Going Going Gone

They are dropping like flies. It's hard to keep track. It's getting harder and harder just to keep up. Just as you're grieving another loss, somebody else dies. Timing is everything people! A phenomenon we've previously covered in the case of Michael Jackson/Farrah Fawcett. (See previous post- Dearly Departed) You'd think the famous would know better. Then in short order Walter Cronkite, Ed McMahon, Don Hewitt (60 Minutes) Robert Novak (Technically, he is the undead), Ted Kennedy!, Larry Gelbart (Comedy writer- the movie Tootsie among other things.) Jody Powell (Carter Administration) all died recently. When you bunch them up like this someone's going to get lost in the mix. Normally you would like to space these things out a little more, give us, as a nation, more time to properly mourn their death, tape the specials and in some cases, arrange the parade. (Walter Cronkite and Ted Kennedy get a parade, Don Hewitt doesn't, Ed McMahon get's a sandwich named after him, and Robert Novak, (A cadaverous, ill-tempered man at best) get's a particularly invasive medical procedure named after him, heretofore known as the "Full Novak." Rectal probe? No, it's a "Full Novak.") Now it's just out of control, Jim Carroll (Basketball Diaries, Jim Carroll Band, one of my all time favorites.) Henry Gibson (Laugh In, the movie Nashville), Patrick Swayze, Mary Travers!, it's getting to the point where you have to start picking and choosing your top celebrity deaths. When Heath Ledger died, it was all about Heath and that's the way it should be. We got to give ourselves completely to his passing, and, luckily he had some movies coming out. That really helped, that way he wasn't completely dead yet. Plus, he deservedly, won a posthumous Oscar. That's better than a parade.

Timing is everything. When Princess Diana died, Mother Teresa had the supreme misfortune to die only 6 days later. Who got the short end of that stick? At the time it was all Princess Diana all the time, which I was fine with. It was horrible and tragic, and nobody should have to die like that. But Mother Teresa got totally lost in the shuffle, at the time you would hear people say, "Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Mother Teresa died!" That's not right. She deserved a whole lot better than to be a footnote in history after a lifetime of service. Did Elton John sing at her Funeral? The Pope didn't even show. That's cold. Mother Teresa got the Full Novak.