Fiona MacKeown Ticks All The Boxes In Anorak Bingo
FIONA MacKeown, mother to murdered teenager Scarlett Keeling, is the subject of heated debate among the newspaper columnists.
Much of the opinion is prefaced by the word “sorry” or “forgive me”. This is always followed by an attack. “Sorry, but I blame Scarlett’s mother,” says Allison Pearson on the Mail’s front page.
Readers can join play along. It’s all part of Anorak Bingo – the game that’s taking the press by storm. The aim is to get the names ‘McCann’, ‘Matthews’ and ‘MacKeown’ into your article. Get all three and score double points. Pens at the ready…
THE PRESS: “What was her mum thinking?
Says Mike Bentley:
Well forgive me, love, but if you hadn’t decided to cart your eight (repeat, eight) children off to India for a six-month holiday, and then left one of them to fend for herself while you cleared off with your partner and the other kids (exact number of fathers unknown, but at least four), then there’s an even better chance that Scarlett might not be dead now.
Bentley has done his research. He manages to tick all the boxes. Madeleine McCann. Tick. Shannon Matthews. Tick.
Fiona MacKeown is a “soap-dodging, pikey mother”. DAILY RECORD: “Terrible Price To Pay For One Bad Decision”
Joan Burnie writes:
FIONA MacKEOWN, the mum of 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, who was raped and murdered in Goa, is unlikely to ever win Mother of the Year. There are those who also, even if they don’t say it right out loud, whisper it about Kate McCann.
Tick.
DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Hands-off mums do their children no favours
Says Alice Thomson:
“Though the children stayed away for many moons, the beautiful mother always left the window open for them to fly back. I do like a mother’s love, don’t you?” Wendy tells Peter Pan.
“You are wrong about mothers, Wendy,” Peter replies. “When I flew back to my mother, the window was barred, and there was another little boy asleep in my bed.”
Mothers in the 21st century are even more divided than the ones described in JM Barrie’s book.
Fiction. Fact. Can you spot the difference?
But by allowing her children to drift in and out of schools while living off government cheques and a home-grown vegetables, she did little to prepare them for adulthood. Scarlett’s 17-year-old brother, Silas, wrote on his Bebo site: “My name is Si, n I spend most of my life either out with mates get drunk or at partys, or going to da beach.” Their mother may have been attempting to live the good life, but she hadn’t given her children boundaries or taught them how to look after themselves. She had opted out of her tedious parental duties, as had the five fathers of her nine children.
THE SUN: MUMMY’S CURSE!”
Jon Gaunt:
“Let’s not beat about the bush, Fiona MacKeown is an irresponsible mother.. Fiona is typical of the kind of mother who wants everything and sees her kids as an inconvenience that can be palmed off at any excuse – she’s a clear example of the ME, ME, ME generation.”
So says Jon Gaunt in his eponymous column.
It’s the same kind of attitude that allowed the McCanns to think it was acceptable to leave Maddie and the twins alone in a holiday apartment…”
Tick.
“It’s the same attitude that has led Shannon Matthew’s mum to have kids by multiple fathers.”
Tick.
THE GUARDIAN: “Mothers and monsters – In the media’s hands, Fiona MacKeown has become a scapegoat for the middle classes”
Says Madeleine Bunting: “Compassion is not a response the media seem able to sustain. That small window that affords a degree of respect for the grief of the bereaved seems to shrink ever more, but even so the treatment of Fiona MacKeown, the mother of the 15-year-old murdered on a Goa beach, has plumbed new depths of harsh judgmentalism.
While MacKeown struggles to get the police to take on the case of her daughter’s killing, she has a second child lying in hospital in the UK with a broken neck from a car accident that happened shortly before her daughter’s death. This goes well beyond the platitude of a mother’s worst nightmare. Yet even such circumstances have not inhibited the torrent of criticism and contempt that has poured down on this woman’s head. Open season has been declared on every part of her family life, her parenting style and even her appearance. She is blamed for abandoning her daughter in a resort while continuing her travels; accused of a recklessly indulgent style of parenting; and criticised for her mode of grieving. Almost every article refers to her hair – it is “lank”, a “curtain” and, most unforgivably, grey.
As does this article. Bunting mentions Kate McCann.
Tick.
Posted: 14th, March 2008 | In: Tabloids Comments (23) | TrackBack | Permalink
