame the darkies for everything." Damn genetics for getting in the way.
Posted by: BlondBerber | Tuesday, 12 August 2008 at 05:32 AM
More than the race factor, I think the subtle insertion of Muslim = Person to fear, is what is most disturbing.
I am particularily disturbed to see any suggestion that a whole religious group is to be scrutinized more than another. It seems like the caricitures used to demonize Jews in Europe before WWII.
Posted by: Delaney Pencil | Thursday, 28 August 2008 at 03:28 AM