To even take up time and a blog entry on this seems to be to give it more attention than it actually deserves, but I need a place to put this down as it's bugging me, and I've started writing now, so I'll try to make it brief.
Jade Goody is an awful human being. She always has been, and the fact that she now has life-threatening cancer does not change that fact one iota. I find it incredibly shameless, undignified and disgusting that she is making sure that every last moment of what is left of her life will be documented by the media. I find it sickening that she is using her sons' futures as an excuse for doing this - she is a millionaire already, so I'm pretty sure they'd cope.
The woman has earned fame for doing precisely nothing and showed her true repulsive colours in 2007. The fact that she has managed to claw her way back into the public eye through prostituting the fact that she now suffers from a serious disease says as much about the general public as it does about her.
I can think of not one redeeming feature about Goody. I would not wish her circumstances upon anyone, but it does not mean that I have to like her in any way, nor does it mean that I should accept the final moments of her sordid life being thrust into my face. She truly is an awful human being.
CodeSOD: Secondary Waits
20 hours ago
5 comments:
I don't really follow Big Brother/celeb stuff, so have no real view on her and her worth as a human (or lack of it), but this commenter on an article about this year's big brother gives an interesting alternative view on the whole racism issue.
I'm almost tempted to say that if newspapers want to offer obscene amounts of money to cover her illness, then she's perfectly entitled to take it, and more fool them for offering.
If you don't mind explaining to the uninitiated, Bambi, what is it about her that you find so repulsive (pre-media-death-hawking at least)?
Having read through that commentary, I get the impression that whoever wrote that is (for some reason) a Jade Goody fan. A lot of what they have written I can to a point agree with, however; what I can't agree with is this part:
"Behind her back, once, Jade referred to Shilpa as "Shilpa Poppadom". When told it could be percieved as racist she was gutted and apologised loads straight away, and she never did it again. It was a crime of ignorance and idiocy, nothing more."
Racism is fuelled by ignorance and idiocy, so I hardly see that as an excuse for her actions. More worryingly, the writer seems to think that Goody wouldn't understand that what she said was racist before someone else told her. Absolute rubbish. There's no way that Goody was entirely oblivious to what she said being racist. I'm not surprised that she "apologised loads straight away". If I realised that I'd destroyed my artificial fame by showing my true colours like Goody, I'd be backpedalling as much as I could too.
"...if newspapers want to offer obscene amounts of money to cover her illness, then she's perfectly entitled to take it, and more fool them for offering"
Firstly, I don't think you can say "more fool them" about the tabloid press, who know that plastering Goody's face all over their papers will make a large proportion of the general public buy them. The tabloids are simply doing what they always do. Also, yes, Goody is perfectly entitled to take the money. But does that mean that she should? If you had made a fortune through a career involving no talent whatsoever, and then found out you were terminally ill, which would you choose to do: withdraw from the limelight to die with dignity and spend every moment you could with the people you love and care about; or chop and change your final days around when the next photo shoot or "interview" or press meeting is? Which would you say is the choice of the decent person? Compare the way Kylie Minogue handled her cancer diagnosis: she made her fans aware of her illness, and then withdrew to recover with dignity and privacy.
And on your final question, I cannot stand Goody as she is the epitome of undeserved fame. Goody has done nothing to earn her celebrity, and whilst there are others who fall into the same category, Goody is taking it to the very limit, milking her celebrity to the very last moment. She wishes to have her death broadcast on television - the height of indignity and egotism. And that's why I find her so repulsive.
"If I realised that I'd destroyed my artificial fame by showing my true colours like Goody, I'd be backpedalling as much as I could too."
"[...]showed her true repulsive colours in 2007"
how can you distinguish her 'true colours' from her media portrait?
the tabloid press, who know that plastering Goody's face all over their papers will make a large proportion of the general public buy them.
So are you annoyed with her undeserved fame, or the people who enable her to have that fame by being interested in her (and who enable her to have that fame by writing about her)? And if she wants to be written about, and people want to write about her and people want to read about her, then is there really any surprise that stories appear?
"withdraw from the limelight to die with dignity"
Is that really an option? If the media think that getting a photo of you/writing an article about you will sell more papers, then they're going to do that, whether that means paying you money, or sneaking into your wedding/hospital or writing a load of rubbish. Given the choice, maybe she decided she may as well get some money out of them for it.
"She wishes to have her death broadcast on television - the height of indignity and egotism."
- do you feel the same way about Craig Ewert whose death was shown on Sky a few months back?
I'm not necessarily saying that you're wrong to feel how you do, but I'm interested that you feel so strongly about someone who has never had any direct effect on your life.
personally I blame the public for taking an interest, if it wasn't marketable it wouldn't happen. The media both tells us what we want and gives us what we ask for (whether that be through actual asking or by consistently watching a genre). The boundaries get pushed every now and then and generally people watch it even if they may be slightly disgusted/uninterested/drunk so in a sense it's the fault of both the media and the public. Jade Goodie does seem to have taken advantage of this and is milking it until it becomes a shrivelled heap on the floor, but oh well "we" asked for it.
I don't really agree with what she's doing, there are people out there going through exactly the same (if not worse) and they're getting on with it (or struggling). If this was raising awareness or money for cancer research then maybe I'd be more for it, but it does kinda seem selfish in some ways (I dunno, maybe not). Anyway that's about as far as my caring goes.
"sneaking into your wedding/hospital or writing a load of rubbish"
You've just described my weekend... I just wanted to join in the quoting game
i just feel I should point out while the meeja does still sneak into weddings, newsprint journalists are forbidden from sneaking into hospitals under the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct. Not that it carries any real weight, but after a couple of journalists conducted an "interview" with some famous athlete in hospital in a coma in the 80s after going into the hospital and pinching a couple of labcoats, everyone agreed this kind of thing was shabby in the extreme and I can't remember ever hearing of another case of it while studying for my media qualification.
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