Whatever your thoughts and feelings about reality tv, you can't deny its impact on society today.
Some magazines would barely exist if it wasn't for Big Brother, X Factor et al, and some people would have nothing to watch or talk about.
It seems to be re-cycling itself to an extent now too. Last night some bloke who was a runner up in one of the singing contests, finally won one of these things. The fact that finishing second a few years ago made him a "celebrity", allowed him the indignity of being a "household name" before the country discovered he could dance and skate a bit.
If there was anyone that embodied the name "Reality tv celebrity" it was Jade Goody. And if anyone pretends they don't know who this person is they are lying. Or live in a cave in the Hebrides's.
She sat naked on a couch, drunk, screaming about everyone at home seeing her "kebab". She called a Bollywood actress a "poppadom" and nearly started a diplomatic incident. She was then on the Indian Big Brother and given the devastating news she had cervical cancer. Finally she lived out her days on tv. Where else?
Whatever you think of her, and for the record, when she was originally on BB, i thought she was a loud mouthed idiot. When she was on Celebrity BB, i thought she was an arrogant, egotistical, loud mouthed idiot. When she was diagnosed, i thought she displayed it in a crass and garish manner, using it as a cash cow for her sons, however well intended.
I think you can tell by now, i wasn't her biggest fan. I will admit i laughed at some jokes that were in very poor taste, and felt a little moral outrage when i discovered she had ignored two abnormal smear tests.
In the end though, you wouldn't wish a death as painful on your worst enemy. Whatever they had done.
Therefore i cannot ignore the disgusting, foul-mouthed and gutter surfing comments, dripping with bile, that i have read. You don't have to like someone to not feel your heart strings tug, when you think of those two boys, getting up yesterday morning, to give their mum a mothers day card, to be taken aside and told she had died. I cannot imagine what they are going through.
The comments such as "i couldn't care less about those two brats" are beyond belief. Heart of stone. It genuinely scares me to think there are people out there that make those kind of comments and start discussing conspiracy theories. Pathetic.
On the flip side to this, the out-pouring of grief, akin to the aftermath of Princess Di's premature passing, is a little OTT! I may be making enemies here when i say that the publics perception that she consciously made these tv programmes to heighten awareness of the disease, is more than a little shortsighted. She admitted that it was to make as much money as possible for her boys. Not sure what she had done with the alleged million pounds she earned immediately after BB, or after the advances for her book, appearance fee for Celeb BB etc etc, but you can't argue about her motives.
I have friends who have lost their mothers, i can't begin to understand what that is like. So any help these two boys could get to succeed in life, i couldn't begrudge.
Jade Goody died to soon. Too soon for her family. I would never have wished her dead, however much i disliked her. She epitomised the Reality tv, disposable culture, nothing behind the facade. It won't change anything. There are those who feel she was the spokesman for the no-mark, no talent, big-mouthed, fame hungry morons who audition every year for these shows just to get there fizog on the goggle-box.
At the end of the day, she stole the limelight for too long, but shes gone. Those two boys have no mother. That's the reality.
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