The Sun this week exposed what it described as the previously hidden truth about Jade Goody: that she is really an ignorant, bullying racist.
As a consequence of having been filled in, once out of the Big Brother house, on the latest of her treatment by the media, 'Jade', according to her agent John Noel, 'is completely distraught and is receiving medical attention for shock and depression'.
That's not surprising really, considering the roller coaster that life must be for her, at the whim of the media. She has been thrown from anonymity via celebrity and now towards notoriety; a tabloid darling one week, a figure of public hatred the next, it's not surprising at all if she's suffering emotional whiplash.
No doubt though, Jade must by now be a tougher cookie than most. This is hardly the first time that she has been on the receiving end of massive media harrassment. Since first appearing on Big Brother, Jade has been ridiculed as stupid and overweight; and that's on top of the more general but constant intrusive and demeaning commentary on her private life that she suffers as a personality in the tabloid eye. (And hasn't she done well despite it? - fitness video and all!)
The real ignorant, bullying racist, to use the tabloid press' own terms, is the great British public itself. We are the ones who buy the Sun and the Star each morning, and tune in by the millions to Big Brother each evening. Channel 4 has been the scapegoat for this latest media 'debate', but what is not emphasised enough is that the popular media does not so much create attitudes as it does reflect them. The questions of racism and bullying on Big Brother have been provoked by the programme's editors; obviously Big Brother's makers thought they would make for good television. And why did they think that? Not because racism or bullying is entertaining, but because the British public is as much a racist and a bully as Jade Goody is (which, truly, is not that much). The C4 executive board met yesterday to discuss recent events; they will have been asking themselves, 'did we give them a little too much reality this time?'
Julian Baggini's excellent article on Guardian Unlimited today discuses the truth about so-called 'racism' in Britain today.