15 pages of speculation, many of the posts saying things like "We're sick of hearing about it now" "Why all the media hype and speculation?"
It was never really news. 99.999% of everyone following the story has never and will never meet the McCanns or Madeleine. Yet from the beginning, the press, on the McCann's initiative, presented the missing Maddie as if she were a niece of any one of us. Repeated showings of videos of her and daily exposure to the grieving parents forced her into the national psyche. Without wanting to seem cold, the fact is that for all the direct impact it has on our lives, or the direct effect any of us could have on the outcome, the whole story may as well be fiction. So now, having been manipulated in this way, and having read the first half of the "book", lots of people want to turn the page, but are forced to wait.
I don't have a problem really with people wanting to be speculative or curious at this stage: it is a very natural response to the way the media has manipulated us. Better rather to face up to why most of us actually watch the news: it's not to be 'informed'. It's to be *entertained*. The media knows this, and knows that if it weren't the case their readership would have long given up on them for their cavalier attitude to the 'truth' if 'truthful information' had really ever been sought by us.
Author