Monday, March 23, 2009 

The world mourns.

MOST WORTHLESS WOMAN TO HAVE EVER LIVED DIES
THE WORLD PAYS TRIBUTE - OBAMA BROADCASTS TO AMERICA
GORDON BROWN DECLARES WEEK OF MOURNING - MOST WORTHLESS WOMAN TO LIE IN STATE
ALL THE NEWS, PICS AND HYSTERICAL HYPOCRISY PAGES 1-93 PLUS 94 PAGE MEMORIAL PULLOUT WITH FREE MOST WORTHLESS WOMAN CERAMIC FIGURE (JUST PAY £199 POSTAGE AND PACKING)

PAGE 94 - OTHER NEWS
SLOW START TO WORLD WAR 3
MILLIONS DEAD IN MIDDLE EAST
OVER BY CHRISTMAS SAYS JOHN HUTTON - NO NEED TO PANIC

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3/23/2009 10:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 09, 2009 

First and last words on the Jade Goody phenomenon.

Part of the reason I've abstained for the most part from commenting on the media/Jade Goody complex is that I've covered very similar examples here in the past ad nauseum. Goody is the latest continuation of what has been building in our media since the death of Diana: the perfect opportunity for the tabloid press to show they care while at the same exploiting the person for all they're worth, even if at the same time the person they're pretending to care about is also exploiting them. The line can be drawn fairly straight from Diana, through to Jill Dando, Sarah Payne, perhaps even Holly and Jessica, Madeleine McCann, Baby P at a stretch and now to Goody. The difference this time round is that Goody is still alive, for now; Madeleine technically is but was being treated as dead from almost as soon as she went missing. The fact that she was missing meant that she and her parents were fair game; to begin with they cooperated, then they were turned on, then they were rehabilitated. Remarkably like Goody, except she went through an initial process of vilification before being rehabilitated before once again being vilified.

The line of defence is that the media is expressing the public will, or the public mood: we too were grieving for Diana, we wanted the murderer of Jill Dando caught, we wanted to string paedophiles up by their testicles, we wanted to find Madeleine, and now we all feel the pain of Goody, of a life unjustly cut short by a disease that strikes us down at random. These moods can sometimes be fleeting, they can sometimes be lengthy, but the media will always be there to milk them to their full potential. Madeleine was only the most extreme example: a press which had lost all sense of its normal journalistic values, reduced to translating gossip in the local Portuguese rags, regardless of how heartless or defamatory, all because they believed that it was what their readers wanted, and that even if it wasn't, it was what they were going to get. Another justification increasingly cited is that the internet now allows constant, almost always unmoderated speculation and rumour, far beyond what even the Express published; the newspapers are only competing in a race to the bottom. It's wholly unconvincing, but expect it to be increasingly depended on as the recession deepens, advertising revenues fall further and circulations drop.

The case of Jade is however slightly different because it's the first real alignment between public relations and media which has dominated the tabloids for such a lengthy period of time. Most of the previous outbreaks of group-think were when those involved were either dead or missing, and when the only people who profited from it, apart from the media, if at all and hardly by much were the relatives. Jade is more comparable with those other individuals famous for no real reason, Jordan and Kerry Katona, the latter also previously handled by Max Clifford. Clifford is both a genius and probably the most shameless individual in the country, other than the tabloid editors themselves: his control and power are probably only comparable in the media world to, believe it or not, Sir Alex Ferguson, another person who can banish media organisations from his presence on the slightest of whims and with the same amount of accountability, namely next to none.

Clifford in fact didn't really devise the model of turning an individual into a brand; Jordan's people are probably those chiefly responsible. Jordan, or Katie Price is not just a perpetually surgically enhanced model, she's an underwear designer, a novelist, the modern equivalent of a diarist, a children's author, a singer, a horse rider, a perfume brand, even a porn star, if you're willing to count her amateur antics with Dwight Yorke which were released onto the net, while at one point she was even set to give birth live online. This edifice is of course a complete and utter sham: she no more writes a single word of her books than she does actively design the underwear sold under her name. Who knows, perhaps it isn't even really her riding a horse or on that TV show with her husband; everything else about her life is fake, why couldn't she herself be? The remarkable thing about all this is that in a world where the tabloids are prepared to scream at the slightest example of phoniness on BBC programmes, they completely indulge Jordan, Katona and Jade. Sure, they might occasionally run the odd article pointing out that Jordan doesn't actually write her books, but the Faustian pact between them is strong enough to ensure that it doesn't affect the next exclusives they've got lined up to keep the punters happy. The other thing is we honestly don't know whether those who buy the books or the garments actually care whether or not they're not getting the real deal: they probably don't. At any rate, the whole thing would be unlikely to come completely crumbling down even if the whole thing eventually turns out to be one long hoax to see just how low someone can go and get some of the general public to follow them.

It's only when someone makes a truly glorious mistake, such as that made by Goody when she bullied Shilpa Shetty that for a time they're sent to the dog house, awaiting their rehabilitation. In the most extreme examples this never happens: Michael Barrymore is one such case, and some of the other famous men accused of various crimes, both proved and disproved also come to mind. Some directly link Goody's subsequent living secular saint status to the fact she was diagnosed with cancer live on Indian Big Brother, but she had in fact been back in the tabloids and not been pilloried for some time before that. The cancer diagnosis though changed everything: sympathy will always win through, unless someone is either a paedophile or a murderer, as it ought to. This though has instead been taken to ludicrous extremes over the last few weeks, resembling a unending wake before she's even close to death's door, all the past insults forgotten, just as they were after Diana died, the harlot that betrayed the royal family turned into one of the greatest Britons to have ever lived, as Rosie Boycott so risibly argued (Interestingly, when Channel 4 did its equally unscientific 100 Worst Britons poll, Jordan came 2nd and Goody came 4th<, which was certainly unfair on Goody at the time). It has gone far, far beyond emotional pornography, instead evolving into the journalistic equivalent of an onanism obsessed teenager filling a whole drawer with spunk-laden tissues, not knowing what to do with them. The whole shallow, facile, revolting spectacle has been variously defended on the grounds that it's encouraging young women to get cervical check-ups, which is far from a compelling reason but a slight positive side-effect, to the completely baseless one that Goody is doing it so that her sons can have the life that she didn't. This is nonsense, not only because Goody was already more than well-off before she was diagnosed, but also because it seems to assume that you can't do well unless you're financially stable and go to a decent, presumably private school.

The real reason I was driven to write this drivel was Madeleine Bunting's even worse article in today's Grauniad, a similar act of masturbation, albeit a pretentious one, trying to explain the Goody phenomenon in terms of the economic calamity. This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "needing to restore our faith in human nature", "grieving for the death of a fantasy world we have all been living in" or wondering what "sacrifices will we have to make as a nation to pull ourselves out of this economic mess", even if not all of those are directly thinking about Goody's death in these terms but instead through "tap[ping] into vague inchoate emotional anxieties", but is instead all to do with how Jade has been marketed and branded: she is an everywoman, and to those that have followed her, her death is similar to someone they know dying. With Diana certain people felt they knew her, through constantly seeing her life played out in the newspapers; with Goody this has been increased ten-fold, to the point where some probably are on the point of grieving because of her death, or even harming her, as the woman found with the hammer in her room may have done if not disturbed. Goody and the media have signed up because it benefits them both, and to hell with the actual effect that this real-life soap opera has on some people.

This obscene voyeurism is the ultimate tabloidisation of our culture, the latest pinnacle of the celebration of the completely unremarkable individual, the obeisance to the know-nothing. The worst thing of all is that the majority are almost certainly completely unmoved by Goody's demise, sad and sympathetic certainly, but not to the point where they want her to stare out from every tabloid front page for getting on for a month. It is instead being imposed on them by those in on the joke, those personally profiting from it. It just isn't funny. The real tragedy is that the woman with the hammer didn't cave it into Goody's skull and put all of us out of our misery.

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3/09/2009 11:38:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, February 13, 2009 

Scum-watch: More heartlessness over Binyam Mohamed.

The Scum continues its shamefully heartless low-level campaign against Binyam Mohamed returning from Guantanamo:

AN AIR ambulance will bring Guantanamo Bay terror suspect Binyam Mohamed to Britain — at taxpayers’ expense.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband also sent a medic to treat Mohamed, who is on hunger strike.

The Ethiopian — whose right to live in Britain expired five YEARS ago — was set to arrive yesterday, but was too ill.

Perhaps we should charge the doubtless extravagant cost to the United States, considering they were the ones responsible for Mohamed's unlawful detention for the past five years. Suggesting something similar though would expose the Sun's long-term position: that it has never so much as once called for the closure of the Cuban camp and has opposed the return of every single British citizen and resident from there. It even went so far as to sneer at the concern raised about the conditions by comparing what was meted out to Daniel Pearl:

Whilst much of the media huffed and puffed about “bad conditions” in Guantanamo Bay, these very same terrorists were preparing to slit Daniel’s throat.

No Geneva Convention for Daniel. No orange suits in the Cuban sun.

Instead, these evil brutes filmed his murder on video and sent it to the Americans.


Likewise, when Moazzam Begg was returned it printed the following leader column:

IF you live in the Birmingham area, it’s possible you have a new neighbour who turned up in the past few days.

His name is Moazzam Begg and he’s one of the freed Guantanamo Four.

The legal papers on Begg released by the American Justice Department make disturbing reading.

America says Begg has received “extensive” terrorist training in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, including how to use AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

He was armed and prepared to fight American and allied troops, the documents state.

Begg denies this and claims he took his wife and children from Birmingham to Afghanistan to open a school in Kabul.

In a sworn statement, his wife claims they wanted to live in a society that was safe for their family.

Afghanistan, under the rule of the evil Taliban, safer than bringing up children in the Midlands?

Unbelievable, isn’t it?

Almost as unbelievable as the fact that, for political reasons, terrorist suspects are walking our streets.

Not a single one of the returned former Guantanamo detainees has been charged with any offence in this country, nor is there any indication that any have returned to any variety of Islamic militancy. Some might say the Sun is just being cautious, defensive, especially considering how some of them were to find themselves in American custody. Others might be inclined to believe that the paper finds nothing whatsoever wrong with "bad people" being locked up without charge or any chance of a fair trial, and that therefore to return these "bad men" to this good country is an outrage. There is however something astonishingly low about complaining about the cost of sending an air ambulance to care properly for a man who is quite clearly seriously ill, regardless of what he's accused of. Such basic humanity seems to be beyond the Sun's conscience, though:

AN air ambulance and a doctor have been sent by the Government to bring dangerous Guantanamo suspect Binyam Mohamed back to Britain.

Labour say we have no option but to take him back.

But laying on a private jet stinks.

Will they send a Rolls to the airport?

How should we have got him back then? Stuck him on a commercial flight from Havana and let the Sun's fearless journalists quiz the desperately ill man about how he's going to kill us all eventually but to begin with is just going to steal our benefits? The attempt at wit which is asking whether they'll send a Rolls to the airport is beneath contempt; far more likely is that they'll send another ambulance, but to consider that might again cause a few pangs of conscience.

Meanwhile, this is happening:



From the woman they wished would slither back under a rock to "the tragedy we all feared" in just more than 24 months.

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2/13/2009 11:29:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, August 20, 2008 

Scum-watch: What a difference a year makes part two.

Having wished that Jade Goody, described as ghastly and a vile pig-ignorant racist bully that will "hopefully now slither back under the rock from where she crawled", the Sun devotes not one, but two, three, four, five, six articles on her in today's paper, having helpfully been diagnosed as suffering from cancer during the silly season.

The paper's leader takes a remarkably different tone:

JADE Goody has upset some people in her meteoric career as a Big Brother celeb.

None less than a newspaper which decreed that the plebiscite for Jade to be kicked out of the Celebrity Big Brother house was the most important vote since the general election. There's nothing quite like a sense of perspective, is there?

But both critics and fans will wish her well as she arrives home from India to battle the Big C.

First to offer support was co-star Shilpa Shetty who put their “racism” clash aside and offered prayers for Jade’s recovery.


Ah, so the vile pig-ignorant racist is now so rehabilitated that the spat between Shetty and Goody can be described as "racism". Poppadom, anyone?


As The Sun has revealed, Jade’s first fear is not for herself but for her children.

The ex-dental nurse has spent her life beating the odds.

We believe her family will lend her the strength to win this struggle, too.


Indeed, she's succeeded in getting the Sun newspaper to change its mind, which is a very rare event. Isn't it incredible what cancer can do for you?

Elsewhere, we've discussed previously the incredibly strange fact that the Sun tends to big-up MySpace while it prints stories about Facebook which tend to be less positive, and today is no exception. The Sun Online editor has decided that this rather dull story about someone tracing his family through MurdochSpace is worthy of a position only slightly below the main stories. Considering it's not even written by a Sun hack, rather a "Staff Reporter", it's all a rather rum do.

And finally, the award for stinking hypocrisy goes too...

WELL-MEANING parents are wasting good money on so-called multi-vitamins.

It turns out they are little more than sweets with tiny levels of nutrients — and the only healthy thing is the manufacturers’ profits.

They should be thoroughly ashamed of playing on parents’ fears.


The Sun would of course never play on parents' fears:

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8/20/2008 09:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 19, 2008 

What a difference a year makes...


TONIGHT is a moment of truth for Britain.

Out of nowhere, a Channel 4 show watched by a few million has erupted from being a bit of a laugh to a defining moment in the way Britain is seen by the rest of the world.

Make no mistake. Much more hangs on tonight’s Celebrity Big Brother eviction vote than the issue of whether Jade Goody or Shilpa Shetty stays in the house.

At stake is whether we are happy to be seen as a nation willing to tolerate vile bullying and foul-mouthed yobbishness.

That is why The Sun urges every reader who loves Britain to pick up a phone and make sure the ghastly Jade Goody is kicked out tonight.



SANITY has prevailed. Thank Heaven for that. Jade Goody went into the Big Brother house appearing to be simply a fun-loving working-class girl canny enough to have made millions from her 15 minutes of fame. It was all a meticulously manufactured lie. She has left the house with her true personality laid bare: A vile, pig-ignorant, racist bully consumed by envy of a woman of superior intelligence, beauty and class. Incredible as it may seem, last night’s vote was the most important in Britain since the last General Election.

...

Hopefully Jade will now slither back under the rock from where she crawled before her debut on Big Brother in 2002.

And so, 18 months later:




Get well Jade: Your messages

PLEASE post your messages of support and goodwill for BB legend Jade Goody


Whether once Jade has recovered from her cancer scare she'll be required to crawl back under her rock again, or once the silly season is over, whichever comes first, is entirely at the whim of Rebekah Wade.

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8/19/2008 08:47:00 PM | | | links to this post

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