The Angry Exile: March 22nd will be the feast of Saint Jade.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Monday 23 March 2009

March 22nd will be the feast of Saint Jade.

As I said once before I didn't have a lot of time for Jade Goody and have always been at a loss to understand how the fuck she stayed famous after Big Brother Number Whatever (can't remember or be arsed to look it up). So while I had some sympathy because I felt her numerous faults didn't merit a protracted death from cancer, I can't honestly say I'm in mourning for the woman. But the press, particularly those with a tendency to show pictures of tits, seem to be making her into Diana Mk II. Let's not forget that when she was on Big Brother the media had a field day. Some papers called her pretty at the start of the show, presumably because she was blond with big tits that she might be inclined to get out for the tabloids' cameras. Then they had plenty of laughs with her apparent lack of knowledge about almost anything you care to think of. Next, sensing the public mood was turning against her, they turned her into a hate figure - 'vote out the pig' ran the headlines. It should have been clear then how the story was going to go. Has anyone ever been built up and knocked down by the media in such a short space of time before?

And of course it didn't end there. Goody turned out to be fairly bright in one respect - she was happy to exploit what ought to have been a brief moment of fame and make it last and last. Hiring Max Clifford was a good move, but in retrospect it looked like the tabloids were already falling back in love with her before that. She was happy to tell "her BB story" for money, and since the show was so popular the tabloids were hardly going to turn their noses up at the chance to sell a few more copies of their arse wipes on the back of that. So she she became a media darling again, and that lasted until, laughably, she went on Celebrity Big Brother (and surely even she got the irony of including a minor celebrity who was only a minor celebrity because of being on the no-celebrity version). We all remember the fuss over the borderline racism of her remarks, even those of us who didn't watch the show, and we all saw how quickly she became a hate figure again. Then Chancellor Gordon Clown was in India at the time and the row over Goody's name calling of Shilpa Shetty overshadowed his visit. Can't remember what he was there for (and can't be arsed to look that up either) but I do remember he had to make some comment about cheap name calling not being representative of British values or something along those lines. But that was nothing to what was said in the UK papers - thick, ignorant, jealous, fat, racist, fishwife and pig were all terms I recall being used about Goody. I think it was the Mirror that even suggested calling her a pig was insulting to farm animals. Max Clifford commented on her spectacular own goal suggesting that she'd probably destroyed her career, and he must have known how hard she'd have to work to get back into the media's good books again.

We'll never know if going on the Indian version of Big Brother would have worked because getting cancer turned out to be just the thing to get the media back on her side. Racist thick fishwife ignorant pig Jade turned into poor cancer stricken battler Jade practically overnight, though there were some who thought that the cancer thing was manufactured, perhaps a scare that had been expanded on for PR reasons. But it hadn't, and it as soon as it turned out to be terminal the canonization process began. The formerly racist thick fishwife ignorant pig Jade turned poor cancer stricken battler Jade became brave Jade, media darling once again. I'm not sure she herself changed a great deal in her 5 years or so of fame and notoriety, but fucking hell did the media's attitude towards her change or what? Even David Cameron and Gordon Clown have weighed in with tributes (while, as Guido points out, three dead soldiers are brought back from Afghanistan almost unnoticed). The pinnacle, or nadir depending on your point of view, was what i think of as the celebrity death edition of OK magazine. Far from hitting the shelves before she'd started cooling down as we might expect, the tasteless bastards didn't even wait for her to stop breathing. But basically every paper that reviled her only a year or so ago is full of the tragic news of her death, gushy gushy, glowing obit, blahblah. No doubt it's only a matter of time before time before they report that a second miracle has been attributed to Jade when it was confirmed that some airheaded teenage slapper with more breasts than brain cells has prayed and has now been shagged by a footballer and will soon be appear on I'm A Non-Entity, Get Me A Contract For Something.

Dead of cancer, she's being buried in hypocrisy. But as The Chaser boys noted a while back, all their faults are forgotten when they take their final breath...