Rolling Obituary Thread 2024

I mean, obviously his whole saga is more complex than that - that epic documentary series from a few years back nailed how his story touched upon so many ruptures of injustice in America, how flawed a man he was even though he was celebrated as an exemplar. But definitely fuck this guy.

Here's hoping TV runs a "Naked Gun" movie in tribute.

ok seeing cancer

i was wondering whether it wasnt a stretcher falls down multiple sets of steps before catapulting into a burning building accident

lol

Or a low speed car crash.

Robert MacNeil

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/04/12/robert-macneil-dead-newshour/

Weirdly, MacNeil and Jim Lehrer were both present at JFK's assassination

Oh so that's the conspiracy

They keep knocking off witnesses don’t they

I heard an interview with Lehrer years ago, and while he doesn't necessarily believe in conspiracy theories, he said he heard a shot coming from the grassy hill.. he conceded that it may have been a trick of acoustics, but he remembered turning to look in that direction

Roberto Cavalli, fashion designer.

Worlds oldest conjoined twins George and Lori Schappell

hopefully both of them

yes, both of them.

i know nothing about them at all but i hope they had a happy life

Quite an eventful life, sounds pretty good - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lori_and_George_Schappell

my gosh, glad they made the most of the tough hand they were dealt

Eleanor Coppola, 87. My Blu-Ray set of Apocalypse Now includes Hearts of Darkness as a bonus disc.

Mister Cee

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/arts/music/mister-cee-dj-dead.html

I'm not sure Hearts Of Darkness isn't a better movie than Apocalypse Now

Makes a great double feature with Burden of Dreams.

rico wade of organized noize and the dungeon family, 52

A lot about Eleanor Coppola in Sam Wesson's Coppola book.

Wasson...

this is a good tribute. i want to give a shout-out to the companion book to The Story of English series that PBS/MacNeil did in 1986. that book taught me a lot. even if i have forgotten it all now...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LKupNgYU4M

i love that Jim Lehrer famously never voted in his time doing the news. so that he could stay impartial.

Journalists not voting to remain impartial is seriously old school - it used to be common amongst Golden Age anchor/news people.

Faith Ringgold

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/13/arts/faith-ringgold-dead.html?smid=url-share

Deadly Derek dead.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/apr/15/derek-underwood-outstanding-england-cricket-spinner-dies-aged-78

The not-voting thing seems especially dumb these days. This quote from Peter Baker of the NYT (from 2020) sounds like someone trying to contort himself into never feeling empathy.

"I try hard not to take strong positions on public issues even in private, much to the frustration of friends and family. For me, it’s easier to stay out of the fray if I never make up my mind, even in the privacy of the kitchen or the voting booth, that one candidate is better than another, that one side is right and the other wrong."

I've got a lawyer friend who iirc didn't vote while she worked for a series of federal judges, and only resumed voting when she took a teaching job in the private sector.

Crank psychiatrist and 'satanic panic'/repressed memory promoter Bennett Braun, truly one of the worst people pushing all that garbage at its height, and easily culpable for a lot of lingering damage on a wide number of fronts. An ice-cold obituary in that clearly nobody had a good word for him at the end, it seems. Even the final lines show he was still rotten:

After temporarily losing his medical license in Illinois, Dr. Braun moved to Montana, where he received a new state license and opened a private practice.

But in 2019, one of his patients, Ciara Rehbein, sued him for overprescribing medication that left her with a permanent facial tic. She also filed a complaint against the Montana Board of Medical Examiners for allowing him a license, despite knowing his past.

Dr. Braun lost his license to practice medicine in Montana in 2020.

wow, the details there, just evil.

truly a grade A creep

Deadly Derek dead.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/apr/15/derek-underwood-outstanding-england-cricket-spinner-dies-aged-78

― My God's got no nose... (Tom D.), Monday, April 15, 2024 1:48 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

was sad to learn he was on the first "rebel" tour to Apartheid South Africa

Yes but then I don't exactly associate cricketers with progressive politics.

Graeme Naysmith of Pale Saints

Some very sad news here to report, the passing of Graeme Naysmith of Pale Saints. Thoughts with his family and friends. 🙏 Image taken from FB. pic.twitter.com/hRRFN6vwsD

— Andrea (@parramaterial) April 16, 2024

Yeah, just rotten to see that. What a sound he had.

Oh no, that’s shocking. I’ll be giving Comforts of Madness a good kicking today, one of my favourite guitar albums of all time.

Bob Graham:

https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/former-us-senator-and-florida-governor-bob-graham-dead-at-87/

One of those guys I remember as being on CNN constantly during the Clinton presidency.

He was the obsessive diarist, right?

"He kept a meticulous diary, noting almost everyone he spoke with, everything he ate, the TV shows he watched and even his golf scores."

Minus the golf scores, he was Andy Warhol.

he was no william lyon mackenzie king

Florida politics seemed so relatively normal back during his governorship

Yep -- and for a while the only truly bipartisan figure we ever had.

The political media's obsession with the diary keeping during the Iraq War was Example #4518 of why we're doomed.

James Dean, Founding Director of NASA Art Program, 92
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/science/space/james-dean-dead.html

James Dean, a landscape painter who ran a NASA program that invited artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Norman Rockwell and Jamie Wyeth to document aspects of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects, died on March 22 in Washington. He was 92.

His son Steven confirmed the death, at an assisted living facility.

From the final Mercury mission in 1963 until 1974, Mr. Dean gave dozens of artists access to astronauts, to areas near the launchpads at Cape Canaveral (and the Kennedy Space Center) and to ships that recovered astronauts after their ocean splashdowns.

Mr. Dean believed that artists offered a perspective that could not be found in photographs.

Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band.

Damn, well that just leaves Jaimoep