I’ve never been one to propagate celebrity gossip, but I found myself strangely upset at the news Heath Ledger died yesterday. I’ve only seen a few of his movies, but I thought he was a decent actor, and he did a good job of staying out of the idiot-media spotlight. So I was a bit surprised to see how many blog entries were devoted to Ledger’s death, especially those who were angry at the amount of coverage it received on CNN, Fox, and the various other U.S. news organs. All I can say is, um, it’s America, folks, are you surprised?
The part that really bothered me are the reasons some people listed for why Ledger’s death shouldn’t be receiving such coverage. Here are the ones I read so far:
1) He played a homosexual in a movie.
God forbid we should lament the death of a man who wasn’t actually gay, but only played one in a movie! Imagine the uproar if he actually was gay! Oooh!!!
2) He wasn’t a soldier fighting in Iraq.
Hey, I’m against the war, but I support the troops. It’s not even my friggin’ country, and I support the troops. We have a bunch of our own in Afghanistan right now working on a difficult mission, so us Canadians can sort of relate. It’s important news when any of them are injured or killed, but at the same time there are some people who take this annoyingly righteous attitude whenever any news story comes along that bumps the war from the top of the headlines. How can you say *insert news story* is more important that our brave children fighting in Iraq/Afghanistan?! The truth, of course, is that no one is saying Ledger’s death, of any other news story, is more important than anything else. I’m not going to get into the pissing contest about whose death is more important because quite frankly, nobody wins those things, and all I’d probably end up doing is getting into a screaming match with some idiot I don’t even know. Let’s just agree that every death is tragic, okay?
3) He wasn’t American.
I don’t think anyone covers the celebrity gossip with as much fervour as the U.S. media, which makes it kind of ironic when fellow Americans blast the media – their media – for how much they cover the death of a celebrity compared to the death of an important person, like the aforementioned soldiers in Iraq. That’s fine, it’s amusing to watch both sides go at it, but the part that bothers me is that I’ve actually read on more than one blog that they shouldn’t be covering Ledger’s death as much as they have because he was an Australian, not an American. One blogger said he understood the need to plaster Anna Nicole Smith’s death all over the news and web, but why were they paying attention to an Aussie like ledger? He’s, like, not even from our country?
Yeah, and he never fought in a war, either, eh?
Everyone’s entitled to their own feelings, of course, but I have to say some of these comments made me pretty ill. Everyone seems to want to turn it into an issue about media, or politics, or the war in Iraq – anything but what it really is, the death of a young man who seemed to have a bright future ahead of him.
I understand that celebrity news of any kind isn’t really that important, and I’m certainly not going to go up against anyone when it comes to the brave soldiers fighting in Iraq, but at the same time I still don’t think the nastiness is called for. It’s the one thing I really don’t like about blogs. When things are good, it lets you see a side to people you might not normally see, but when it’s bad, it lets you see a side you wished you never saw.
Pretty sick, people.
(I should add that these comments were not made by anyone I link to or anyone on my LiveJournal friends list. I was sent to the blogs by a friend who linked them in an e-mail with the subject header: “GEEZ, MAYBE THEY SHOULD JUST EAT HIM”)
- Currently reading: Terminal, by Brian Keene