I have been trying not to write about Jade Goody because the situation has hit home so bad for me. But when I saw this touching tribute that Russell Brand had for her I had to share. The blog entry is quite long but there are three paragraphs that are just amazing to me.
“When my Mum first got cancer I must’ve been around the age Jade’s eldest son is now. Too young, in fact, to properly comprehend what was happening, only old enough to sense the tingling presence of fear, the averted looks, the stifled, thin lipped sympathy and muddled, neighbourly compassion. My Mum, Thank God, did not die and whilst her cancer returned several times; each time more frightening for me as my innocence waned to be replaced with dread, she lives still, so I can but imagine the sad confusion of the two bereaved boys.
One of the charges often levelled at Jade was that she was just a normal girl with no trade or practiced skills. Well people didn’t care and our heroes are not prescribed to us, we have the right to choose them and the people chose Jade. Fame has long been bequeathed by virtue of wealth and birth and this was the first generation where it was democratically distributed by that most lowbrow of modern phenomena – Reality Television. She was a person who, I think due to her class always had the propensity to irk people. When Big Brother 3 made her famous she was vilified in the paper and bullied in the house but through her spirit she won people back round and became a kind of Primark Princess with perfumes and fitness videos and endless media coverage – because people were interested in her. They remain interested. One of my best friends, a woman in her mid twenties is genuinely heartbroken at the death of Jade, herself a Mother from a working Class background she obviously connects with this sad narrative in a way that she doesn’t seem to with J-Lo or Jennifer Aniston or Posh Spice most likely because of Jade’s authenticity and accessibility.
I’m glad that Jade’s death has been handled with saccharine mittens by the papers, she lived and died in the glare of their interest and doubtless benefited from it hugely at times. I recall her tearstained face pegged across some rag as she endlessly sought to be forgiven by the media her misconstrued conduct had so incensed and it made me a little angry. She wanted to be accepted, loved, redeemed, and now through her early death, she is. I hope some of the lessons of this modern Fairy Tale are learned, that the people who aspired to be like Jade observe the price she paid. I hope her sons are ok and that on some imperceptible level contrition is felt by the media that gave Jade Goody everything.
And I mean everything.”
It’s really touching to see such a guy that is always making others laugh does that for Jade. It shows he really does have a heart.
[Images by WENN]
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