Why America Needs a Jade Goody

How come the Brits are far crazier about reality TV than we are? You would have thought we'd have had a monopoly on outsized vulgarity -- but we've been so seriously trumped.
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How come the Brits are far crazier about reality TV than we are? You would have thought we'd have had a monopoly on outsized vulgarity--but we've been so seriously trumped.

Jade Goody seems to be some reverse Diana, embodying the British people's worst fears and most depressed sense of self. Our reality people, those gigantic people on the weight loss show, barely have names.

Jade Goody is surely some sort of economic tailspin chic, or end-of-the-good-times bathos. She turned reality celebrity into cash, got dinged for a bit of British working class-ism (racism, as it happens), rose again, then got felled by cancer. And now has chosen to live out her fate as publicly as possible.

That's pretty irresistible--and Jade Goody is clearly an original. So where are our reality stars? Hard to believe there aren't some suitable media-crazed Americans.

The bleak fact is that we need such a star to save the media--at least the old media.

Continue reading at newser.com

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