The Deltafication of Jessica

 

First, we heard that Jessica Rowe was being axed. In the wake of that revelation - and all the accompanying bad blood - it seemed only a miracle could intervene to prevent her from being pulled from our screens. Then, like...well, a miracle, it was announced - by Jessica - that Jessica was pregnant. This was convenient, as it gave Rowe a handful of options where before she'd had none at all - either bail out with dignity (maternity leave, you see) or remain where she was, the onus thrown upon Eddie and co. to dare making ogres of themselves by 'boning' an expectant mother. Now, as if we haven't gotten the message clearly enough, the news flash is that she's fallen down the stairs. It was The Bulletin's Paul Toohey who first referred to the "Lindyfication" of Joanne Lees. Forgive me for being the cynic (and a thief, Paul), but this is beginning to look to me like the Deltafication of Jessica Rowe.

 

Anyone who was alive in Australia in 2003 will recall the avalanche of media surrounding Delta Goodrem's battle with Hodgkin's Disease. The media squall that accompanied her illness was so ferocious that, for a time back there, it seemed there was nothing else worth putting on the front pages of our newspapers.

 

Reports on her health, or lack thereof, became so relentless that a hardcore cynicism - a sibling of rank-and-file 'compassion fatigue' - was born and nurtured in the dungeons of the Internet and continues today. People began commenting upon the convenient timing of it all, announced just before the ARIA awards in which Delta was subsequently nominated for a record number of gongs.

 

There was scornful talk that the "courageous battle" had been nought but a skirmish. And the question was asked: did we really need to learn about her health in the first place? Might she not have been able to quietly undergo her treatment without inviting us along? Might this very real personal health issue not have been milked for all it was worth by flaks in charge of Delta's professional future? Hadn't the press release that alerted us to Delta's condition come not from her doctors, or the girl herself, or even her family, but from her TV network and record company? Wasn't this, at very least, a little tacky?

 

It was a difficult charge to argue against (so I didn't), particularly when judged alongside the similar trials of Daniel Johns from Silverchair, who, just a year before Delta's bad news broke, had simply announced his ill health before quietly disappearing from the public eye, emerging with the details only when the battle had been won.

 

The result of any media carpet-bombing is the inevitable silence after all targets have been obliterated, and we haven't heard from Delta in while. Perhaps she's in good health, beavering away quietly on her career, and I surely hope that's the case. But I also know that I don't really care if I never hear her name again. After years of honouring the sacred cow - of being gagged from speaking an ill word about her - I lost interest in a girl who, before all the hoopla began, had actually fascinated me quite a bit.

 

I don't watch breakfast television (mostly because I like breakfast), so I can't really see any noticeable difference between Jess and Mel, Karl and Kochie - a Blankety Blanks of good-time goofballs in much the same moulds as their American TV ancestors. But when I saw Jessica's star going south, in the seemingly brutal manner that it was, I saw tremendous opportunity for a 'return from the dead' at some later date. She certainly seemed well liked, and everyone loves a heroine back from a savaging.

 

But there's no chance of that now. Frankly, if I feel sorry for anyone at the moment, it's Eddie McGuire, whose cutthroat words, spoken in private boardrooms, have been upgraded to the book of Satanic verses by nothing more than a miraculous conception. Motherhood has rarely seemed so damning.

 

Perhaps Jessica had every right to declare her pregnancy. Perhaps she had no choice but to let us know she'd fallen down some stairs.

 

But if what she's doing here is declaring herself 'untouchable' until she's worked out what it is she is going to do, then, for her own sake, I hope it's to retire from public life.

 

Because recent history tells that, when you play the Delta card, that's ultimately what you get.

 

Jack Marx

July 27, 2006 09:43 AM

What a rude dickhead <_<

Can you sum it up for me rob :(

I HATE ppl like this writer!! :banghead:

 

Love,

Kirsty xx

That is ****ing sick, how dare s/he! I don't think Delta had a choice in the media focusing on her cancer. and what about Kylie, she is milking it for all its worth, I don't think Delta did hour long doco's on her cancer but does kylie get any bad pr, nooooo, wonder why??!!

And as if Delta getting sick had ANYTHING to do with her winning those awards!

Did that stupid writer ever think that Delta having cancer may have helped other people through what they were going through?! And if the australian media had nothing better to do that write about Delta, what is this stupid ass wiping dickhead doing writing about how sad it was that the Oz media wrote about it, am I the only person who see's the irony!?

 

Who wrote that?? I want to email the ****er!

 

That is just awful, i honestly don't nkow how people can say such horrid things about cancer, it effects so many people and all they can say is how it was great for delta to have!

 

I hope he dies!!!

That is ****ing sick, how dare s/he! I don't think Delta had a choice in the media focusing on her cancer. and what about Kylie, she is milking it for all its worth, I don't think Delta did hour long doco's on her cancer but does kylie get any bad pr, nooooo, wonder why??!!

And as if Delta getting sick had ANYTHING to do with her winning those awards!

Did that stupid writer ever think that Delta having cancer may have helped other people through what they were going through?! And if the australian media had nothing better to do that write about Delta, what is this stupid ass wiping dickhead doing writing about how sad it was that the Oz media wrote about it, am I the only person who see's the irony!?

 

Who wrote that?? I want to email the ****er!

 

That is just awful, i honestly don't nkow how people can say such horrid things about cancer, it effects so many people and all they can say is how it was great for delta to have!

 

I hope he dies!!!

 

You said everything I couldn't be bothered to say :P

 

Love,

Kirsty xx

Can you sum it up for me rob :(

 

I only read the first half (as it was rather long winded :rofl:), but they say Delta just used her cancer for sympathy -_-

How did he expect Delta to keep her illness as a secret :huh: she had only released her album, innocent eyes the single had just released and she was still on neighbours. I pretty sure people would have been wondering were she went too.