Not gonna lie, the news about Robin Williams hit me kinda hard. I mean, Mork & Mindy was right in my elementary school wheelhouse and Dead Poets Society was an instant favorite with me, and just so many great roles over the years...
But the morning network news program has dropped coverage of everything else to do a huge Robin Williams retrospective. If Putin wanted to roll tanks into eastern Ukraine, he just missed a splendid chance to... well, actually, Putin may have rolled tanks into Ukraine and I wouldn't know about it because my TeeWee screen is wall-to-wall clips from Good Will Hunting and Mrs. Doubtfire.
Does Erbil still stand? Have the Peshmerga stiffened up? Dunno. How're things in Gaza? Got me. Ebola still marching through western Africa? I guess so. Of course, in the insular media-entertainment celebrity world, this hits pretty close to the flagpole. Maybe in some ways closer than Michael Jackson and almost as close as Tim Russert.
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I enjoyed most of Robin Williams' work and thought he was a hilarious guy, so this one hit me harder than most celebrity deaths do. The way the media cashes in on stuff like this just angers me though, it feels like the worst outgrowth of the "go for the ratings!!!" style news.
Life goes on, does it not? Yeah, it hit me pretty hard too. And I'm glad we're talking about depression, but there are still monsters murdering children out there. The world is still falling apart.
I admit that my first thought was "good lord it's Michael Jackson 2.0"
Life goes on, but without the guy who gave us Mrs. Doubtfire, Jaffar and Adrian Cronauer, it goes on a little less lively.
Cracked.com has, IMO, the best attempt to explain why this sort of thing happens. http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/robin-williams-why-funny-people-kill-themselves/
But the G is protecting us from bagpipes, so there's that.
http://weaponsman.com/?p=17155
This has become my constant refrain: We have become a fundamentally unserious people.
Check the foreign media. They only go crazy over their celebrities.
Wife's in St Louis on a temp assignment. Finding any real time info on the riots is impossible. Most "reporters" are breathlessly reporting what occurred the day before. That KT has burned more times than Selznick's Atlanta.
Robin Williams did the reporters a huge favor. They might have had to leave their bunkers.
And Twitter? Nothing more than "Yo yo yo - git sum" and "Shoppin' for Michael"
Mentioning Putin made me think of Moscow on the Hudson.
I am sorry about losing this funny guy and I can understand that there is self-induced pressure on these entertainers as their craft goes up and down, he used to really crack me up as Mork and I enjoyed a lot of his other characters too. Having said that there are people dying all over the world in newsworthy situations and we need to share a tear and perhaps say a little prayer for Robin to Rest in Peace and then as a nation try to address problems that face us in the future. I do have a problem with celebrity worship and national morning over dead celebs.
Hmmm, didn't know Mr. Williams personally, so the news of his demise was met with an "Oh, ok." Suffered depression and had substance abuse issues. Hard to predict that demise.
The media focusing on his passing is just their way of ignoring the bad stuff goin on everywhere else.
Tim who?
And, @KevinC, Robin Williams didn't really give us Adrien Cronauer, Mrs. Cronauer and the US Air Force/Armed Forces Network did that... /aspie
I remember when Whitney Houston died, for 18 hours all any one knew was that she was dead, and the news channels went wall to wall with one fact. I find myself watching more BBC these days. Sure they're liberal but at least they know what news is.
Well, of course the MSM is going Wall-to-Wall! After all, Robin was one of THE Politically Correct Uber-Liberals!
God help us, even the BBC said on their News Feed "Obama LEADS Robin Williams Tributes."
Now if he could only LEAD in Foreign Policy, Domestic Policy...
Any bets that The Anointed One will "Break" from his Summer Vacation to attend the Funeral?
Wish he would DO THE JOB HE IS GETTING PAID TO DO and LEAD on Gaza, Iraq, Libya, Ebola, The Ukraine, the South China Sea.....
I dunno, Robin Williams was important *precisely* because he took us away from the unsolvable mess in Gaza, Ebola (or whatever it was from the late 70's through the mid 2000s that had people crapping their pants during the evening news) and other various brutalities of life on this planet--and he did it with verve, élan and a loving, constant lunacy. Pootie poot and ISIS (the unfunny kind) will still be there after we've taken a moment and paid tribute to a man who made us all laugh at one time or another over the last 3 decades. JMO.
That's the thing- a celeb like Robin Williams seems more real to us because his voice, and face has been such a part of our lives in a way that some Sumkid in Sumforeignland isn't.
It's terrible that he is dead, so young, it's terrible that he did it himself, I enjoyed his manic improvisational humor, and how a cruel streak never manifested itself when he was clearly not censoring anything he said or did.
My mom raised us to not get all googly-eyed over celebrities, so while it's unfortunate, I won't take to my bed for three days as my brother did after John Lennon's murder.
I don't recall the passing of Charleton Heston lasting more than a single news cycle. Admittedly his passing wasn't unexpected, but he made more movies.
Interestingly on Tam's Putin comment, it took less than 8 hours for the conspiracy nuts to concoct a suitable murder fantasy about how the Illuminati murdered him for vague and ill-expressed reasons. Had they said that Russia and Putin murdered him to get eyes off Ukraine that might have carried more weight with the skeptics.
I just read that Stalin considered having John Wayne killed, because of his extreme anti-communism stance. He liked Wayne's movies, though. Interesting what that says about world perception of celebrities.
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