The Jessica Watson brand is just as big a manufactured fake as the “TV idols” or other PR generated nonsense.

She is dripping with PR, marketing, sponsors, spin doctors and all the rest, and the media is happy to play along.

Sure she’s done a low-latitude circumnavigation and she is young. So what ? Is there actually some good deed in their that warrants the “hero” tag ?

No. This story is all about creating a media brand to enable associated people to make lots of money. There is no redeeming aspect.

This story represents some of the very worst aspects of our society.

Re #1, having a bad day are we?

one word!  ” INSPIRING ”

yeah her PR team are lame and the media is often full of crap, but It’s a good change from stories about Brendan Fevola’s gambling addiction, Melbourne Storms cheating & Tiger Woods’ sex life etc.

Bomba, I’m not aware of the “hero” tag being applied to Jessica Watson, but I’d much rather kids idolise her instead of hollywood types.

#1 Lindsay did you post that just to rev us up?
You crazy guy.

All I can say is, ‘Brilliant! Great! What an amazing thing to do! I admire her courage, persistence, strength and attitude!’

For sad, jaded, cynics like Bomba; bugger off! Jessica did a real thing, not a fake thing like ‘TV Idol’ or ‘Man vs Wild’. She was out there doing the hard yakka, being knocked down, pooped, and alone in gales and lightening storms. I think her effort is heroic.

Re # 1
I would like to see you do what Jessica has just done.
Alone for 7 months, being knocked down several times in huge seas and she is only 16 years old.
She is a bloody champion.
I wish her the very best for the future.

I would like to see as many 16 year olds as possible, who have the inclination, to have the same opportunity as Jessica has and see them sail around the world.  Buy them boats and let them set sail.

It is character building stuff and a bit like 40 days fasting in the desert, there will be few people around to relate to because they just do not understand what she has been through.

Like dropping down the face of 20 foot of imminently explosive water while standing on a foam toothpick - exhilarating.

’
  (1)
    you gotta be outa your tree pilgrim ! this 16 year old girl has just shown the world just how strong is her sense of survival , a feat which very few of todays “yoof” are capable of (let alone adults), so crawl back into your hole and show some respect ! the kid deserves it.
             
                    d.d.

Great personal achievement but to what end? Fame and more bloody fame. I have to agree with post 1.

Hundreds of thousands of kids her age went to school to study and many actually did things for the benefit of other people not just for themselves in the seven months she has been away. And funny enough, none of them made the news.

This saga is the best example of today’s hero worshiping look at me me me attitude driven media circus around anything out of the ordinary, at any cost. How can any teenager aspire to beat this nonsense, or anything like it, and where will this end, what do they have to do if the most important thing they expected to do is to become famous. It seems at any risk and cost.

As boring as it seems I would prefer to celebrate kids who have done the ordinary exceptionally well.

Jessica is now on dry land and has achieved something most of us would never attempt .
Guts,determimation and an ability to cope with horrific weather and mountainous waves appears to mean nothing to the person writing as Bomba.Jessica deserves all the wealth and praise that will come her way

This brave, articulate and sensible young girl is an amazing role model for our kids.

Is bomba #1 a real person? Surely not !

Not much support toward your point of view here bomba?
Though the inevitable gorgonzola of palaver from the mainland media is ever par for the course.

The reaction to brand Jessica is like Pavlov’s dog. It’s a mass conditioned response to a manufactured event. People want a “hero” (as Rudd called her today), they want a plucky little winner story, a journey-against-the odds.

You want it - and an enterprising group of spin doctors and companies have made one for you.

This wasn’t a voyage, it was a manufacturing process.

Before you get all teary-eyed at this “brave girl”, just take a moment to think: “What was the purpose of this voyage” ?

Just think about that for a moment: The Purpose.

Behind the cliched “inspiration to us all” veil is simply a profit stream.

This is so incredibly shallow and meaningless it’s breathtaking. That there are so many willing to play along with the PR fairy tale says volumes about our society and it’s inability to look beyond the most superficial layer.

There is a huge difference between genuine heroics and a manufactured “heroic brand”. To preserve your own morality and intelligence you need to able to see that difference.

Hey #1 - George Bernard Shaw once said : “Silence is the the most perfect expression of scorn”.
......No further comments.

14, well put and all so correct. If you were not skeptical beforehand surely alarm bells should have been ringing once the News and Rudd spin machines got on board in full swing.
Again, a great personal achievement, but evidently only to become famous. And how much shallower any achievement can get than just that!

I’m with Bomba, it’s a manufactured profit making enterprise.
Great credit to Jessica for her achievement, but it has been debased by the sensationalist attention seeking of her PR team.
It’s the Australian Idol syndrome where the person is secondary to the money making opportunities.
Next ...

This young lady achievements cannot be underestimated, give respect where it’s due.
For all your testosterone charged and heroic critics, how many of the criticisms are really the fault of this fine lass?
The amount of media glitz was not the end pursuit of this girl, this madness rather belongs to the clowns who run today’s commercial television networks.
This was no paddle around a millpond, from all the better sourced reports she preferred her own company to that of the people living in our more-ever becoming synthetic world?

Didn’t she sail into a container ship?

In the modern era if 20 kids Jessica’s age set out in identical boats I hazard to guess that 20 of them would most likely make the same trip.

Do this without a satellite GPS and phone and weather forecasting and auto steering and high tech food, then its an achievement.

The skill in Jessica’s PR team is that this whole “adventure” probably cost them nothing as they were able to separate sponsors and their money on the promise of a dream. Well done.

I’m with Bomba.  Nothing against Jessica herself - she’s not responsible for all those queuing up to exploit her (a bit like a certain 12 year-old girl in Hobart recently?) 

But the public are fickle too.  How long before she she morphs into Nikki Webster or Bindi Irwin?

You people who are doing your best to put this brave girl down should have heard her comments at the Opera House.
She said the preparation for her voyage minimised the risks, but it was still a trip into the unknown where anything could happen even with the fancy stuff on board, so just let her enjoy her fame and tend to your own exciting lives.

Nothing like a Jessica Watson to drag out from the gutters in which they grub the whiners, the whingers, the moaners and the naysayers.

And, from an opposite perspective, to crank up moralistic high-grounders spouting Left-lite nonsense about crass commercialisation.

Granted, many of them may have a sliver of a point, but why do so many of them deem it necessary to denigrate this 16-year-old girl’s achievement? How many of these screen-jockeys and e-mail heroes have ever done anything like what she has just done, whether 16, 36, or 56?

Yes, she did have the best and most up-to-date navigational and communicational technology available -  but so did Capt Arthur Phillip, who had at his disposal the knowledge, skill and expertise of the world’s most proficient naval power ever, the 18th century Royal Navy. Should he be mocked for having advantages which Columbus or Magellan or Zheng He or Drake lacked?

We might as well deride the current personnel of the International Space Station because they have ‘stuff’ which shields them 95% better from the risks which faced 1960s US astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts.

Besides, technological advances induce people to take risks which previous adventurers would have deemed literally impossible: a circumnavigation like Jessica’s would have been physically impossible for a solo 16-year-old girl, or boy for that matter, relying on muscle-power and eyesight in the sort of vessel available before, say, the 1990s.

As one Sydney bloke put it -

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/spirit-of-sailors-guides-our-girl-home-to-glory-20100515-v5d3.html?posted=sucessful

Only in Tasmania can be found pathetic, whinging,armchair critics like Bomba, Bert Norton ! and their ilk who have never achieved nor ascribed to do anything worthwhile in their entire lives, and now would wish to take away some of the shine of this brilliant kids voyage into the history books , under the shelter of anonymity.
  cowardness i call that !

                  Don davey

http://www.theage.com.au/nsw/sponsor-slams-orchestrated-voyage-20100515-v5do.html

No.23 Don Davey.  Unfortunately Sydney has the same amount of Wingers, Whiners and Pathetic people as Tasmania, just read the SMH blogs on Jessica.
As for you, more power to your pen.

Margaret Stuart-Mackenzie

Yeah, Comment 1, Miss Watson’s “story represents some of the very worst aspects of our society”, as distinct from -

~ mass-murder by quite non-commercial suicidal religious fanatics;

~ endemic tribal / clan war, Afro-style;

~ fixations on guns, god and gas, US-style;

~ girls Jessica’s age suffering chronic health problems from their society-endorsed FGM;

~ being depressed about where your next blade of grass is coming from, as in North Korea’s thoroughly uncommercialised society.

How happy all those above must be in their societies, with not a worry about “some of [our] very worst aspects”.

No need for me to post. Leonard said it all. spot on.

I think she did well, showed incredible courage, and will benefit from the experience in many, many ways. Heroic? Perhaps. Will the wider society benefit? We shall see, in the fullness in time.
But I find the media hype just a tad over the top. Rudd’s chiming in on the act is about as opportunist as Howard’s use of the “troops” at every possible chance. The media circus was definitely orchestrated and I do feel this taints what is a real achievement. A shame, really.

There’s another aspect to the ‘commercialisation’ angle of Jessica Watson’s achievement -  one which seems to be taken for granted too often -  and it is this: her sort of achievement costs money, lots of money, as well, of course, of lots of time and effort.

The money, in whatever form, has to come from somewhere, a reality that would be known, if vaguely, even to the pixie brains in Lefty-lite Land.

There seem to be three sources:

~  (i) commercial sponsorship, which is done in the expectation of a return on investment, whether from business owners’, shareholders’ or purchasers’ costs;

~  (ii) the government, which means directly or indirectly through a range of taxes, fees, levies, charges, imposts, or whatever you, or the government, likes to call them;

~  (iii) her own, or from her family, and / or from her family’s circle of friends, acquaintances, et al.

Given that source (i) would need some very rich people, the sort about whom that old joke about yachting was made -  ‘sailing is like standing in a cold shower tearing up hundred-dollar notes’  -  this leaves (ii) or (iii).

Think which would be preferable:

the ‘commercialised’ arrangements which financed her voyage, or to have, say the sponsors logos replaced by –

“Working Family young person Jessie’s journey going forward is brought to you by the Rudd Labor Australian Government, working on behalf of every Australian young person’s dream of world circumnavigation, regardless of race, colour, creed, gender, socio-economic quintile, NAPALM test results, and chosen parallel of latitude, and both totally endorsed by Fair Work Australia and entirely within sustainably environmental paradigms with permission from the Original Custodians of every wave she crests”.

Perhaps Lindsay would offer a small prize for the sort of ‘sponsor’s message’ one would expect from, say, the Dear Leader up there over the 38th //N, or from Osama bin Laden plotting the destruction of the evil, atheistic, hedonistic and libertarian Western Civ his lot so loathes, and which most of us so enjoy.

I reckon all you naysayers and wannabe critics should just .... and let the kid enjoy her time in the sun.

    She has shown that other’s can aspire to much more than, goddamn video games, mobile phone’s, and spunging of their parents for a way, way, shorter time than they do at present.

                d.d.