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Why Do We Cry When Celebrities Die Young?
Until his suicide, I never heard of Anthony Bourdain. Since I’m male and have no interest in purses, it’s more understandable that I never heard of Kate Spade, who also took her own life. I am surprised at the outpouring of grief by many including conservative writers, and not just youngish ones. Rob Long in a recent podcast said he was affected by Bourdain’s end, saying Bourdain lived the life he dreamed of living.
Bourdain was a stranger, or near stranger to all of them, as was Spade. In Spade’s case, I’m not even sure she was on television all that much, it’s just that many women had bought her high-end purses, or had been gifted one at a young age.
I was old enough when JFK got assassinated to remember it, but not old enough to know its real significance (I was 3 months shy of 7 years old). But that event was in the shadows as I grew up as he became a secular saint. I’ve read how older people at the time acted — the tears, the crying.
My personality is such that I don’t get too worked up over people I don’t know when bad things happen to them. Frankly, I felt that way about Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. In MLK’s case, I may not have been aware of who he was, and most white children probably didn’t until he became martyred. RFK was living in the shadow of his brother, so you couldn’t escape his presence.
I’m not immune as I originally thought, however, to strangers who have bad things happen to them. I was a daily listener of Rush Limbaugh as he went deaf. I was affected by that and relieved when he found a way to overcome that disability.
We can’t get worked up over every person’s misfortune, whether it’s starvation in Africa or the too-frequent teen suicides of every person we don’t know. We’d all be emotional wrecks if we did.
So why do we care so much for some complete strangers? They’re actually exceptions to the rule of not getting worked up about people we don’t know.
It’s irrational to me.
Published in General
I well remember seventh grade. A coach died in a driving-off-a-windy-road accident that probably involved alcohol. The hysteria was palpable. I had lost a Grandmother and I didn’t much know the coach. The mourning was out-sized and I sort of got it even then. This was just that huge to…children. People innocent of death so far.
Losing a real person puts celebrities into perspective. I love me some art, but not like I love my family.
Billy Joel knew.
Based on the title, I was sure this was going to be about Matt “Guitar” Murphy. Gone at 88, far too young on June 15:
Regarding Anthony Bourdain: Those of us who are followers on twitter of various activities like sex trafficking and HRC’s supposed involvement in such are more than simply reacting to the “suicide” of a celebrity.
He had been tweeting he had important information that would bring her down. He made that tweet one month to the day of his death.
There are also rumors afoot that he had been offered oodles of money to be one of the producers on a new network that would be devoted to investigative journalism. If you don’t understand what a world renown chef has to do with journalism, you haven’t seen some of his more interesting “Travel Channel” food episodes, especially the one where he and his film crew filmed in Beirut.
Not afraid of looking like a sissy, the film footage of the stay in Beirut allowed him to be shown cowering under the daily assault of Israeli missiles while George W and others in that administration were caring less that Beirut is a tourist destination for many Europeans and Americans.
In the end, the US Navy sent a war ship in and Americans were able to get out. At that point, Bourdain returned to covering the food. All that they had for the most part was mess hall mac and cheese, but Bourdain proclaimed it to be the best comfort food he had ever eaten. He also proclaimed the various officers and Naval shipsmen to be extraordinarily gifted at comforting the many freaked out people, including small kids, who had been traumatized by their experience in Beirut.
I don’t know that I can completely explain it, but some of these people we feel like we know. I’ve never met Rob Long, but if he killed himself it would affect me. He’s been a part of my life – even if virtually – for a long time. Same was true of Bourdain in my case. He was a real personality. Watch one of his shows. You’ll see what I mean. In both cases, they do so much unscripted media that if you’re a fan, you get to know them in a way. Like I said, that’s not a complete explanation but it’s part of it.
I’m sad when people who produce things I love die (relatively) young (e.g. Robin Williams, Alan Rickman, Terry Pratchett, Carrie Fischer) because it means I won’t get to enjoy more output from them.
The celebrity grief that confuses me is when the really old people die. John Glenn dying at 90 or Zsa Zsa Gabor dying at 100 isn’t surprising. It isn’t tragic. It isn’t denying the world more of the things they could provide. It’s the kind of thing that happens to people that age. I don’t begrudge the families their grief, but the crocodile tears on social media for people so currently irrelevant that the most common response is “I didn’t realize they were still alive” are just baffling to me.
I’ve been sad or regretful at the odd celebrity death, especially of a not-old person, but I can’t recall actually crying. I really don’t understand the piling up of flowers and teddy bears and the like, or the spontaneous vigils, such as when John Lennon died.
I wonder who is more emotionally healthy, me or the folks who respond like that.
There’s also something about suicide. I mean, people die but there’s something particularly jarring about them killing themselves. You take notice of it, even if you didn’t notice them much in life.
Princess Diana!
Need I say more. An entire nation, a nation that stoically endured the tragedy of the Somme*, prostrated by the death of one person.
* 7/1/16 The British Army, in one day, 57,000 casualties including 19,000 killed.
I have to admit, I was sad when Isaac Asimov died. Now, there will never be a sequel to “Foundation and Earth”.
I was sad when Benny Hill died.
Some of us did feel like we knew him, because he gave us hours of entertainment through his television programs, and seemed like a genuine good person.
I cried like a baby through Ronald Reagan’s funeral. He was old. He was sick. He’d been “off the stage” for quite a while. It was his time. But they weren’t crocodile tears. Sometimes we really feel the loss, even of someone we never actually knew.
I was strangely upset when Andrew Breitbart died.
I have not seen any comment on the fact that these well-known personages not only died close together in time, but by the same means (hanging). Is this a coincidence, or was Bourdain inspired by Spade?
One of the horrific aspects of an already horrific act is that suicide is contagious. Perhaps I’ve missed it, but I haven’t seen this addressed in the current breast-beating on suicide.
It is contagious, isn’t it. As with school shootings the idea is suddenly everywhere and people with low resistance are going to catch it.
Me also. But at least for partially selfish reasons–he was a weapon on “our side,” and we lost him.
And painless.
It causes quite a few alterations, too.