Sick game mocking Madeleine McCann and Hillsborough victims branded "beyond offensive"

Sick game mocking Madeleine McCann and Hillsborough victims branded "beyond offensive"


May 18, 2014 21:24By Neil Docking


Cards Against Humanity is a word game in which players try to make the most offensive answers including "Madeleine McCann", "Hillsborough" and "Jade Goody’s cancerous remains"

Hillsborough families have branded a card game mocking the tragedy and missing youngster Madeleine McCann as “pathetic”.
Cards Against Humanity is described as “a party game for horrible people”, in which players are encouraged to be as “despicable” and offensive as possible.
Among its targets is the disaster which led to the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans.
Margaret Aspinall, chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, whose son James, 18, died in the disaster, said the US makers of the game had “warped minds”.
She said: “Sadly you get morons everywhere. Whoever decided to make a game up like that about people’s tragedies – it beggars belief. It’s pathetic.
“I believe there is one card about the McCanns and it is absolutely terrible what that family are still going through, and also the families of Hillsborough.
“Anybody who can think of a game like that, they’ve got warped minds. They’re sad people.

“It’s an absolute disgrace and people who play that game, it tells you what they’re like too.”
Sheila Coleman, from the Hillsborough Justice Campaign (HJC) , said she could not fathom why people would want to play such a dinner game.
She said: “It’s in extremely bad taste, not just in reference to Hillsborough, but the whole tone of the game. Cashing in on grief is always obscene.”
In the game, one player asks a question from a black card and the others answer with their ‘funniest’ white card. Each black card is either a question, or a phrase where the key words have been left as blank.
The players then respond with answers on white cards, which include “Hillsborough”, “Madeleine McCann” and “Jade Goody’s cancerous remains”.
The person who creates the ‘funniest’ or most offensive answer wins a point.

The McCanns’ spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said the offensiveness of the game spoke for itself and Cards Against Humanity should cut all references to Madeleine in future editions.
He said: “For the makers of the game to make light of a missing child is beyond offensive.”
The game was invented by eight childhood friends from Chicago in 2009.
Eli Halpern, 27, project leader of the British version, said their “mission statement” was “to take the most sacred thing in the UK and tarnish it”.
He has been quoted as saying Hillsborough “seemed fair game because it was historic”.
He added when the game was test marketed no complaints were received.
Fellow inventor Ben Hantoot said Madeleine McCann was the “riskiest” card as nothing similar appeared in the US version.