Celebrity Deaths


There seems to be a sudden rash of celebrity deaths in the last few months. Does this mark a "changing of the guard," so to speak, or is it something more subtle and less easily recognizable.

They say that deaths come in threes, but recently the dead seem to be coming in the dozens - at least when it comes to celebrities. Some of the better known: Gregory Peck, John Ritter, Elia Kazan, Donald O'Connor, George Plimpton, Robert Palmer, Johnny Cash, Barry White, Katharine Hepburn, David Brinkley, Maurice Gibb, Althea Gibson.

The only reason I've even noticed is because most of my news comes from CNN.com and it has become a weekly event (if not daily) that there is a new story about a famous dead person. Until about 4 months ago the celebrity dead were not consistently qualified as front page news.

A quick perusal of the list of dead celebrities for the years 2002 and 2003 (so far) indicates to me that there were at least as many celebrities that died in 2002 as there will be in 2003 (if current rates continue). So it seems the theory that celebrities are suddenly dying faster than before is wrong. The only other explanation that I can think of is that it has suddenly become fashionable in the media to list every celebrity that dies in the headlines.

This is no changing of the guard in the temporal sense. This does not herald in a new age where young thoughts and bodies begin to take over and replace the good ole boys network. As much as I first hoped this was the case, it now seems that it is purely a media obfuscation.

What do I mean by obfuscation? In this time when we are subjected to a government that is totalitarian in its control of *everything *, we sit back and watch without question from the sidelines as it happens. We are in a constant state of fear that *we are under attack* from an invisible enemy and perhaps the only entity that can save us is our government. We are incapacitated and unwilling to object.

How does this all relate to the increased reporting of celebrity deaths? Ever since the new Iraq war started, we have lost a soldier every day on average. It seems that the best way to remind people that death is a natural human occurrence (and thereby soften the impact of the war death toll on the human psyche) is to report celebrity deaths in the headlines as often as they occur.

Well, I'm not buying it. I think it IS important to honor the dead (especially when they have given an amazing amount of history to our culture), but not when they are being used in such a manner.

Posted: Sun - September 28, 2003 at 06:14 PM      

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