Michael Parkinson Says, “Jade Goody was ‘ignorant, puerile and no Diana’”

British Big Brother 3 reality star Jade Goody was basically famous for making racist remarks to an Indian castmate and then turning her notoriety into tabloid fodder. The new British dream, some would say. But when she fell ill with cancer and ultimately succumbed, the country literally lined the streets for what the press called a “Princess Diana-style funeral.” Proving the media can manipulate the public into anything.

Finally, Sir Michael Parkinson, that country’s Johnny Carson and Phil Donahue rolled into one, (look it up if you have no idea who we’re talking about), has said to Radio Times what at least we’ve been thinking all along:

When we clear the media smoke screen from around her death, what we’re left with is a woman who came to represent all that’s paltry and wretched about Britain today.

She was brought up on a sink estate [Ed: Essentially, the projects], as a child came to know drugs and crime, was barely educated, ignorant and puerile. Then she was projected to celebrity by Big Brother and became a media chattel to be exploited till the day she died.

Only in England can you still get burned with the word “chattel.”  We’ll go you one better, though, Parky. We’d say she’s being exploited even in death.

Sir Michael Parkinson: ‘Jade Goody was a wretched role model [Times Online]