Celebrities Exhale as Death Takes a Holiday
As early as June, we were all thinking, “What’s going on?” when celebrities starting dropping like flies. Considering that death rates are normally higher in the winter, it seemed odd that everyone famous appeared to be at risk. It was a time when the non-famous were thankful for anonymity.
In early May, Dom DeLuise died. It was sad, everyone liked him, and no one knew that it was the beginning of a most unusual Hollywood trend. June saw the macabre, scandalous passing of David Carradine. Ed McMahon died soon after. But, at 72 and 86, at least they had lived full lives.
Then Farrah Fawcett passed. Young, but with cancer, so we were more saddened than surprised. Her death had not even been mourned when the whopper hit.
One Trend Michael Jackson Would Gladly Have Passed On.
Michael Jackson was dead at age 50, steeped in controversy, and all over every website, newspaper, TV station, social network, and conversation. The scandal rages on with sister LaToya’s announcement that it was murder and not a simple drug overdose. During this terrible time, at least someone had the foresight to save burnt locks of Jackson’s jheri-curl to have them turned into diamonds at the right time. No one found his death funny, but it was a symptom of a serious problem: was the world going to run out of celebrities?
The only person who was probably grateful was South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, whose infidelity and running off to Argentina—all the while writing embarrassing bad love emails—was news for about 300 seconds until Michael Jackson was found dead.
Then pitchman Billy Mays, also 50, died with cocaine in his system. It made the news. Barely.
Then the man who reported news, who made news respectable, Walter Cronkite left us. Some other famous newspeople died during this time, too. But they weren’t even blips on the collective media radar. We were still being bombarded with Michael Jackson death updates. We even got to see his ghost wandering through Neverland Ranch. About a zillion times.
Then movie writer and director John Hughes died. Anyone who grew up watching “The Breakfast Club”, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Sixteen Candles” felt this one. He was giving a voice to our generation. He was only 59 and scandal-free.
Les Paul, electric guitar god, passed in August, along with Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Edward Kennedy.
No one was safe. Musicians, directors, actors, product pitchmen, sidekicks: they were heading up or down (depending on your opinion) in droves.
Dominick Dunne was 83 when he left, but Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein was only 36.
Then went Patrick Swayze, after a long battle with cancer. The last we heard of him was that he was getting stronger and doing fine. But that’s the way it was this summer.
Labor Day couldn’t come fast enough for Washington, DC and Hollywood. Maybe Fall would bring something new and different. Or at least stop the ridiculous number of celebrity funerals.
Did anything good happen this summer? It’s hard to remember anything uplifting. Some people got married, others had babies, but does anyone remember their names? Other famous people split up, like Jon and Kate Gosselin, but that made for good TV and lots of entertaining jokes. You can’t really joke about death, can’t make fun of Chris Brown beating up Rihanna. Even Paris Hilton was able to fly under our collective radar because of the death toll. She was free to be her vacant self and we wouldn’t notice. Famous people could act like idiots and remain out of the news. We were too busy checking TMZ to see who was next on the Grim Reaper’s list.
Hopefully Autumn will bring the end of Death Season and we can focus on what we really like: good gossip and Stupid Celebrity Tricks.
Hellooooooooooooo October.