*EXCLUSIVE* - McCanns to Split!

If the media has anything to do with it.
The psychological warfare they are waging against this couple, alternately sympathising with their plight one day and casting aspersions upon their presumed innocence the next, is disgusting. Time was when reporters reported the news not wrote it! Not made a story fit the 'exclusives' they sought, no matter what the truth or human cost. And what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Notwithstanding in the unlikely event charges are brought against the McCanns and made to stick, trial by jury, rather than by the media?
As for the Portugese police, for a force not permitted to comment on a live case, one bizarre theory after another has emanated from their ranks - one suspects, if not in collusion with the media - just to get rid of this nuisance British couple blighting one of their tourist hotspots with the worst economically-disastrous scandal that can befall a tourist hotspot. Arresting them certainly did wonders for the McCann departure from embarrassing Portugese shores.
While I cannot claim to have read every word printed on the story, from the sizeable chunk I have read and McCann interviews I've seen, I cannot think of a single reason why the McCanns would want to kill their much wanted (IVF) eldest daughter. Had they done so accidentally, why on earth would they not have admitted it? However stupid it might be to (allegedly) drug your daughter to make her sleep, it still would've been manslaughter, rather than murder. But the sudden death of a young daughter from whatever cause is hardly a thing a couple can fail to blame each other for or otherwise hide - particularly a couple expected to behave entirely normally at dinner with friends who knew them well that night. As for launching an international campaign to find her (which mushroomed into a phenomenon that neither of them could have predicted), hardly the act of a guilty couple either, albeit unusual, but then they are both unusual people as I detailed in my earlier posting.
So the question remains, what do the media WANT from the McCanns aside from lots of newspaper sales? A marriage split is obvious, as the McCanns cannot be seen to buck the trend of 80% relationship breakdown following the death/disappearance of a child, but do they want mental breakdowns as well? Suicide by one or both? Some kind of 'confession' perhaps?
Kate and Gerry McCann may not fit the demographic of the usual parents of a missing or murdered child, but I'll eat my hat if they turn out to be guilty of anything other than not fitting the usual demographic.
One can only hope they get some sort of closure (good or bad) before the media takes things one step further and pays someone to frame them up for Maddie's disappearance

The McCanns - An Interesting Phenomenon

Has most of the rumour mill and general nastiness directed at the McCanns got more to do with general discomfiture at the suspicion that their second phone call was to Max Clifford, rather than any real belief that they had something to do with the disappearance of their own daughter?
Certainly their media savvyness and unprecedented high level international campaign made my own jaw drop, causing me to regard them rather oddly, as if things didn't quite 'add up' somehow.
After all, aren't parents supposed to quietly melt away and trust the Police to do their job after a couple of press conference appeals and newspaper cuttings, when a child disappears?
Three months down the line after watching the McCanns being interviewed on yesterday's BBC1 Heaven and Earth show, I find myself thinking how amazing they are for that self-same media savvyness, not to mention those little qualities determination and strength of character, albeit with a little help from their evidently genuine Catholic faith. In addition there are the following factors to be considered; -
Mr McCann is a highly educated Cardiac Consultant
Mrs McCann is a highly educated GP
Both doubtless know all about case meetings and strategy where their patients are concerned. In addition, both are old enough (late 30's) to have noticed the cases of many other child and gap year student disappearances and murders overseas, and how they tend to drop from public notice (and foreign Police interest) like a stone if not kept in the public eye somehow.
Once a disappearance or murder looks like affecting the tourism trade in an area or the reputation of that country, THAT's when it might actually be taken seriously.
So good on them for staying put and fighting on I say. Publicity and public embarrassment should know no bounds in this scenario. And perhaps the current anti-McCann backlash originates via the Portugese Police anyway, to intimidate them to leave.
Even if they are driven by guilt at trusting their parental instincts on that fateful evening, rather than the hotel babysitter, drive is drive. It is surely immaterial where it comes from.
Moreover for all the fuss that was made of their leaving their sleeping children yards away from them while they dined, this was entirely commonplace not so long ago before childcare hysteria took over. Yet you never heard about that because this is one of the first instances where instinct backfired.
Worst case (and sickest suggested) scenario - did the McCanns engineer Madeleine's disappearance for the publicity? I think you can discount that straightaway when you see how little either Mrs or Mr McCann seem to be 'enjoying' themselves whilst their daughter remains missing. Mrs McCann indeed appears to be losing weight and looking gaunt and strained, for all her grit. Mr McCann is at the heart of keeping the campaign alive and vocal, his way of dealing with it - so what?
I know the news ultimately probably won't be good about poor little Maddy (with a face that could melt the hardest criminal heart, you would've hoped), but I hope it comes nevertheless. It makes me feel guilty that I became somewhat sick of the sight of her posters plastered on every flat surface in Oxford. (Oxford?) But if your kid was missing, what would you do? Your best no doubt. And who am I to question that? The world is global these days, so fly the posters.