MORTALITY AND THE MEDIA

There is something inherently obscene about the media feeding frenzy on celebrities who are dying of cancer. A horrible relish with which it charts the physical decline of people once regarded as objects of desire - now obviously wracked and ravaged with illness.
Paparazzi photographers prey on the sight of former heartthrob Patrick Swayze, terminally ill with pancreatic cancer. And still smoking.......Why wouldn't he? .
Jade Goody, desperate and dying, is the stuff of front page news as she fuels the tabloids with ever more horrible stories of last-ditch treatment and how she is determined to make as much possible money out of her plight.
This is an invidious and frankly vile use of people's suffering to boost newspaper sales and make the rest of us feel a little better about another mundane Sunday morning - in which we can all kid ourselves we are among the immortals and no such trauma will ever happen to us.
It is also an inhumane and disgraceful indictment of our dumbed-down newspapers and magazines that make capital out of other people's misery. We are all on a one-way ticket to oblivion. So why is it news?