I don't want to be callous, but, honestly, my number one priority would not be other children. It would be on finding my own. Maybe much later I would become less self-centered and think about other children, but immediately? No.
I don't think that is callous, I think that is just the honest-to-God truth about being a parent. You think "Please God, let it not be my child" when you hear that the Lifeflight med evac helicopter picked up a child who fell at recess. You know intellectually it is another parent's possible agony, but you pray that it is not
your child lying on the pavement. That is the reality of being a parent.
What is notable is that the other children were abstracts to the McCanns. Yes, it is obviously a huge problem in the world--and notably again--in countries like Thailand where child sex is promoted as a tourist attraction. (reportedly.) The suffering of these children, while real, is on the same level as that of children in famine-affected or civil-war torn countries--it is simply not something that most upper middle class parents relate to easily.
These children are for the most part, victims of their governments, their countries, and their cultures. They are not the random victims of crimes. Their suffering is systemic and much harder for the rest of the world's people not only to correct, but to relate to. It is a tragic fact, but it is a fact. It take a bunch of movie stars and rock stars to get the rest of the world to notice, for example, that children are starving in Sudan.
So it is not admirable for the McCanns to take on the welfare of other children and to say openly it is not "fair" to them. It is just plain odd, even inexplicable. Why would it be unfair to them, if Madeleine is rescued? After she is rescued, could they not then turn their attention to the other children, using the media attention tocus on the others?
And oddly enough--when the McCann investigators see a child they say publicly is probably American--in Morocco, in the company of adults they again say are not related to the child--do they rescue that child? Do they make getting that child to safety a priority? As they have said so many times is their priority, helping other children as well as finding Madeleine?
No, they do not.
There is no explanation for this that makes sense. They say they want to help other children, but they publicize this other seemingly endangered child, and the only purpose seems to be a kind of "See, here's this other kid, so you know Maddie is probably there, too."
Please don't tell me they wanted to rescue her but are waiting til the right minute. If that were true, they would have kept that on the hush-hush until they could. After all, what good does it do the rest of us to know that, if no action can be taken to rescue this child who is "probably American?" And how does that help Madeleine, other than alert the kidnappers that we are on to their Morroco hide-away?
Cynically, it seems to me it only seems to be an effort to boost the abduction story and possibly keep the donations coming.
This change allows for the timeline window to close to the now 8 minutes their investigators now claim is when the abduction took place.
:waitasec: 