it will def get big ratings and will be piers best ratings i would predict,this would get huge media interest would would generate alot of viewers also

 

Of course it'll get huge ratings, it'll be on the front page of all the tabloid newspapers.

 

I really just don't care anymore. I'm a caring person, but there's a line and it's been crossed unfortunately. I'm not gonna be brainwashed by cancer itself (The Sun) into giving more sympathy than I should be to a dying woman. Why should everyone care about her more than the old lady dying down the street? Or a child that was born with a terminal illness? She shouldn't. I can see why she's doing this, but two wrongs don't make a right.

 

If it was The Queen, David Beckham, Sir Paul McCartney etc. in the same position as Jade Goody I could see the logic for the over the top reactions of the media, but seriously, it's getting to the point where it's just silly now...

There's been a at TV/camera the whole way, why stop it at the end?

True, but to record your death?..

And well obviously some people do find it interesting as they are buying the paper? Selling a lot more copies! If people don't care then don't buy the paper, simple?

 

Which is exactly what is wrong with the news/media in general. Any news outlset tbh, even the more reliable ones. They broadcast the news that sells; there is never any intention of bringing the news that matters to the masses.

MARXIST THEORY, here we go.

Which is exactly what is wrong with the news/media in general. Any news outlset tbh, even the more reliable ones. They broadcast the news that sells; there is never any intention of bringing the news that matters to the masses.

 

If The Sun & The Daily Mirror still have her on the front page after the terrorist atrocities in Pakistan today then that will truly be offensive IMHO.

MARXIST THEORY, here we go.

 

Actually happens to be TRUE though..... There are monumental changes going on at the moment in Latin America, India and China which will have a knock-on affect on the whole planet, and us in the UK in particular, over the next 20 years, yet, do we actually hear a damn thing about it here in the UK....?

 

And, do we hear very much about the true nature of our wars in Iraq or Afghanistan...?

 

Naaah, we just act as if a dying woman is the most important thing in the world....

 

I really just don't care anymore. I'm a caring person, but there's a line and it's been crossed unfortunately. I'm not gonna be brainwashed by cancer itself (The Sun) into giving more sympathy than I should be to a dying woman. Why should everyone care about her more than the old lady dying down the street? Or a child that was born with a terminal illness? She shouldn't. I can see why she's doing this, but two wrongs don't make a right.

 

Exactly..... The tabloid media unfortunately dont appear to acknowledge that a line even exists though....

 

And here's an article to absolutely SHAME all you Jade bummers.....

 

Shakira: Every little thing she does is magic

 

When it comes to mixing philanthropy with sexuality, Shakira is second to none. Amy Turner finds out how Colombia’s finest export become pop’s saintliest sinner. Photographs: Muir Vidler

Shakira, she of the bum-gyrating, belly-wriggling Latin pop songs Hips Don’t Lie and Underneath Your Clothes, is being kissed by nuns. Around her swarm photographers, reporters, fans and minders, as you’d expect of a 40m-album-selling artist; “Shaki, Shaki, over here,” they shout. She poses for pictures, patient as the sisters, smiling serenely. She has just stepped offstage, but she’s not wearing her usual low-slung hipsters or bikini top, and she hasn’t been gyrating tonight. She’s all in black — a sleek, smart shift dress — and her trademark tousled curls are soberly straight.

 

Shakira has just given a speech in front of the Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, the media and hundreds of children and parents at the £4m school she built in a poor suburb of her home town, Barranquilla, which she paid for mainly with funds from her last tour. This is the other Shakira: Colombia’s Lady Di, a national treasure. The nuns that teach in her schools love her as much as the kids who imitate her hip-thrusting dance move Among her entourage and those on stage with her at the school inauguration was Uribe himself; Alejandro Char Chaljub, the charismatic mayor of Barranquilla; the elegant Colombian former foreign minister Maria Emma Mejia; and Shakira’s boyfriend and sort-of fiancée, Antonio, the son of the former Argentinian president Fernando de la Rua. A formidable line-up.

 

Worldwide, politicians and philanthropists queue up to work alongside her charitable foundation for education, Pies Descalzos (“Bare Feet” in English), which she founded aged 19. She’s provided education and jobs to some 30,000 Colombians, who were previously unemployed and strangers to schooling. So why is Shakira so often written off as some kind of Hispanic, belly-dancing Britney?

 

It’s easy to see how people could get Shakira wrong — she’s something of a mixed message, part girlish sex bomb, part Mother Theresa. “I’m not a virgin but I’m not the whore you think [i am],” one of her lyrics declares. Another of her songs features the infamously daft line “Lucky that my breasts are small and humble/So you don’t confuse them with mountains”. But when not suggestively (she prefers the word “sensually”) grinding her hips to her distinctive fusion of Latin American, salsa and Middle Eastern pop — which she writes and produces herself — she is a Unicef ambassador, and contributes to Newsweek. She speaks superb, self-taught English, and lists among her interests world history, politics and art.

 

Related Links

Whenever, wherever: Shakira is a winner

Brown talks schools with Shakira

Shakira

She’s famous the world over — one of the few artists who has made the transition from Latino star to superstar. With a fortune of £26m, last year she ranked fourth on Forbes’s list of the richest women in music after Madonna, Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion.

 

When I meet her the morning after the school inauguration, she is dressed down, casual in combats and a T-shirt, with her long, bleached hair loose and just a whisper of pink lipstick. We’re on a chartered flight to the rainforest town of Quibdo in northwest Colombia, to visit one of her foundation’s five schools. She tries to visit all her schools regularly. “It gives me so much satisfaction to see people’s lives transformed,” she shouts over the noise of the engine. “It’s like harvesting the fruits of the seeds you plant.”

 

She’s beautiful and open-faced, and so tiny she is able to swivel in her seat, dangling her feet into the aisle to lean in closer. She’s 32, but could easily be taken for 22.

 

“Being from the developing world, it affects you in so many ways,” she says, wide-eyed. You are so close to injustice and so many brutal, brutal conflicts in society, that you grow up…” she searches for the word, “smothered by it.” She goes on: “Growing up in Colombia has given me the clarity of mind to recognise that education can help break the cycle of poverty. It unlocks every child’s potential, and teaches them that they can have whatever they want in life.”

 

Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was born in 1977, the only child of her Lebanese father’s second marriage to a Colombian. She has eight half-siblings from her father’s first marriage, many of whom still live in Barranquilla and were at the inauguration ceremony the previous night. Her parents were at the speech, too, seated just a few seats down from the president.

 

To begin with, Shakira enjoyed a comfortable upbringing. Her father was a jeweller. “Not rich, not poor,” she says. At the age of four, she was eating at a restaurant with her family when she first heard the Arabic doumbek drum, which typically accompanies belly dancing. Before anyone could stop her, she’d clambered onto the table, dancing for the entire room to see. That day, she says, was the day she knew she was a performer. “It sounds odd, and I can’t explain it,” she says, “but I always knew I would be an artist and travel the world. I’m sure a lot of children fantasise about this, but for me I knew it was true, like it just had to be.”

 

One former classmate recalls how incorrigible she was as a performer. “Every Friday morning at school, we would watch her perform to assembly. Just her, singing and dancing on the stage. Everyone encouraged her — her parents, our teachers. We knew she would become a famous performer somehow.” Shakira’s father particularly encouraged her to write poems, which grew into lyrics. She wrote her first song, Your Dark Glasses, about him — one of her brothers was killed in a motorcycle accident, and her father wore dark glasses permanently in mourning. “Did you see him wearing them last night?” she asks me. “He never takes them off.” She’s still very close to her parents, who now live near Shakira’s home in Miami, in a house she bought them.

 

Videos of her early school performances exist on YouTube, her hair its natural Lebanese jet-black. She doesn’t gyrate in the style she’s now famous for — it wasn’t appropriate, perhaps, for her nun-taught Catholic school, but she’s sultry, with a precocious stage presence.

 

On Friday afternoons, Shakira and her fellow pupils were encouraged to visit the poorest areas of the city and help the non-schoolgoers to read and write. “It was a sadness for me,” recalls Shakira, “that these children would have no books or paper. Sometimes we would have no roof over our heads, there would be mosquitoes everywhere, it was humid and the children were so hungry they couldn’t concentrate. I said to myself that if I ever found success, I would do something about it.”

 

Shakira’s father went bankrupt when she was eight. While the dust settled, her parents sent her to visit relatives in Los Angeles. She returned to find her home comforts sadly diminished. “It was a shock to come home to no cars, where we’d had two previously. We’d sold most of our furniture, our colour TV, and food was basic rations. In my childish head, this was the end of the world.”

 

To remind her that things could be worse, Shakira’s father took her to the park to see the orphans there, sniffing glue. “From then on, I gained perspective, and realised that there were many underprivileged children in my country. The images of those kids, with their tattered clothes and bare feet, have stayed with me for ever. I said to myself back then, one day I’m going to help these kids when I become a famous artist.” And she laughs, knowing how it sounds.

 

But Shakira’s determination is no laughing matter. Aged 13, she heard a manager at Sony was in town, found him and sang to him in the lobby of his hotel. He signed her, and she released her first album, Magia (Magic), aged 14. The first thing she did with the proceeds was buy her parents a car, but the record wasn’t a huge success. Two years later there was a second album, Peligro (Danger), which also sold slowly. Shakira finished high school, and success came when she released Pies Descalzos (Bare Feet), aged 19. Soon after, she set up her charity, “named after those barefoot children I remembered and the album that brought me recognition outside my country”, she says. But her real break came in 2001 with the release of her first album in English, Laundry Service. It sold 13m copies worldwide thanks mainly to the pan-piping, ebullient single Whenever, Wherever and the eye-popping video that accompanied it. One fan writes on a recent blog: “Shakira is extremely talented and has wonderful voice [sic], but it’s actually her butt, or to be precise, the shaking of her buttocks, that helped her achieve stardom.”

 

Helped, possibly — especially in a Western market dominated by Spears, Aguilera, et al. When in Rome. As her former classmate points out, “Shakira’s Spanish songs are much more soulful, much more from the heart. In English she is something else completely.”

 

But Shakira says: “I like to think there’s more to me than image. My first interest is growing as an artist. I’ve been doing this for such a long time that learning English, connecting my music with different parts of the world is good for me. It feels like I’ve just started.”

 

So what is her priority, her music or her charity? “Oh!” she exclaims, and exhales, puffing out her cheeks as though it’s the hardest question she’s ever been asked. “Music gives me a leverage — the tools I need — to work on the relevant issues. One thing feeds the other one.

 

I call myself an artist, but right now I feel driven by the charity. What I want to do is stay here with my feet in the foundation and have endless meetings and plan our next school, but I have to go back to the Bahamas to work on my new album. If there’s no more music, I’m sure I won’t have one more penny to go into the foundation!” She laughs — it’s not true, of course. A lot of the £2m annual Pies Descalzos fund comes from other private donors and governments around the world, though Shakira gives the lion’s share.

 

She shares her Miami home with Antonio, her boyfriend of nine years. Her expatriation has done nothing to deter her Colombian fans. A journalist writing in a Colombian newspaper after her prestigious inauguration at the school in Barranquilla, said: “Shakira is American now, and her loyalties lie outside music. Every time she moves she calls the press.” It sparked outrage among readers, who bombarded the paper with letters of support and gratitude for her charity.

 

Shakira and Antonio are the Hispanic equivalent of the Beckhams, papped everywhere. But Antonio isn’t popular with Colombians, who have nicknamed him “the sponger”. “Everyone asks, ‘What does he do except manage her money?’ ” says her classmate. (Antonio, a qualified lawyer, is also vice-president of Alas, a group that campaigns for better education.)

 

The couple have been engaged since 2001, although Shakira says she has no plans to get married. “This is my engagement ring,” she says, flashing an enormous diamond set among more diamonds on a band of white gold. I ask why she wears it on the middle finger of her right hand. “Oh, it’s too big,” she says. “I haven’t gotten around to having it made smaller yet.”

 

When Antonio’s father, the former Argentine president Fernando de la Rua, was overthrown in 2001, it was rumoured that Sony, Shakira’s record company, advised her against seeing him, and some shops took her records off the shelves. Does she fear marriage could jeopardise her career? Not at all, she says. “The fact is, I’m not very traditionalist. We live together as husband and wife, we don’t need anything to make it official, especially not for the paparazzi or Ola! magazine. Why fix things that aren’t broken?”

 

Given her love of children, she would make a great mother, I suggest. “Oh, I want to have babies with him. Yes, I want lots of bast*rds!” she says, hooting with laughter. “Oh, maybe don’t print that! I talk like a parrot. Are you dizzy already?”

 

Not at all. She is sweet, funny and very smart. Interviews are clearly second nature to her.

 

“Interviewers can be helpful,” she says. “Like therapists. I don’t keep a diary, so talking about myself in interviews give me an understanding of who I am and what I do. If I stutter, or take a little longer to answer, it’s because I’m trying to dig deeper in my brain to find the right answer for you,” she explains. “Being in the public eye since such a young age, I don’t know any other way of living — it’s everything I know. My family and my friends remind me what’s real, which helps, and Antonio — he is a wise man. If I get a bit silly he brings me back and reminds me who I am.”

 

Who is Shakira, then? Her answer is strange and figurative. “I think I’ve crossed to the other side of the river already. I’m on the other shore. I’ve had such a long journey, and left so much behind, the sadnesses that happen when we are young. I’ve been through so many storms and my ship has encountered so many unexpected things, that now I am strong on the shore. I am in control. Unless something dramatic happened in my life — it might, I don’t know — to change me, I don’t believe I could forget myself now.”

 

I wonder how much of this is a smoke screen, and how much is Hispanic magical realism. A lot of what Shakira says must get lost in translation, like the breast-and-mountains lyric. She rolls her eyes; all English journalists ask her about this line.

 

“I started my career living in a Hispanic culture, and I have a very tight relationship with those fans. It’s a marriage of many years — they know me like a mother knows her child, to the marrow of its bones. I have put out only two albums in English, so my career in the English-speaking market is quite new. But that’s refreshing, like a new relationship. There’s something truly magical and natural about music that connects people all over the world. I love to see people experiencing Hips Don’t Lie, or Whenever, Wherever with the same joy in Egypt as I see in Paris, Buenos Aires or Chicago.”

 

Her manager hurries us — it’s time for pictures before the plane lands. Shakira pulls out a compact and applies make-up, then worries that she’s applied too much. Afterwards, she slinks down the aisle to where Antonio is chatting easily with the Colombian Sony rep. She sits in the seat opposite, leans across and wraps her tiny arms around Antonio’s neck, and they whisper and giggle together cosily.

 

We land in the oppressive, wet heat of the rainforest, and board a sweltering bus to the Montebello neighbourhood, where the school is built. As Shakira appears in the village, local children race alongside. The second she’s among them, she is literally mobbed. Hundreds gather round to kiss her clothes, her hair, and hang from her arms.

 

Antonio wanders behind, unheeded. “I like to come along for support,” he says. “This kind of work takes a lot, emotionally, from her. It would be weird not to want to be a part of that.”

 

We enter the school gates and Shakira visits each classroom, where the students sing for her and present their work. She stoops to embrace one girl whose face shines with such ecstasy that I ask Shakira afterwards what she said. She replies, near to tears: “It was beautiful. She said, ‘Shakira, you’re my mother.’ I said, ‘Oh, really? I can’t be — where is your mother?’ She said, ‘At home. You are like Colombia’s mother.’ ”

 

After four decades of civil conflict, Colombia has the second-highest number of displaced citizens — thought to be around 4.3m people — after Sudan. Around half of Colombia’s population of 45m lives in extreme poverty, and it’s estimated that 1m children don’t go to school — most aged 11-16. Pies Descalzos has reached 30,000 families since its inception in 2001, and more schools are planned.

 

The unique element to Pies Descalzos schools is their “open door” policy. They are centres of the community, where parents find work in administration, cleaning, cooking and making the uniforms. The school has on-the-job training schemes in tailoring and ecotourism, and “business planning” to encourage career progression. Outside the curriculum, they are hives of activity for after-school groups, and cultural projects like music and crafts are encouraged. The school in Quibdo provides breakfast and lunch for its 750 students, and in a village where children were malnourished — some had never tasted meat when the school opened in 2004 — now every student is up to a normal nutritional standard. All this costs less than £1.50 per child per day.

 

But Shakira’s next step, with the help of Trevor Nielsen, the president of the Global Philanthropy Group, is launching the foundation worldwide under its English name, Barefoot, in an attempt to reach the 300m-plus children in the world’s poorest countries who don’t attend school.

 

“What we want, ultimately, is to set up a global fund for education,” says Trevor, “whereby the many aid organisations that work towards education are fed and co-ordinated by one body. Unfortunately, given the state of global economies right now, education isn’t a priority. Governments should realise that the cost of educating the poorest children is far less than the cost of not educating them. Education prevents the spread of disease, improves the efficiency of agriculture, and boosts employability.”

 

Shakira’s popularity could bump the global education issue up the priority list. With Unesco lobbying for quality education for all by 2015, it’s already on the agenda, but could do with the kick, perhaps, that Bono and Geldof gave to the issue of Third-World debt. Is Shakira the next Geldof? It’s clearly something Trevor has considered: “If she isn’t, I don’t know who is.”

 

Shakira herself is more cautious. “Ha!” she says, when asked. “I met them both back in 2005 for Live 8, and they were very helpful. I will do anything I can to bring attention to the importance of investing in education. I think it’s vital that private and public sectors become allies to invest in schools, universities and school-feeding programmes. I know that, right now, this isn’t a priority for the powers-that-be.”

 

It’s an issue close to the heart of Gordon Brown. Shakira and Brown met last year to discuss education, and she says she hopes to meet him again in the spring when she visits the UK to promote her forthcoming album. “We’ll have lots to talk about, she says. “Every time we meet, all we talk about is education, education, education.” She looks quizzically at my smile. That’s a well-known slogan and it’s taken a battering of late, I explain. “I don’t know about his domestic policies, but I know he’s one of the few people in the world who have taken specific action towards the goal of bringing education to every kid in the world,” she replies.

 

It’s really, genuinely important to her, isn’t it?

 

“Yes, it’s vital. Vital.”

 

As we leave Quibdo, Shakira and Antonio head for their chartered plane to the Bahamas, but not before she does a round of hugs with the entire entourage, posing patiently again for photos with journalists, PRs, sound crews, even making a video for one reporter’s child: “Ola from Colombia, Bambina, I send you a kiss.”

 

As we say goodbye, she’s anxious that I got everything I needed. “I tried to make it worth your while, I know you came a long way. Did you see everything you wanted to see?” Something tells me we’ll be seeing a lot more of Shakira yet.

 

Source; Sunday Times

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Admirable... Absolutely fukkin' admirable.... As good an example of any that I have seen of how a celebrity in the public eye CAN make a difference to people's lives... Shakira has my utter respect....

If The Sun & The Daily Mirror still have her on the front page after the terrorist atrocities in Pakistan today then that will truly be offensive IMHO.

 

Predictably it happened :manson:

 

Well tbf to the Mirror it did have the events in Pakistan as its front page article but The Sun forgot about what was a hairs breath away from being the biggest sporting tragedy since Munich that could have wiped out the Sri Lankan cricket team and instead lead with the all important news that Jack Tweed had been allowed to breach his curfew and spend a night at Jade's bedside :rolleyes:

 

Predictably it happened :manson:

 

Well tbf to the Mirror it did have the events in Pakistan as its front page article but The Sun forgot about what was a hairs breath away from being the biggest sporting tragedy since Munich that could have wiped out the Sri Lankan cricket team and instead lead with the all important news that Jack Tweed had been allowed to breach his curfew and spend a night at Jade's bedside :rolleyes:

 

 

You've to remember that no-one was killed though and it was the Sri Lankan team and not an English sporting team. There is a difference. If the entire English team had been shot at or any killed then of course it would have been on the front page of The Sun. Also if the entire Sri Lankan team had died it would have been.

Edited March 6, 200916 yr by Crazy Chris

Are you insane?

 

What happened in Pakistan has repercussions world wide. It is hardly less important than Jade f***ing Goody.

 

This made the Australian headlines and rightfully so.

 

Just because no-one was killed in the terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport doesn't mean it wasn't headline worthy world wide. Terrorism is a very real threat and as the news report on Ten News said this could have severe implications on the Indian Commonwealth Games given the political instability of that area of the world. An attack on the games could kill not only athletes but spectators from the world over.

The Sun forgot about what was a hairs breath away from being the biggest sporting tragedy since Munich that could have wiped out the Sri Lankan cricket team and instead lead with the all important news that Jack Tweed had been allowed to breach his curfew and spend a night at Jade's bedside :rolleyes:

 

Nice to see The Scum getting its priorities right..... Attempted mass murder of the Sri Lankan cricket team, Freddie bloody Goodman running off with almost £700k a year of taxpayer's money, but NAAAAAAH, none of that's important as comared to their Royal Chavnesses Jade and Jack...... :rolleyes:

 

Nice to see The Scum getting its priorities right..... Attempted mass murder of the Sri Lankan cricket team, Freddie bloody Goodman running off with almost £700k a year of taxpayer's money, but NAAAAAAH, none of that's important as comared to their Royal Chavnesses Jade and Jack...... :rolleyes:

 

Not forgetting the "accidental" :rolleyes: death of Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai wife when a large truck just happened to move out in front of his vehicle yesterday carrying him & his wife.

 

Anyone who reads Rupert Murdoch's vile offensive piece of $h!t propaganda that is The Sun "news"paper should be totally ashamed of themselves that Jade Goody is on the front page of this & its sister News Of The World paper for the SIXTEENTH day running. :manson:

 

 

Soon be over :) according to The Sun docs have said she has less than a week to live

 

But of course when she dies The Sun will have a 16 page tribute, get its readrs to petition for a state funeral at Westminster Abbey, slag off Gordon Brown for not declaring a day of national mourning, bring out a tribute record to raise money for her family and so on :rolleyes:

 

Even if I am being semi sarcastic I am probably not far off the truth :manson:

Justice for Jade!

But of course when she dies The Sun will have a 16 page tribute, get its readrs to petition for a state funeral at Westminster Abbey, slag off Gordon Brown for not declaring a day of national mourning, bring out a tribute record to raise money for her family and so on :rolleyes:

 

Even if I am being semi sarcastic I am probably not far off the truth :manson:

 

I wouldn't call that sarcastic at all mate, you just left out "sir" Elton John playing doing a re-re recorded "Candle in the Wind" at her State funeral...... :rolleyes:

I wouldn't call that sarcastic at all mate, you just left out "sir" Elton John playing doing a re-re recorded "Candle in the Wind" at her State funeral...... :rolleyes:

 

No joking:

 

It won't be it will be a reissue/re-recording of Jade Goody's all time favourite song: Aerosmith's I Don't Want To Miss A Thing.

 

:manson:

Anyone who reads Rupert Murdoch's vile offensive piece of $h!t propaganda that is The Sun "news"paper should be totally ashamed of themselves that Jade Goody is on the front page of this & its sister News Of The World paper for the SIXTEENTH day running. :manson:

 

Precisely... If anyone should be getting "bigged up" to this degree, it should surely be Shakira and her noble, sincere and entirely SELFLESS actions to educate some of the poorest and most deprived children in Latin America.... The likes of Sting and Bono talk the talk, but Shaki's actually DELIVERED something.... Surely she has to be the next UN Goodwill Ambassador.... Shakira's actions actually put me in mind of what Audrey Hepburn did in her later life with her work with UNICEF....

 

 

Actually happens to be TRUE though..... There are monumental changes going on at the moment in Latin America, India and China which will have a knock-on affect on the whole planet, and us in the UK in particular, over the next 20 years, yet, do we actually hear a damn thing about it here in the UK....?

 

And, do we hear very much about the true nature of our wars in Iraq or Afghanistan...?

 

Naaah, we just act as if a dying woman is the most important thing in the world....

Um, what monumental changes are going on in Latin America? :blush: (exactly your point?)

Edited March 7, 200916 yr by Harve

Um, what monumental changes are going on in Latin America? :blush: (exactly your point?)

 

 

Yeah no-one has any idea what these monumental are though whereas everyone knows who Jade is. :wacko: