Celebrities seem to be dropping like flies lately and each and every death seems to be surrounded with some degree of fanfare. Heath Ledger is the most recent significant pop culture big shot to kick it and in his honor I have titled and come up with this list.
The first thing I really hate about celebrities dying is the instantaneous media saturation of the initial report. I honestly think there should be a select group of people who are allowed to tell people a celebrity is dead. I think it would be infinitely more fun to go a few days without knowing the exact time and location of someone’s death – or if it even occurred at all.
Next, I have a major issue with all the speculation. What good does it do to cause rumors? No one but the people working on a lifeless corpse have any idea as to what caused a death (unless it’s a murder or happened in public). Do we really need 15 updates a day on every news channel and blog in the world as to what may have happened to this person? No, we don’t. At the very least we should institute a statute of limitations on how long reporting can go on for. I say one week. Then we move on.
Is anyone else bothered by the immediate inflation of the person’s celebrity upon the signing of their death certificate? When Anna Nicole Smith choked on her own (assumingly cocaine and TrimSpa flavored) vomit, the media made her out to be some sort of saint. In actuality, she was a has-been playmate that had married some old rich guy in the most cartoonish way imaginable and had recently lost a few pounds. Besides doing that can anyone name a singe other personal achievement or social impact she had?
The fact that I have to talk about it with my friends in social situations is kind of bothersome. I know “no one’s making you talk about it DJ”. Well, I have severe issues with being left out of conversations and while that may be on me, I don’t think it’s my job to spit out the latest shit I’ve read on PerezHilton.com. Much like the mainstream media (which means all media), social circles not in immediate contact with the dead person or dead person’s family don’t know a goddamned thing.
Individuals who think they have some sort of personal connection to another (now dead) person because they listened to their music, watched their movies, or jacked off to pictures of them at a red carpet event should be weeded out and slaughtered. The utter lack of intellect a person of this caliber must suffer from is mind boggling.
Celebrities rarely go out like they used to. Choking on vomit and overdosing on illegal drugs was pretty standard practice for a while; now we’re stuck with sleeping pill bullshit and foggy toxicology reports. I don’t know about you, but I think we’re due for a decent assassination sooner or later, which is another honorable way to die (Ronald Reagan, I’m looking at your corpse…).
I hate how people who aren’t experts on dissecting humans think they’re experts on dissecting humans. It sickens me that I just used the phrase “toxicology report” a minute ago because I really have no understanding as to what would go into doing such a report. By using the phrase, I feel like an idiot. Why doesn’t anyone else?
Yeah, I understand that it’s basically a reiteration of point’s 4 and 5 which were basically the same thing to begin with, but who sits at their computer and decides that a photo montage set to sappy music is a legitimate form of tribute and is in any way entertaining to anyone? And am I imagining things or were some of those photos in there twice?
Ok, I’m really running out of steam here.
But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate celebrities’ deaths, not even close… not even a little bit… not even at all.
Also, I was musing with some friends (Chase... I'm looking at you) about how funny it would be if The Dark Knight had only been 75% completed and the last quarter of the movie featured Heath Ledger's corpse on strings with Jack Nicholson narrating.
