“Freindly Fire Zone”

Well, it's official. Gerry and Kate McCann have become the Ramseys of Europe. Just as the Christmastime murder of six year old JonBenet Ramsey went officially unsolved, it appears that resolving the disappearance and probable death of five year old Madeleine McCann will suffer the same fate.

That is a terrible shame for three reasons.

It's time to stop pretending. It's time to pronounce guilt in the Madeleine McCann case.

A little girl's life may have been snuffed out, so let's dispense with political correctness and call it like it is. By doing so, maybe we can prevent a similar tragedy from happening again.

Maddy's fate lies squarely with her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann. They are either directly responsible for her death (accident or otherwise), as Portuguese authorities believe, or they are complicit in her disappearance by their unconscionable irresponsibility in leaving her alone, night after night, in their apartment (along with her two-year-old twin siblings).

Either way, they are guilty and should be held accountable.

According to CNN, the recent naming of Kate and Gerry McCann as suspects in their daughter's disappearance was a “surprising twist”. 

This should have been a surprise only to those whose heads were buried in the sand or who were blindly, and foolishly, loyal to the McCanns.

“Equally suspect” has been the performance of the media.

I have championed Don Imus keeping his job.  I have defended Barry Bonds' achievements. I stood up for the falsely accused Duke lacrosse players long before they were cleared.  I complimented a Governor, whom I disagree with on virtually every policy, because he had the guts to take responsibility for a weather-related calamity.  And I even stated that Paris Hilton was wrongly jailed, receiving unfair treatment because she was a celebrity.

But no matter how much I try, I simply cannot find anything worth defending about Gerry and Kate McCann.  Or the complicit paper tiger known as the British Media.

Even the French take better care of their children than the British.

The response to last week's “Freindly Fire” column, “Parents of Kidnapped McCann Child Are to Blame” was tremendous.  The situation in Portugal clearly touched a nerve on both sides of the Atlantic, but nerves  of a starkly different kind.  The majority of respondents from the United Kingdom defend the actions of the McCann parents, namely leaving their three children in a hotel room alone while they went out to dinner. A small additional fact:  the children had a COMBINED age of seven (7).

By a similar margin, Americans agreed with my commentary that the parents are solely to blame for this tragedy for the simple reason that, had the McCanns used just a smidgen of common sense (that is, if they actually played the role of parents by staying with their children) the abductors would not have carried out their kidnapping plot.

What is fascinating, indeed incomprehensible, are the reasons given defending the McCanns.  Many in the UK stated that the McCann's decision to leave their children alone in a foreign country was a simple “mistake”, while others chastised me for not realizing that such actions are merely a difference in cultures.

Just to make sure we're all on the same page, we are talking about leaving children alone to fend for themselves, correct?  Because if I didn't know better, it would seem the Europeans were referring to their pets.