Jeez, I mean, people will talk about anything to keep their flock scared. I was on my way to the movies last night and flipped through the channels on the am dial trying to pick up a sports show when I landed on some guy evangelizing the death of actor Heath Ledger. He quoted some Starkbucks barista, who said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that Ledger was seen a lot in his NY neighborhood with his daughter on his shoulders and that he [Ledger] "seemed like a great father."
You can probably see where I'm going with this. The radio host, who admitted to being a conservative, ranted about how Ledger overdosed, and how could he possibly have been a good father if he was on drugs? Now, this is a California radio station here. Understandably it's a conservative talk show targeted specifically to his audience, with the same old tired references to drugs are bad, actors (who are mostly liberals or at least libertarians) are f*cked up, and Hollywood is a cesspool.
Most of that is true. But alcohol is more destructive than sleeping pills, and someone's husband's dead and it might've been an accident, so shut up.
I don't know Heath Ledger apart from the hit-or-miss career he's had as an actor; I don't care in the least about his demons and personal life because I have my own. I do think his performance in Brokeback Mountain was extraordinary; Knight's Tale was a terrible movie but I blame the writers.
No, the tragedy of this whole mess is he was young but the fact is he had a career in an industry that deconstructs people. And now radio hosts and bloggers like myself have something to talk about. Thankfully, I don't gossip on this thing. I talk about my writing projects West Coast Hearts and occasionally Dryline Rhapsody and North of Here. No, I talk about me. And I'm not dead. Yet.
