Some Country for Old Men

Sometimes an article comes along that’s so bad, you know there must be n other articles (where n is a large positive interger) on the Interwebs covering the same subject just as badly. Just take a look at this piece of shit: “For Celebs, is Death a True ‘Triple’ Threat?“

Better headline: “In an effort to seem sort of hip, but really to cash in on the death of Michael Jackson, we’ll pander to the douchebag masses who read this type of shit, but since we’re the once glorious Washington Post, we’ll make it pseudo-scientific and nerdy-funny and respectable-like.” Barf.

Really, there’s no reason to read on, since I summed up, I don’t know, 800 words in 47. But in case you’re feeling masochistic, or really want to know why legit news outlets hate their readers, here are some of the gems from this A-1 piece of journalistic prowess.

That’s the old rule that celebrities die in threes. Between Ed McMahon’s passing on June 23 and Michael Jackson’s death on June 25, less than three days elapsed. Farrah Fawcett also died on the 25th.

Even in the face of such powerful evidence for the triplicity of bold-face morbidity, skeptics denied it. They blogged with learned-sounding certainty about how celebrity deaths, like all human demises, occur with random frequency. The skeptics were met with equal cogency by those who maintain that whenever a famous person dies, two more face imminent doom.

See what the author did? He barely masked his contempt for this nonsense in that second paragraph by using big words (“Even in the face of such powerful evidence for the triplicity of bold-face morbidity”) some people wouldn’t understand (if they could read, that is). Really though, it’s hard to blame the writer.

[H]ow then to explain the death of David Carradine? He was found hanged June 4 in Bangkok in a reported case of autoerotic asphyxiation, but that’s not all that needs explaining. Under the rule of three, he could have been No. 1, making McMahon No. 2 and Fawcett No. 3.

Or was Carradine No. 3 in a previous trinity of death? Or is Jackson No. 1 in a new series? Who’s next?

Maybe deaths by masturbation don’t count in the rule of threes? How do we explain the death of David Carradine? Who knows? Who cares? FUCK. I’M GETTING DUMBER WITH EACH SENTENCE I READ.

Is [dead bassist from a band you've never heard of Sky] Saxon a celebrity? If so, he, Fawcett and Jackson make three in one day. Then we could put McMahon and Carradine together with, say, Koko Taylor, the blues musician, who died June 3. Another three.

Now we’re RANKING LEVELS OF CELEBRITY. Sure, People magazine does it all the time. But the Washington Post isn’t People. Yet.

Anyway, to make a long boring story even LONGER, the writer gets into the whole B-lister thing, and how there are some celebs who die in a double, and finally, the piece goes to full-on wackos (h/t Michael Jackson).

Theresa Lazenby-Jones and her 17-year-old son, Kenneth Jones, were at home last week grieving Jackson’s death when they were struck by the coincidence of two such famous people as Fawcett and Jackson dying on the same day. Or was it coincidence?

Jones got on the computer to do some research, and mother and son were blown away by all the celebrities who have died on the 25th of a month in recent years: Bea Arthur (April 2009), Dan Seals (March 2009), Eartha Kitt (December 2008), James Brown (December 2006), Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes (April 2002), Aaliyah (August 2001).

“This is like kind of crazy,” Jones says.

“It’s just strange,” says Lazenby-Jones.

Actually: not crazy. Totally coincidental. And since we’re ranking the dead, no one cares about Dan Seals.

Along with the apparent lethality of the 25th, she also respects in the rule of three. It applies to her family, too. She recently has buried an uncle, an aunt and a cousin.

The weird thing is, they were alive.

It’s a saying in our family,” she says. “When somebody dies, it’s always in threes.”

It’s not just a saying in your family, asshole, but whatever. The only quote left out of this tripe apparently was when Jones turned to Lazenby-Jones after and allegedly said, “Now let’s go and sit in a child’s swimming pool filled with turds.”

Hmm, you say two papers died this year? Rocky Mountain News. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Which paper will be the third?