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Originally Posted by stoogeswoman
(P.S. - do NOT believe anyone on radio or TV who says how sad they feel. I used to work for a local radio station and trust me, two dead celebrities in one day is GREAT news for them - it's what they LIVE for!)
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That is so true! I was flipping around the cable news channels this evening between 6:30 and 7pm (East Coast, US), and the guy on CNN (or was it Headline News?) kept saying: "Michael Jackson, DEAD at fifty." It was like he was enunciating the word "dead" for a try-out at the local community Shakespearean theater --- just loving the feel of the word as it rolled off his tongue over and over again with different inflections. Shep Smith over at Fox News had a terrific adrenaline buzz going at the same time.
Media types live for this stuff: it defines and gives a certain meaning to their ephemeral lives. Lawrence Taylor, the great football linebacker for the New York Giants, had a telling comment about this. He was being interviewed many years ago on the Today Show by Bryant Gumbel, and he said that television newspeople "celebrate" the tragedy of others. Gumbel tried to correct him by saying that "we
report the news, not celebrate it!" But I'm with Taylor on this one.