Except he’s not wrong, is he? I am perfectly happy to complain about the media, certainly regarding politics where it is easy to shape people’s views en masse…but when you talk about heat magazine then ultimately people have to buy the stuff to validate and encourage further coverage.

It may not be something you or I like to admit, but “the people” were interested in Jade, through her colourful public existence, regardless of how the PR spun things. In fact it is easily argued that they liked her because she was so blunt (and stupid) that you could happily understand her THROUGH the PR spin. Russell Brand is really not saying anything controversial or that we should disagree with, and to claim that killing him is any kind of reasonable response to his writings shows how juvenile your argument is right here.

What Lee said.

And yes, people don’t choose from an infinite number of celebrities but when Goody first came to prominance on Big Brother the press held her up as a hate figure but miscalculated the public’s feelings and eventually portrayed her positively; and when they demonized her again over the ‘racism’ row in CBB they eventually had to accept she was just an idiot and not the seething mass of race-hate they had made her out to be.

The media gives us choices, it does not make those choices for us.

Indeed. The media wouldn’t've continued to run the story if it didn’t resonate. Clifford more than most knows what will and won’t play. That’s how he’s made his pile. Whatever else you think of him, he has a talent.

And it was precisely because JG had no talent whatsoever that the story ran and ran. She offered a new opportunity – to be famous for being famous. And, perhaps, her belief that money can buy you love – in the hope that it could do so for her sons, she was more than happy to sell her privacy. When we bang on about internet surveillance and CCTV all over the shop, we should remember JG.

It’s much the same on here, really. Chris Dillow writes wonderful intelligent stuff but what attracts the most attention? Sex and personality to go by the volume of comments.

Except that if the newspapers reported on someone entirely different, then that person might have been a shortlived ‘hero of the people’ and not Jade. Our heroes are prescribed for us. Jade was deliberately raised to fame by the newspapers for her stupidity – but we can all recognize a bully when we see one, and we do like an underdog, so JG became popular. Had the media chosen not to attack Jade so bitterly for thinking East Angular was a foreign country, we have no idea what she’d have become when she left the house.

Imagining that JG was, in fact, another people’s princess is to buy into tabloid hype. If we ignore that Jade Goody was a person for a moment and just think of her as another phenomenon, like the millenium bug stories, people didn’t relate to the millenium bug, and yet hype was created to the point where some people spend large amounts of money on “millenium-proofing” their businesses, their homes and pretty much anything that the newspapers said could fail.

Because JG was a person, we’re inclined to think of the phenomenon in human terms. But the whole process can take place without an object that displays human characteristics. There is an industry designed to tap into the heads of the audience and convince them of something – and because of the constant conditioning towards sex and personality, we lap it up. Similarly, in the case of the millenium bug, the social conditioning played on was fear and we lapped it up.

There are hypes plural because the PR industry can be more or less successful at any one time at guessing how people will react and playing to that. What the hype is about is completely irrelevant – and to suggest, as Brand does, that Jade Goody was somehow different simply because she was a working class girl who got some hype around her is ludicrous. The basis of it all is hegemony, the lived process of our lives and the prejudicing of our critical faculties by the pre-existing social relations into which we are born.

It is not simply that we collectively ‘liked’ Jade. We like anyone in a tight spot. Even OJ Simpson got outpourings of sympathy.

If hype alone was enough people would remember who the fuck Sigue Sigue Sputnik were.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik?
Wrong example , mate.
The hype and the ups and downs Jade Goody enjoyed were more Britney Spears material.

You only have no talent when you’re dead.

Goody maximised the potential of an opportunity she had, and she used the knowledge of the closing of her life to create opportunities for those around her.

Goody’s story is a modern morality tale – her fame was her redemption.

Celebrities count among the constellation of contemporary saints and sinners, which gives us plebs cause for contemplation.

Some say blog posts complaining about Jade Goody coverage apparently vindicate and perpetuate the rather nauseating circus. I think such logic is bollocks…

Yeah it is bollocks. But that wont stop the contrarians.

I must be the odd bloke out, each time I saw Jane Goody or was told she is dying, I looked out my window, I live on a estate built which has been built for the sick and the disabled on top of the biggest hill you would fine, no bus stops no shops, the only way to town is ask somebody to take you or call a taxi. I have seen five people die of cancer in less then six years, I watch families ripped apart by death, I saw no media I saw no weddings I watched the hearse come with two cars and thats it, now you have Jane goody, I cannot be bothered when she died did I feel pity nope I did not why should I.

she was more than happy to sell her privacy. When we bang on about internet surveillance and CCTV all over the shop, we should remember JG.

Mike, let me know when the Government will give me a few hundred thousand pounds for photos of my wedding.

[10] I don’t think the Government gave her any money…

That’s rather the point, isn’t it? Goody chose to give up her privacy in return for larger sums of money than she would otherwise have been able to earn.

We don’t have a choice about giving up our privacy to the government (except by getting rid of them) and it’s arguable what we get in return.

Except for a false sense of security and billions less money in the public purse.

These poor proles, they lack the autonomy to decide which celebs they like or dislike, which news stories they want to read and what they don’t. It’s all cos the press are telling them what to think, don’t you know? If you really think that the readers of the gutter press are that incapable and that stupid, why be leftwing in the first place? If you have that much disregard for the great unwashed then surely the last thing you want is social mobility?

Jade was a big story in the press even *before* she started dying, just not *as big* a story. She would often be in mags like Heat, Closer and such like and guess what: when she appeared in the mags, the mags sold more copies! Who’d have thought it? I think one week Closer ran a couple of stories on the Rwandan genocide and Keneysian economics, but the Jade cover on a rival mag sold better.

Clever people read broadsheets; thick people read tabloids; some people are interested in Jade. That’s the way it goes.

It is not the case that the punters are simply ‘choosing’ the Jade Goody story out of an infinite list of stories they could be interested in. For a couple of days last week, it was the only story

The “only story”? Really? I can assure you that on most of the news outlets I read, Jade Goody wasn’t mentioned.

The Jade story is a sad one but also a reflection on our times. She was celebrated mainly because she was ignorant – a celebration of stupidity that has been going on for years. People always like to look down on people, making them feel better about themselves. That’s how she rose to covers of magazines etc. It was a carefully manipulated image which she contributed to – she was a little more savvy than some people think -but happily played along.

Russell forgets, she was promoted because she was allowed to be the butt of the joke – not because she was a hero. She knew that but was obviously happy to play that role.