Are people always trying to start these rumors, but simply succeeding thanks to this celebrity-death-filled week? I don't know, but that makes sense: Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays…like any truly random combination of celebrities, their juxtaposition makes it feel all that more surreal. The combination of true legend and pitchman, of beauty icon and early-TV fixture, of tragic tabloid targets (Fawcett and Jackson) and onetime punchlines (Jackson and Mays)…it all seems like a crazy celebrity Mad Lib and makes it feel like hey, if those four people can go in the same week, anything's possible. If you'd showed us, say, this week's forthcoming issue of EW two weeks ago, we'd have thought it was some sick joke. So naturally, this has all made fertile ground for, well, sick jokes.
Presumably born of people's dark musings as they watch endless hours of Fawcett/Jackson coverage — can you imagine if George Clooney died now, too? could Natalie Portman be dead? — and the rumor power of the blogosphere, the death hoaxes have been coming fast and furious this week. The first, from what I can tell, was Jeff Goldblum — whose rumored death hit while news outlets were only just reporting Jackson's shocking demise. That choice of celebrity seemed almost eerily well-planned: He's just the right level of fame (Madonna or Britney Spears at that moment would've seemed too big to be true). And because we don't follow his every move so religiously in the gossip pages, anything happening to him without much warning seemed plausible, from a movie-set accident to an unforeseen illness. For the record, we are thrilled and relieved and grateful to report that all of these talented, rumored-dead folks are still with us.
What do you think, PopWatchers? Why so many rumored deaths to go along with our devastatingly real ones this week? Have any of the rumors upset you more than the others? Will we ever figure out a way to control the Internet's growing rumor mill?
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Whoever starts these rumors are just sick…
http://tvdonewright.com/2009/06/30/snl-alum-chris-kattan-joins-new-abc-comedy-the-middle/
People with no lives and too much time start these rumors.
I’m sure the Twitter bosses are trying to find a way to stop this. They’re priding themselves on becoming an instant news source (Iran stuff, etc) but all these hoaxes are the boy who cried wolf. It’s making it look bad.
By the time I hear about these rumors they’ve already been debunked, so it doesn’t upset me. It’s totally people with a sick sense of humor who play on our already freaked out sense of “everyone’s dying!” The only way to control it is to not retweet, reblog, or otherwise repeat these rumors without verifying them 1st through actual news agencies.
I only know that the celebrity/ former celebrity death toll rose to 6:
McMahon
Fawcett
Jackson
Mays
and as of yesterday, 50’s television star Gale Storm and 80’s comedian and celebrity impersonator Fred Travolina (Bogey the organgutan from the 80’s cartoon, Shirttales).
Grace Jones was rumored to be dead. She certainly is not. Just type Grace Jones 2009 into YouTube. She is all over the place in Europe, Australia, and Japan with a new CD, Hurricane. She is still dead to Americans. We would rather listen to Britney Spears
unfortunately.
We’re such a gloom and doom society (meaning we like to hear negative news), and people like to be the first to break a dramatic story. I would say these rumors are started by a bunch of drama queens who want to be the first to announce some celebrity’s death, whether it’s true or not. I’m not upset by them because I consider them rumors until I verify them with a reputable news source. And depending on who the celebrity is, I may or may not consider it a great tragedy. . .
Jeff Goldblum eulogizing himself on The Colbert Report last night was totally hilarious, though.
RIP Billy Mays. Check out for updates http://billymayes.blogspot.com/
I think everybody agrees that the death of these truly iconic figures dying is depressing. All we have to do is mourn and forget.