JFK Jr.
7.21.99

I really just don't care.

I just want to get that out of the way. And if I sound like an insensitive prick, I don't apologize. But I will explain.

I'm not older than I am. In other words, I didn't grow up and watch John John salute good-bye to his father, or crawl though a door under a desk in the white house. JFK Jr. was never a part of my life, or wishful life.

I'm not gay or a woman, so I never had the fantasy of meeting him and having him fall in love with me and living happily ever after as a Kennedy.

Except for being a quasi-extremist playboy, and creating the magazine George, I really don't know anything that he's done in his life.

So to hear that JFK Jr. died doesn't effect me. Mind you, I think it's a damn shame and a tragedy that people died like that, but that's it.

Should I be weeping? Should I have been so concerned that they couldn't find the bodies? *as of now, the bodies were found and brought back to land* Should I be so concerned with HOW the crash happened? I don't think so. Unless...

The only thing that would make me gain interest in this situation is to find, through autopsy or forensics, that the plane was sabotaged in some way. A nice fat conspiracy. That would interest me.

One of my coworkers thinks that this is just the latest in an extended contract put on the Kennedys, starting, of course, with John John's father.

A friend of mine thinks it might be part of the curse that the Rabbi put on Joe Kennedy back in the day; a Jewish curse lasting through three generations.

This kind of stuff interests me. A celebrity dying that was never a part of my life, no matter what his last name is, doesn't phase me.

Actually, the media attention started to annoy me, for two reasons...

First, if it was you and I in a plane that dove into the ocean... if I never had an instrument license to fly and shouldn't have been flying an a low-visibility situation or at night... if our bodies hadn't been found... do you think the media would've paid ANY attention to us? Do you think no one would come up and say, "well, hell, he didn't know how to fly at night... that's what's gonna happen."? We would just be another two people dead... just like the other 6,000 Americans that die every day that no one pays attention to.

Second, do you remember when Jim Henson died a few years ago? Do you remember the day it happened? Probably not. This might help... it was the same day that Sammy Davis, Jr. died.

The news went on and on about Sammy, and rightly so. But at the end of all the tributes and memorials for Sammy there was almost a footnote like, "Oh yeah, Jim Henson died today too. He created the Muppets." Damn, that annoyed me.

The media was more attached to Sammy, so he got props. Jim Henson, who so many of us grew up watching, just got ignored. So when the media blows up about a celebrity death, it just reminds me of how many deaths just get ignored, even celebrities.

So, there it is. To all the people out there that are just too polite to tell everyone that's buzzing around about the Kennedy Tragedy... some of us just don't care.

---

PS. I did, however, buy the July issue of George. Last issue before he died, right? You never know what's going to be worth money these days.