and now he’s dead
Just as millions of decent people around the world were marking the death of revolutionary Czech philosopher/playwright (and former president) Vaclav Havel with the realization that it is very rare to actually mourn a public figure’s death, North Korean clown-monster Kim Jong Il kicked the bucket, and the world found it could laugh again. What [...]
Jack LaLanne died at 96 … 96! He was in pretty good shape until the end. Jack was a vegetarian (or “pescatarian”?), non-smoking two-hour-workout-a-day beefcake Greco-Roman model (NSFW!) who lectured housewives and night-shifters for 30+ years on the teevee, and if you actually look at him it’s like Kerouac talking at Neal Cassady speed, and [...]
After his weekly appearance on Showtime at the Apollo, Robert Byrd would sometimes take his fiddle down to the Opry to rock some bluegrass. He’s no Alison Kraus, but he is dead. And that along with a half century as a senator is enough reason for a Children’s Treasury of Weird Videos.
After 51 years in the Senate, Robert Byrd of West Virginia died this morning at the age of 92. Byrd was literally wheeled out to vote on Obama’s health-care reform bill and has been “in failing health” for about as long as anyone can remember. The Democrat is best known for being a Ku Klux [...]
If you’re of a Certain Age (“not ancient” yet “not young”), you may recall this guy Alexander Haig because he ran around yelling “I am in control here!” and “Fuck the Pope!” after Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. Or, you may not. Most people who grew up in the 1980s don’t remember anything beyond [...]
So long, old fella. [NYT]
He hadn’t anchored the Evening News in nearly three decades, but Walter Cronkite set the standard for serious, authoritative network news. The stuff he covered was the biggest stuff of the 20th Century: from WWII to JFK, Apollo to Vietnam, Chicago ’68 to Watergate and the slow rot of America beginning in the mid-1970s.
America’s first black president, 12-year-old space monster Michael Jackson, is still dead. But like most Americans, you are probably wondering, “Is he in the coffin at that vulgar Staples Center death show in Los Angeles, or is whatever’s left of his body somewhere else?” TMZ just sent us this EXCLUSIVE photo showing … we don’t [...]
Robert McNamara accomplished many things in his long life, from revitalizing Ford Motor Co. with a new line of safe compact cars to decades of work to alleviate global poverty and reduce the risk of nuclear war. But he dies today as the “architect of the Vietnam War,” and it seemed the whole rest of [...]
One-man circus Michael Jackson has officially died, and somebody is very, very happy about this news. (That “somebody” is Mark Sanford. Adios, Mark! Enjoy the rest of your life.) We, of course, could give a hoot about Michael Jackson, although your editor once free-lanced a “concert review” of Wacko Jacko’s post-pedophile (?) 1996 performance in [...]
PAUL HARVEY … DEAD: “He had a face for radio and the political compass of the Inquisition. Born to a long line of Baptist preachers, he became the biggest snake oil salesmen of them all. Although known as a full-bore right wing nut, he broke with Nixon on Cambodia and (so he claimed) Joe McCarthy [...]
JESSE HELMS: AMERICAN GARBAGE Read your editor’s obituary for Jesse Helms, and let’s all laugh together. [AOL Political Machine]
