Saturday, June 14, 2008

Notable Deaths This Week

Here are some notable deaths this week. If you care to, you can find the names, listed in order of their appearance here, at the bottom of the page.

  • A medical researcher who was one of the first to find a link between tobacco and cancer.

  • A woman who fought a battle against hospitals, doctors, and societal taboos to champion nautral breast-feeding; one of the founders of La Leche League.

  • A former Vietnamese reformer and eventual prime minister who helped to lift his country from a war-torn, Soviet-style regime back into a place on the world stage.

  • An Italian film director who pioneered a new style of cinema that helped give citizens a newfound self-confidence after the trauma of Mussolini’s Fascism.

  • A researcher who discovered important information on organ transplant rejections and was one of the first blacks to be granted tenure at New York University Medical School.

  • An Egyptian politician and ex-prime minister who helped negotiate the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

  • A man who, as NATO ambassador under Johnson, repeatedly urged a halt to nuclear proliferation and urged “a world structure in which” weaker nations “will have assurances that existing nuclear powers will come to their rescue.”

  • A famous philanthropist who supported dozens of progressive causes, gave monetary assistance to candidates who otherwise might not have had a political voice, helped to finance the lawsuit that ultimately led Spiro Agnew to resign from the vice presidency, and was a prominent name on Nixon’s “enemies list.”

  • A guy who read the news on television, chatted with people who actually said and did important things, and helped to foster the idea that the mainstream media was worthless at presenting unbiased information.
So who got the most news coverage BY FAR?

Their Names
George E. Moore
Edwina Froehlich
Vo Van Kiet
Dino Risi
Randolph M. Chase, Jr.
Mustafa Khalil
Harlan Cleveland
Stewart R. Mott
Tim Russert

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

So my mom calls me yesterday afternoon while I was at work.

"Did you hear the news?"
I replied, "What news?" Maybe I'm silly but I thought there was some big news. George W. Bush found with a hooker and a kilo of coke, the Pope is really Mormon, McCain is gay, something truly important.
"You didn't hear? Tim Russert died."
"Oh. How'd that happen?"
"They're saying heart attack."
"Hm," is all I could muster. I couldn't fake interest.

Damn media.

Spanish Inquisitor said...

I thought it was news, but it was news that should have justified a 5 minute eulogy by Tom Brokaw, and that's about it. But when I went to bed last night, that is all the commenters were discussing, and when I woke up this morning they were still at it.

Of course there was also a 7.0 earthquake in Japan, the shuttle returned, and we now have more men dying in Afghanistan than in Iraq. You remember Afghanistan? Where one of Bush's missions was not quite accomplished.

The Exterminator said...

Afghanistan? Have I heard about that lately on the television news? Nah. Nothing going on over there to meet the press about.

Bacchus Veritas said...

lmao, I live in Japan (Okinawa, far from the quake), and had no idea there was a quake until many hours after it happened and the news has been on most of the day...the media thinks the people covering the "heroes" are heroes themselves.

Anonymous said...

Ummm, the red guy?

Talk about abuse of power. These clowns control the use of their piece of the broadcast spectrum, and they are so short-sighted and so impressed with themselves that they think it's perfectly okay to drone on for hours over Russert, whose biggest skill seemed to be the petty ambush interview. Most of these guys should be sharing jail cells with the Republican leadership and Democratic enablers that created the fucking mess in the Middle East, and at home. The assholes are still going on about it as I write.

There's news going on out there, you morons, real news, important news, and you are ethically and morally obligated to present that news and not blither on about one of your own because he died. The display going on at MSNBC is disgusting.

PhillyChief said...

So who's going to appear in the media to be the Hitchens to his Falwell? Has anyone stepped up yet?

Not Important said...

The only responses I had were to be grateful that I watch as little teevee news as I do and to marvel at how he looks like my cousin's husband, who is also named Tim.

The Ridger, FCD said...

The thing is, they're so isolated that they really think everyone is as devastated as they are. They really think everyone is hanging on this death. They wouldn't believe it if you told them that probably 73% of Americans are saying "Tim Who, now?"

They're such a closed community it's shame.

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