Sorry about the delay in dropping a line to all you avid readers, I’ve been swapping my broadband supplier (from BT to Talk-Talk…………don’t ask, I’m still suffering from third degree angst burns) and these things I write take a little thought too.
Considered the fall-out from the Big Brother experience and considered a considered reply would be worthwhile, if only to assuage my own feelings on the matter; Jade…………………what a mess, huh? And even when things were going from bad to worse she didn’t know when to stop digging, and her manipulators didn’t know how to handle her lack of perception except through deceit.
That she was being briefed from outside by her Channel Four masters (and her agent/publicist too) became obvious, even to the most unobservant half-wit…… Obvious that Jade was remarkably well briefed when she entered the diary room prior to her being voted off when leaving the house, and even more so when we saw how fully prepared she was for the lack of public attendance these evictions normally provoke; unfazed when crossing the bridge with Davina McCall to just the echo of her own footfall. But, even though she had been fed information by those who are making money on her back, the media people and agents who are creaming her for a fast buck prior to moving on, she was neither a sufficiently intelligent vehicle for their priming nor the surprised but willing receptacle for our public admonition.
Right now, and probably over the past X weeks, her image crew (small shareholders in Jade Inc. to you and I) have probably been working feverish overtime in order to get Jade back on track; get her seen at the window of her home in a tired and emotional state; send her off to India in sackcloth and ashes (designed by Versace, obviously); get her to appear in something on telly that makes Big Brother look positively intellectual and where she can show her caring side (probably Fortune) and above all get her tits out somewhere in the tabloids ‘cos when all else fails in the British psyche a good pair of knockers will go a long way to a person’s rehabilitation in the public’s eyes. But that’s the obvious; the standard menu for the average punter, it’s when we turn over the stones of our own consciences that we find the hardest truths; but first lets start out by destroying a “pub fact” shall we?
It isn’t snobbery to judge Jade’s behaviour by the concepts and understandings of what is generally considered to be “society”. Those who say so are adrift in a classified sea of misunderstanding. You don’t look down on people because of their background but because of their behaviour. Eating with your mouth closed isn’t an act of the privileged classes it’s a signal of care and awareness of yourself and others.
You have to get deeper than that, try harder to sweep away the detritus of failed politics, and to hold Jade Goody up as a beacon in this travesty of failure and cruelty by politicians is to do her and her ilk the greatest disservice. To have people turning out like her is the crime; to hold her up as an icon is a greater one. All those who want to achieve and be like her should do so with the ability to conduct themselves with self-control, with articulate dignity, with an ability to complete at least one sentence in five without peppering it with a “fuck” every third word.
It isn’t contempt for the working class, its contempt for those members of any class who behave in a crass and grotesque manner; who offend and then, through their lack of social intelligence, re-offend the basic manners of civil society. It isn’t because its Jade, it’s because it’s wrong; her background is blighted with a lack of social responsibility, full of selfish irresponsibility and that’s not an excuse for such behaviour.
The discussion at the theatre where I work revolved around whether she would in fact be alive come the end of 2007 and this wasn’t one of vindictive relish but a genuine concern for what media and agents have created and that she lacks the intellect to see. When you walk into the lions den of celebrity you’d better know damn sure why you are there (Shilpa Shetty should have done a little more research, methinks) and Jade is and was singularly poorly furnished for such an adventure. Her upbringing suggests she is an eminently suitable case for therapy not for manipulation and social confrontation. The Channel Four bosses and particularly those involved in the casting of Big Brother knew that. They threw her into that melting pot precisely because she’d make “good telly”. The destruction of individuals is their role and it’s what we want to see; it’s our national blood sport; give it a year, maybe eighteen months and we’ll be watching people kill other people on telly for our game-show entertainment; it’s a racing certainty.
The ability to talk, to discuss, to reason is an essential part of everyday contact with our fellow human beings. We must have the mechanisms in place that allow us to meander and converse our way through the labyrinth of social, conversational signals that allow us to arrive at a viewpoint which is acceptable to those involved in the discussion. We need to negotiate skilfully, to reason soundly, to have the awareness not to overstep the bounds of personal propriety and, if we do to know how to draw back; and above all to know when and how to compromise. With so many people today, and sadly this does include a larger than average amount of what have been whimsically referred to over the years as “the underclass”, is that these skills are totally lacking. They move from divided opinion to open warfare in an instant, go from ask-you to fuck-you and miss out all the bits in the middle. All those skills of diplomacy and discussion, reasoning and deferment have gone.
The deeply worrying thing is that the more socially aware people in this country breed less, limit their families and have the skills handed down to them to care for those children they do have. Those in the underclass have more children; demand the life of the role models of the day and lack the self-discipline and the education required to be strong parents, to be able to guide their children in socially responsible ways. The hedonism that we went through since that arch-bitch Thatcher told us there was no such thing as community (built on a platform of suspicion and mistrust planted by tosser American psychiatrists that the gainers of power saw as their ticket to riches) has been the building bricks of this rampage to self. But we didn’t all fall for it; we didn’t have to fall for it. Those with the intellect saw through it all and made their own way, the others just followed the lead that led to the next Prada handbag.
The outcome of the Big Brother debacle seems to be that Mr and Mrs General Public have finally switched off the light on this playroom filled with under-educated hedonists and are looking further than the reflection in their Police sunglasses. I hope so for, if not, this leaves us with the inevitable end-game; of greater numbers of social and educational miss-fits and as we all know, we should never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large numbers.
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