What is it about Jade Goody that the British public find so fascinating ? It’s not her good looks, even after the extensive plastic surgery. Not her charming personality, noticeable by its absence. Nor is it her whit, which she does not possess. Not her innocence, which presumably was corrupted at birth. Not her intelligence, which is below that of a rocking horse. So what is it ?

The fascination seems to be routed in the pride she takes in her exhibited ignorance which so shocks and stuns that it makes us incapable of turning away from what has been her perpetual car crash persona.

Jade first came to national attention on the TV show Big Brother where the startling breadth and depth of undiluted ignorance shocked and astounded us all. She was a perfect example to hold up to truant children of how not to grow up. Where had this throwback from the pre-Victorian age come from, and how was it possible in the modern age for her to have achieved adult age with only a child’s, or imbecile’s, understanding of the world she inhabited ?

Whilst it is undoubtedly a tragedy that her life has prematurely come to an early ending it is no bigger tragedy than her twenty seven years of life. Brought into the world as an undoubted accident, presumably the result of another intoxicated fumble between a heroine addict and a crack cocaine addict, her life had predestined doom written all over it. Perhaps it might have been different if her grandparents were decent sorts. So many like Jade have been successfully guided into a worthy and honourable life through their grandparents efforts when parents have not been up to the job, but unfortunately it is clear that her grandparents are no better than her parents.

We know that at least one of her grandmothers is a shoplifter, and considering how much mileage the press have made out her parents misadventures it can only be wondered at just how deplorable and unsavoury the rest of her grandparents might be to have so far remained unmentioned at any point in this nightmare tale of modern day Dickensian squalor.

Not once has her grandfather, on either side, either voluntarily stepped forward or been brought forwards to acknowledge his grandchild and great grandchildren while they are still able to do so. Why can only be speculated on, but there must surely be something deeply unpleasant and publicly unpalatable about them not to have been mentioned thus far in the story of her life.

Few can blame Jade for grabbing her one opportunity in life to raise herself out of that primal swamp that was her existence before Big Brother, but her success owes more to the excellent publicity skills of her press agent than to her own ability in any given direction.

The subsequent press and media attention received by Jade since her first Big Brother appearance is a phenomena worthy of some examination. What values does this society have when it chooses to promote a culture of ignorance figure headed by Jade Goody ?

It used to be that the general consensus of public, political, and spiritual opinion that it was the duty and right of every individual to do better and go further than their parents had been able to. Figures like Dr Duncan of Liverpool who single handedly did more to improve modern living standards in this country and abroad for everyone, especially the poor, by the introduction of covered sewerage systems were held up as inspiring examples to be followed. Children were taught about other such inspirational figures in the hope that some of us may be inspired enough to do similar works and achieve further improvements in the health, wealth, and well being of our fellow brothers and sisters.

Misguided though many of them were, the Victorian adventurers and pioneers had at their goal the improvement of mankind and a desire to increase educated intellect. By comparison today’s society, its values, its goals, and political directives seem to be designed purposefully to undermine such natural desires and ideas of self improvement and hurl us backwards into a time where ignorance is actively encouraged and glorified so that those who do know better may rule us from their ivory electronic gated CCTV towers like cattle.

It is shameful that in this modern age of technological wonder that people across the world are allowed to die in their thousands from starvation, lack of sanitation, and lack of medical care due to the greed and ignorance of but a few rich and privileged persons. Live Aid proved to us all that if the will was there that technology was now advanced enough to enable us to communicate and organise ourselves in such a manner as to address such situations. Sadly the lesson has been buried under a mound of festering and useless dictates that keep us bickering among ourselves through our own ignorance and manufactured obsession with god like celebrities and the rich and famous figure heads of fashion.

Jade came out of Big Brother the first time around and made a few quid out of the subsequent press interviews. Most of us simply thought good luck to her and wished her well in stepping up out of the mire, hoping that having done so she might make a decent life for herself after such an unfortunate start. However, the old saying that you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear has never rung more true. Instead of using her new found wealth and status to get an education Jade simply followed the directives of the magazines she could barely read and the values they portrayed to her. She underwent plastic surgery, took every opportunity to grab whatever money was on offer, and appeared on every magazine cover that her idols had.

Having become a millionaire several times over she did not choose to spend the money on a drug rehabilitation programme for her mother and father but instead chose to grab at and hold onto the shallow, ephemeral, and ultimately useless status of celebrity by launching her own perfume range and opening up beauty parlours to increase her own wealth, for no other reason than to increase her own wealth, which already far exceeded her own needs and requirements. Not a penny was raised for any charitable endeavour to help others like herself to achieve a better life than they had.

Then came that second appearance on Celebrity Big Brother. It had to be the biggest mistake her publicity agent made and the biggest mistake of her ‘career’. The public had forgotten just who and what Jade was. The show exposed her for the shallow, greedy, self interested, and selfish personality that was but a product of her upbringing and a refection of this societies values since the destruction of community and community spirit brought about by Maggie Thatcher’s single handed hatchet job on ordinary and decent working class families and communities during her time in power.

Thatcher’s cult of individualism has brought us nothing but the illusion of opportunity and encouraged only the manipulative and malicious greed of self interest. Like Thatcher, Jade commanded wealth and power without compassion, care, or consideration of others.

Her public death throws are a grotesque pornocracy that any ordinary decent human being would take pains not to inflict on their own families, and in so doing she condemns her own children to an inescapable future as objects of public pity. She has done this simply for the money and no other reason though supposedly it’s all for her children’s future welfare. It would seem that she has failed to realise, and no doubt has never been taught, that some things are more valuable and worth far more than cold cash.

The brazen lack of dignity she has exhibited in her death throws has been scurrilously encouraged by her publicity agent in a desperate attempt to grab, grasp, and squeeze every last penny possible for no better reason than a blind ambition to be remembered and loved by the public more than she ever has been by her own parents, family, and so called friends.

If the vultures she calls ‘friends’ were of any calibre at all they would have implored, or at least tried to talk her out of this last public embarrassment and leave her children able to walk with their heads held high in dignity and the knowledge that their mother had more respect for them than their grandparents and great grandparents had for their mother.

No doubt we will see all their ‘exclusive inside stories’ splashed just as grotesquely across the media in the oncoming months following Jade’s death along with her jailbird husbands pathetic outpourings of elongated self pity. It is a sad reflection of our society that anyone should want to emulate Jade, and it’s sadder still that so many seem to think of her as their hero. If anything Jade is one of Thatcher’s children, and that is a legacy of truly frightening proportions because it reveals just how much damage Thatcher caused to the fabric of decent honest dignified working class people and the wider society they inhabit.

Viper 16/3/2009

Many thanks to Liam420 of the ChilledTimes.com online community for his help and inspirational support in the writing of this article.

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First Published 16/3/2009 by Viperslair.co.uk

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