Objectivity or insensitivity?

A very modern melodrama and our shrine to Madeleine - David Aaronovitch in The Times:

"But why put a picture of Madeleine in your window, 500 miles from the Algarve? “If I thought it would help show solidarity”, writes one contributor to the BBC website, “why not? I wear a poppy on Remembrance Day, a lapel badge for breast cancer awareness, why not a ribbon for Mad-die? So what?” Those who question this are described as “miserable devils”....There are many ways of being “overly helpful”, but all suggest the possibility of guilt. In our case it may be that the abduction of Madeleine McCann has become, essentially, a bad form of entertainment and that, deep down, we know it."

In chatrooms and message boards, Madeleine hysteria grips the world - Emma Brockes in the Guardian.

"It was the point at which big business started to get involved, however - BAA, the British airports operator, is carrying the "help find Madeleine" message on its website - and yellow ribbons began appearing on all benches in the House of Commons, that people started to feel a little uneasy. While the BBC flew out Huw Edwards to look apocalyptic, live from Praia Da Luz, people started to ask how much of this was actually helping, and why people were doing it...Of course, at root, people only want to help. But their exaggerated responses look from some angles like self-gratification. "Help us," wrote one group of people who had never met the McCanns, to another group equally remote from them. "Missing for two weeks now please forward to anyone abroad - she may be as far away as Bolivia or Colombia or the USA," wrote someone else, hyperbolically, and lots of people pondered and responded to the indefensible posting "imagine what she's feeling?""