Defending Jade Goody

Justine Picardie has written a moving appeal in The Times of London on behalf of Jade Goody—the 27-year-old British reality television star who was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer—and her right to publicly display her last living moments. This weekend Goody wed her boyfriend Jack Tweed in a highly publicized affair—the broadcast and photo rights were sold to the highest bidders—designed to make as much money as possible for her two young children. Some have criticized the outspoken woman’s decision, but Picardie, whose sister Ruth, in 1997, chronicled her own last days in The Observer, hails Goody, saying, if she “refuses to leave quietly, then that is her right for she has lived by being loud, by refusing to give up the light.”