No, There Is Not A Conspiracy to Kill Off Random Celebrities

Over the past two weeks, a smidgen of people involved with entertainment in different ways have all passed on. Obviously, the biggest one of these is Michael Jackson, but they've ranged to the passing of names like 70s sex symbol Farrah Fawcett to TV pitchman Billy Mays to the passing today of Karl Malden, who starred in A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront. Morbidly, people are asking "who's next?" as if there's some sort of conspiracy to kill people in the middle of June. But let's look at the fact that most of these names, bar the freak accident that killed Mr. Mays and the possible overdose that took Jackson's life, all died of something that naturally happens all the time to people. Cancer, as sad as it is, happens to millions every year and takes away many of those who try to fight it and it took Farrah's life as if she were just your average 62 year old woman.

People seem to forget when tragedy strikes that death is not discerning. It is often random, but it's not discerning. This also isn't Final Destination here. Billy Mays didn't die because death was having a bad morning. He died because of a freak accident that occurred and cannot rationally be explained as to why it happened or why the tire busted from that airplane and baggage hit him on the head and likely led to his death.

On the same note with Farrah's passing, some people make it out of cancer treatment and others don't. But it is forgotten that death is one of the more random developments in our world simply because any moment can be interrupted by a gunshot or a car wrecking into the side of a house or something that often cannot rationally be explained.

Or it can simply be attributed to age. It is also forgotten that Malden was 97 when he died. The guy was out of acting for years and was obviously winding down his life. Gale Storm, who got a passing mention as a notable dead celebrity, was 87 years old. Ed McMahon was 86 years old and had not been seen in public in quite a while. All of these losses are tragic, but the fact that all of them died (all of natural causes) at the same week or so period is entirely coincidental.

More importantly, there isn't a conspiracy to kill more of these celebrities off. Sydney Pollack died last year in late May last year. Was it a part of some conspiracy to off the guy that directed Three Days in the Condor? No. He simply died of a disease that has a known history of killing people.

And sadly, things like that occur. But like a lot of things in life, many deaths "in a row" can't be explained as anything more than a sad series of random coincidence.

(Yes, I know I've been covering death a bit too much lately. The next blog will probably be happier when, you know, I get to it. Thanks for supporting FID in any means, especially if you bought this on Kindle. Your support is just awesome.)