It’s been reported that J.K. Rowling has now pledged a “staggering” sum to the reward for the safe return of Madeleine McCann, the four-year-old English girl who was abducted in Portugal 12 days ago.This sum is in addition to the $3 million already raised, in part due to contributions from such notoriously media-shy figures as Sir Richard Branson, Simon Cowell, and Sir Philip Green (the mesomorphic billionaire head of the Top Shop Empire.)Moreover, David Beckham has recorded a televised appeal along with two Portuguese players in the Premiership: Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo and Chelsea's Paulo Ferreira. Texts are popping up on mobile phones around the world (including Ireland) asking the recipient to light a candle for the missing girl.All the while, Sky News and BBC News 24 maintain their 24/7 vigil, under the Portuguese sun and the hired klieg lights.On an individual level–on the level of the family in the eye of the storm–this event is nigh impossible to conceive. Nightmarish is too consoling an adjective. But on a macro level, the coverage has all the hallmarks of whipped up hysteria–there’s more than a whiff of the kind of emotional fascism that characterized the Soham case, and, further back, those bizarre days after the death of Diana. You must be distraught is the unspoken commandment. But does anyone seriously think lighting a candle, or getting David Beckham to make a TV appeal, will have the slightest affect on the (darkening) outcome? I suspect that all this “concern” really achieves is to make our own lives and families seem more stable, more sensible (what is the real story behind the family’s perfect facade?, the muttering goes) as we warm ourselves against the blazing spectacle of another person’s tragedy.