Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality by Theodore Dalrymple

Author:Theodore Dalrymple [Dalrymple, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Non-Fiction, Sociology
ISBN: 9781906142612
Amazon: B00A3Q9BGU
Barnesnoble: B00A3Q9BGU
Goodreads: 8563216
Publisher: Gibson Square
Published: 2010-08-18T22:00:00+00:00

The disclaimer at the beginning of this entry is simply not credible; for if Mrs McCann’s alleged poker-face is not evidence of her guilt, or at least collusion, what could be the point of mentioning it? It seems that the refusal of the McCanns to exhibit their emotions in public caused so much hostility towards them, and so much abuse, that the Daily Mirror felt constrained to close down its website devoted to the case.

One or two newspapers tried to salvage the public reputation of the McCanns by reporting that they did sometimes show their emotions publicly. The Times, for example, reported that Mrs McCann had cried in the aeroplane on her way back from Portugal to England, while the Daily Mirror reported that she cried when she returned, alone, to Madeleine’s pink-painted bedroom. (How alone could she have been for it to have been reported, unless, of course, the whole thing was made up?) If you want public sympathy, it seems, you must cry in public; grieving is like justice, it must not only be done, but be seen to be done. And God help those who do not cry.

The demand that emotion should be shown in public, or be assumed not to exist and therefore indicate a guilty mind, is now not an uncommon one.

A young British woman called Joanne Lees was driving through the centre of Australia with her boyfriend, Peter Falconio, in 2001, when they were stopped by a man on the pretext that there was something wrong with the vehicle in which they were driving. The man shot Peter Falconio, and then tied up Joanne Lees, almost certainly preparatory to raping and killing her. However, she managed to escape and run into the bush, where the assailant could not find her.

She told her story when she reached safety, but since the body of her boyfriend was never found, it met with some scepticism. What is more, her lack of emotion in front of the reporters and television cameras led many to suspect, and even to accuse, her of either making the whole story up, or, even worse, of being herself a murderess. For a time, the police seemed to suspect her. Emotional restraint was once again taken as evidence of lack of emotion and therefore of a guilty mind.

More than four years later, a man called Bradley John Murdoch, a man with a long history of criminality, was found guilty of the murder and attempted abduction. He was sentenced to serve twenty-eight years in prison, and his appeal against conviction was dismissed. Joanne Lees had been entirely vindicated, at least officially.

However, even after Murdoch’s conviction, an Australian broadcasting station, Network Nine, saw fit to hold a poll to discover if Australians thought that the convicted man was guilty. The cruelty of this to the victim of so horrible a crime hardly needs pointing out (and even if Murdoch were innocent, even if, against the odds, there had been a miscarriage of justice, a poll in his favour would not have constituted worthwhile evidence).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.