For the sake of what?

I confess to being completely nonplussed by this whole Maxine Carr thing. The determination of the press to identify her new secret self seems to be vindictive for the sake of it; something they do to conjure up another news story, another few pence from the pockets of newsagent punters. And then another news story after that when some vigilante kills her.

Let's draw some tenuous connections here. First of all, when they get her killed, aren't they -- in effect -- making themselves worse, morally, than she is? She provided a false alibi, the kind of stupid, dumb, thing that people do every day in the name of romance. She didn't kill anybody or cause them to be killed. And, crucially, in my view, her falsehoods didn't, in the end, help the real killer to get away with it.

So here's my tenuous connection. Those shitkicking redneck US soldiers in Iraq, who are torturing and humiliating Iraqi resistance fighters (or insurgents, whatever you want to name them), are doing so because somewhere along the line someone put the idea in their tiny little brains that Iraq was responsible for the Sept 11 attacks. In their minds, they're paying back the lost lives and the suffering of families back home.

And when the newspapers manage to reveal the address/identity of Maxine Carr, someone with a similarly tiny brain will attempt to punish her, because the woman has been demonised by the press, turned into Myra Hindley The Sequel, and is equally to blame for the deaths of Holly and Jessica. We all know how Myra Hindley was used to sell newspapers, and now she's dead, so they're looking for another. So shame on them, and shame on anyone who buys a newspaper because Carr's face is on the cover.