Feeling Jaded

I had actually made these notes before Parky weighed into the Jade Goody debate, and it is quite scary to find how much I apparently agree with the curmudgeonly old Yorkshire git. Perhaps because I, too, am a curmudgeonly old Yorkshire git.

I should begin by saying that it is, of course, always a tragedy when someone dies before their time, especially at the age of only twenty-seven. And cancer is a dreadful disease, have no doubt, even despite modern advances in diagnosis and treatment, the way it can ravage families and destroy the lives of individuals is still a source of much fear and suffering. Both my own parents died of cancer, my mother at the relatively early age of 57, so I know whereof I speak.

I didn't know Jade Goody, despite her obvious "fame" and "celebrity". "Reality TV" tricks us into thinking that we actually "know" people, when in fact "Reality TV" is, in itself, an oxymoron. It's no more inherently "real" than any other type of TV. The "reality" is, in fact, all in the edit. The impression I have gained of Jade Goody, overall, is that she was an ignorant (in the strictly technical sense of the word) unthinking, proto-racist. But other versions of reality are available.

To hear Max Clifford talk, for instance, the only thing that stopped Jade Goody overtaking both Diana and Mother Teresa as the princess of all our hearts, is that she didn't have the same start in life. True, Jade Goody does seem to have had a very hard childhood, granted, although it would seem that she was reconciled to her mother despite that, in a way which could be described as admirable, given what the woman seems to have put her through, if the reconciliation was genuine.

And it was probably because of that childhood experience, that when she was told her cancer had spread and it was terminal, that she decided to turn her last days on earth into an obscene and grotesque spectacle, in order to provide her own children with "the best education money can buy". In this aspiration she was willingly aided and abetted by the mututally symbiotic relationship between Max Clifford and the tabloid press.

The phrase "best education money can buy" of course speaks volumes about Jade Goody's own values and limited horizons. The idea that money can solve everything, and that there might be a very good education that you don't actually have to pay for (of all sorts, not just academic education) and the idea that the education process requires the willing participation of the person being educated, obviously never occurred.

So we were treated to a blow by blow, breath by laboured breath account, of Jade on her deathbed. The press, that had previously been happy to print Jade stories good and bad in the old days, when she was firstly "Miss Piggy" who didn't know where "East Angular" was, and then later, in the Shilpa Shetty debacle, when she became "The People's Poppadum", demanded that Jade whored herself one last time for the money, and for the sake of their circulation, with one gleeful Sun executive speculating that "the Jade effect" had been good for 300,000 additional copies on their circulation. If they had any decency at all, they would have just said "thanks for the memories", given her the money anyway, and left her to die in dignity.

But, of course, instead, the roller-coaster was set in motion, and once her own condition had deteriorated to the point where it was no longer clear to the dispassionate observer just who was taking the decisions and pulling what strings, the children were caught up in the machinery, and God alone knows how traumatised and damaged the experience of participating in the slow, public death of their mother will have left them.

Time alone will tell. But personally, I would rather any of my children were poor but happy, and knew the value of important things, if the alternative was rich but traumatised and psychologically vulnerable, if that were the choice. But then I am not Jade Goody.

Apologists for the public death of Jade also point out another, different, "Jade effect" to the one enjoyed by The Sun, lifting their circulation out of the doldrums. The fact that her plight apparently prompted many thousands of women to take smear tests for cervical cancer, tests which they had previously been ignoring. This may well be true - I know of no objective sampling that can tell us if it is or not - and if it is true, it can only be a good thing. It is not, however, on its own, sufficient to elevate Jade Goody to the sainthood. Her story, particularly the grotesque details of her final days and hours across all the news bulletins and all over the papers, also carried disturbing echoes for me of my mother's final illness.

In and out of hospital, the false dawns of hope, the futile operations, it was all there. So for every person who has taken a neglected smear test because of Jade Goody, I would contend there's probably also a family or individual somewhere who has been forced to remember and confront the painful loss of a loved one, and re-live it in ways they would much rather have avoided.

And that is what it comes to, after all. Sadly, many, many people die of cancer at too young an age, sometimes alone, and frightened, without all the attendant hoohah which accompanied Jade Goody to her grave. Are we saying that these people, and indeed the many people now who fight cancer, and occasionally go on to beat it, who refuse to give in to the disease and battle on heroically regardless, are we saying that these people are worth less than Jade Goody? Because, you see, I don't think they are. I just think that when it came to supping with the devil, Jade Goody unfortunately drew the short spoon.

And as I was finishing off this piece, I noted one final irony: The Sun is requesting that people do not "trample" Jade Goody's grave, respect her last resting place and leave her alone in peace (complete with pictures of the grave). That is rich, coming from the people who gleefully trampled her grave while she was still alive.