I wasn’t going to add anything to the MJ death gorge-fest, but I’d rather watch Thriller on endless repeat for another week than have to read another mawkish blog about ‘poor Farrah Fawcett’. Google her and you end up with twaddle like this:
“The person I really feel bad for in all this is Farrah Fawcett. After all those months of suffering with cancer, poor Farrah could barely get in 12 hours of death coverage before Michael Jackson came along and stole the spotlight.”
or equally obnoxious:
“And with that, Fawcett’s struggle was set aside. She became the follow-up story. For the first time, I really felt for Farrah.”
You’d think, in the case of the second blogger, that the whole dealing with cancer thing might be enough to elicit his sympathy, but no, it was the act of being usurped by Michael Jackson that made him really feel for her. Well that’s great, but she’s dead and probably not too bothered by the whole thing.
In fact if anything, she’s probably grateful. The measly 12 hours of death coverage that so affronts the first blogger is more than enough to cover her life. It’s not like there was that much to talk about in the first place: the hair; Charlies Angels; the red swimsuit photo and the accompanying Guinness Book of Records entry for most teenage wanks over a 70s icon; Ryan O’Neal – saint or tosser? – and cancer. That’s pretty much it. If MJ hadn’t died, the networks would have been scrambling around trying to find more to say about her and who knows what skeletons she had hidden away. Possibly the original Jaclyn Smith, given that the wooden version that appeared on Shear Genius was missing a personality.
And didn’t Farrah have her moment a few weeks ago with that documentary about her cancer? At least she was still around to know that 9 million people cared enough about her to watch it. Not as impressive as the 30 million that watched the American Idol final, but hers was reality TV that’s a bit too real. Aside from fellow cancer sufferers it probably appealed to the same ghoulish people that buy the books in the airport about the child who suffered horrific abuse by their parents but went on to make something of themselves. Usually called ‘Daddy You’re Hurting Me’, or some version thereof.
So it’s over and now Ryan O’Neal can carry on playing the grieving lover/friend/ex but without having the awkward tag of ‘widower’ dragging him down when he looks for a new 20 year old girlfriend. What exactly was the purpose of all the marriage-talk? If he’d wanted to marry her it would have been pretty damn easy. Just buy a couple of rings and get someone over to the house. Jade Goody and her good-for-nothing layabout managed it before she died, so why couldn’t he?
I’m just pissed off at the self-righteous bollocks that says Farrah has missed out, that there’s so much more to say and yet not enough room to say it because MJ stole her thunder. I’m sad that she died and that the last few years of her life were so rough, just as with any cancer sufferer. But lets not pretend that she was anything extraordinary. Charlie’s Angels did not define or reshape the television landscape, Farrah Fawcett did not have crossover appeal and nor was she embroiled in sex or drugs scandals. As far as we know, TMZ.
I trust that my own death will be in some way overshadowed by the demise of a greater celebrity than I. Someone beloved and yet fundamentally flawed so that I shall appear almost saintish by comparison. And as I’m in pre-ordering mode, I’d like it to be quick, so I can have that shocked ‘where were you when?’ aspect. But give me some warning so I’m not doing something odd, like sitting in a hotel wardrobe with fruit jammed into all my orifices and a copy of Melissa Gilbert’s biography about Little House on the Prairie. It’d just make it so much harder for Elton John to adapt Candle in the Wind.