Celebrity Death Watch

If you're like me, your eyes have been diverted while you were in line to check out at the grocery store by those sleazy tabloids with all of the latest gossip on the cover. One of them, and don't ask me which one, will occasionally have a picture and the headline "(So and so's) Tragic Last Days". The picture is of some celebrity looking like he or she is knocking on death's door. I would suppose that someone living in the spotlight would expect to be on the front page of the supermarket tabloids. Even when they're on death's door. They don't miss a trick. Gaining or losing a lot of weight? Front page. Doing drugs? Ditto. Divorcing wife #1, #2 or #3? Ditto, ditto, ditto. Being whisked to a Honolulu hospital with horrible chest pains? Ditto!!!

Haven't had the time to put the Corpulant Crusader on the front page of any tabloids yet. Look for it in the next edition. You know, the one after the "Former First Lady Gives Husband Final Last Ultimatum After His Love Letters To Former Cabinet Official Discovered". We may also see headlines with the words "Almost Died", or, "Died And Came Back To Life!". The Corpulant Crusader would like that one. Thinks he's God already, though. The headline would only encourage him.

Too bad that the Weekly World News is no longer being produced. We would find "Bat Boy" with the CC in the emergency room. "Space Alien" would have interrupted his photo shoot with the President and it would have been revealed that Nostradamus predicted the CC's heart attack way back when Nostradamus was doing his prediction thing. Oh, and Ed Anger would have been incensed that the President didn't drop everything including his vacation and follow "Space Alien" to the CC's bedside. Shame on you, Mr. President!

But I digress.

The tabloids have a way of stirring our emotions about those who have been chosen, or have been born into celebrity. Wife finds out about husband's philandering and chases him down the driveway with one of his golf clubs. We eat it up. A spokesperson for a sandwich chain gains weight after smiling and telling us about all the weight he lost by eating that chain's sandwiches. We love it! Wholesome TV mom reveals she is gay as a may pole. Bring it on! Some starlet we hardly know is found dead in her Hollywood apartment. More, please, more! Sales of the tabloid which prints the garbage go up in proportion to the offense. I'm willing to bet that if the Corpulant Crusader han been either the last celebrity of 2009 or the first celebrity of 2010 to take the eternal dirt nap, sales of the tabloids would skyrocket for months.

Makes me think that perhaps the tabloid people have some sort of a death watch going on. "Oh, nothing personal, but we're talking sales, here. Besides, all the major press organizations maintain pre-fabricated obituaries of the rich and famous in the event that one of them quits breathing for an extended period of time... why shouldn't we kind of, you know, try and push things along to boost our circulation?"

There's a reason the tabloids are sold where they are sold. Chances are good that they would sell considerably less if they were sold next to the likes of the Dallas Morning News or the Wall Street Journal. Sold where they are to what amounts to a captive audience and with stories which (to put it politely) offer the human side of the rich and the famous, they can't help but to sell.

The Corpulant Crusader would be in a bit of a pickle about coverage of his latest escapade. On one hand, he's a private citizen with a right to privacy. On the other, he's a public figure who advocates free enterprise - and what better example of free enterprise is there than to sell tons of tabloids based on the misfortunes of a public figure?

Ditto!!!

Be Seeing You!



Couple of side notes. Even though it was my job to listen for commercial cues during the Rush Limbaugh radio show so many years ago, I don't wish any harm to him. He won't be on my prayer list, for sure. Excuse me. You betcha!

Several blogs ago I mentioned a friend, Jerry Temples, with whom I disagree with politically while still enjoying him otherwise... Jerry was in hospital over Christmas, returned home about a week ago, and as I understand it is back in hospital now. Jerry is in my prayers.