Charlie Brooker, for today you are my hero
Speaking of heroes, I bought HTC Hero and joined the "smart" phone hype.
I will neither hype it nor slate it however, because that is as pointless as saying that Xboxes are better than PS3s.
But whatever man.
Anyway, I have reached my threshold for gossip lately and was pleased to see a video that a friend posted on a certain social networking site earlier. Presented by one Charlie Brooker, it addresses the media extravaganza around the death of Jade Goody last year.
Jade Goody. A nobody who became celebrity, was reduced to a somebody and then died. It is a real shame when any person dies who has had some good fortune in their lives no matter what kinda shit background they come from. Jade was merely a victim of her upbringing. To be honest, if you stuck any randomer in front of a camera that you know, they'd probably do something equally silly as to be vaguely racist or insulting to anyone who pretended never to have heard the word "nigger" at least once in their life.
Big fucking deal. It's a gaffe, albeit a vaguely prejudiced one.
I know people who aren't racists at all that say things more insulting in a fit of anger. We're all subject to losing our cool from time to time, it's human nature. Some "super" humans however, seem to think they are above all the rest of us and take insult to stupid things all the time. These are the real racists, taking insult to pathetic passing blurps uttered by anyone. These people just want to complain and pick their own category for which thing they will take insult to next. Personally I find when someone is insulting your character rather than your race or creed to be more insulting. It's not like Jade Goody ever said "Shilpa, you are a talentless whore who abuses toddlers when she's not poisoning the elderly!"
What's even more shocking is how the media zombies kept about-turning on their opinions... and how everyone just kept lapping it up!
People who buy into basic slanders are the type of people who live in a balloon of ignorance floating over the rest of us, feeling special for refusing to see the world as it is.
I'm sure some of these very same people are the likes of which buy "OK" magazine and "Heat". I'm sure the very same people might buy tabloid rags like "The Sun" and "The Star" and other shit heaps that pander to the ignorant. How Ironic that such closed-minded misinformed trash would be named after things so mind numbingly awesome and mind opening as a giant ball of nuclear fire, floating out in the nothingness. Mind = blown.
What trash like this do is keep their loyal readers as stupid as possible by feeding them scandal after scandal with no real value whatsoever. One day you are their friend and as soon as you put a foot "wrong", you are their front page scandal. God forbid you should cheat or get caught leaving the pub after a drink! All they gotta do is take one picture unawares, one picture of you maybe half-blinking while drinking a smoothie and your today's worst alcoholic. The Media Snake's ready made zombies are there to buy up their shit-rags and soak up all the unnecessary bullshit they are willing to print. How many times have you read an editorial or about a court case involving a "rival newspaper" detailing how they "got it wrong" a couple of times? I'm pretty sure the very same mishandling of information resulted in Michael Jackson's cardiac arrest some months ago. Like him or hate him, nobody deserves to die. It's a well known fact that stress can cause heart attacks and heart failure. If you ever bought into media hype surrounding the break down or death of a celebrity or pseudo-celebrity, you should be ashamed of yourself.
What is also staggering is the sheer volume of clever people who buy into the misery of others. It's understandable that the average idiot will buy into rubbish printed on toilet paper, but a lot of the reader base of some of this poison are actually intelligent people! Yeah! They go to college, they work as Solicitors*, they run banks, they build homes and they create staggering technology. They are just like you... insecure. They want to feel that they are living life "properly", so they join the group** that are pointing the finger at anyone who "steps out of line" whether lucky or unlucky enough (depending on your perception) to be living in the limelight.
Gossip is a tool of the ignorant. you have to be ignorant to some degree not to notice that it's the same play, over and over but with different actors. Why don't you just go to the theatre?? I mean you already know the story, right?
The bottom line here is that media tabloids say nothing new, nor constructive ever. All they do is pander to your insecurity. The subjects are never new, nor surprising. They blatantly favour nobody and judge everyone. They are soulless, mindless and are fickle and two faced. If you need to defend your right to read such bilge, such awful regurgitated bile because you have nothing more important to think about, challenge or talk about to anyone else then do so. Remember, every cent you spend on them contributes to the misery of others. Every time you bond with another over how some poor sucker "got it wrong" once and is victimised by every judging eye on the street, then you contribute as much to their break down as the filth that decides that this type of story sells. After all, they need readers like you.
Does the readership not spare a single thought that maybe this girl or this man, is somebody's child? Do they not have a conscience that they have a life of their own to live? That perhaps they have the right to their privacy and their choice of how to live their lives?
It's true, Jade Goody, for example did court the media and tabloid for the sake of being famous. It's questionable as to whether she recognised their ability to break her when they needed fodder to increase sales of their gossip rags. Her true intelligence is debatable also. I mean do you believe she was genuinely smart or just what your told in order to justify the media's right to tell stories about her like "well she was clever and got herself into this mess and smart enough to set up a business, she deserves everything she gets" Is fame only a right of the intelligent? Is quality of life a gift only available for those smart enough to dodge the bullet? And what is the bullet? The values you hold yourself or the values you're told you should have by the publications dependant on your hard earned cash?
*That these guys are intelligent at all is subject to debate itself
** I think "Hoards" would have been a more appropriate word to use when addressing zombies
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