OT: Celebrity Deathwatch

So, as conventional wisdom goes, celebrities die in threes and this theory passed the test this week when the King of Pop stepped up in the clutch, following Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett.

Yeah, I'm a cold hearted bastard but my general distaste for the general concept of celebrity comes to a head when one of them dies. You'd think the world was coming to an end if you bothered to turn on TV last night.

Apparently, Ed was a pretty good guy. He did alot of charity work throughout his career after serving in WWII and later reaching the rank of colnel. He did go broke recently and as incredibly unfathomable as that is, well, it seems to be common.

I remember Farrah Fawcett in Charlie's Angels but the appearacne I remember most is several years ago seeing her on Letterman (or Leno?) high as a kite. When celebrities are afflicted with a terminal illness, words like courageous and valiant are often tossed indiscriminantly and it is in my mind, pretty absurd. 'Courageous' is not a default setting. You aren't brave for getting sick. Not even if you're rich and famous. I have lost family members to cancer. They fought like hell against it but does it make them courageous? I don't think so....I think they did what was natural.

To me courageous is to do something against your nature, specifically, your survival and self preservation instincts whether literally or figuratively for the benefit of others. Firefighters who run into a burning building to save someone are courageous. People who take a stand on something they believe at the risk of career or political suicide are courageous. People who get sick with a terible disease can too be courageous but it takes alot more than simply being ill to make it so.

So nothing in particular against Farrah Fawcett but lets be real, getting sick an dying is tragic, unfortunate, sad even but not inherantly courageous.

As for Jacko.....well, he was never convicted of child molestation in a court of law. OJ Simpson wasn't convicted of murder either. I tend to think the downward spiral his life has been was far more sad than his actual passing. The drama is gone, the sopa opera tabloid foolishness is over and done with.

His life has been a trainwreck and the whole world has looked in on it with morbid fascination for years and years. How does this change the lives of every day people when a horrifically self indulgent and mentally unstable celebrity dies? News of his death has surely eclipsed graphic pictures of the young woman from Iran who was gunned down whilst standing up for what she believed in.

This is part of a larger problem for me in that people in general don't give a crap about what's truly important to them but will go on and on about how sad it is that Michael Jackson has died. I dare not talk politics with my friends because many of them don't know jack crap about the basic elements of representative government like um....who their congressman is. They can sure as hell tell you who the top 10 left on American Idol are and surely know all about the passing of MJ and his career.

I guess that's a blog for another day.

So....three celebrities died.