Three dead men

The only time this fractured society seems to be on the same page is when a Celebrity dies and we all rush to our favorite keyboard to commiserate, celebrate and share opinions.  When Kobe Bryant died in what seems like an especially needless accident -- why was the helicopter flying in conditions of poor visibility? -- the news was inescapable.  CNN had everything but the Chopin funeral march leading into commercial breaks.  Great player, great guy, terrible for his surviving family, a loss to the game and to western civilization, you know, the usual.  A few people, mostly women, remembered that one time he was credibly accused of raping a nineteen-year-old, but it was Too Soon.  "The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones," said Mark Antony, but it turned out he was kidding.  He would have appreciated what Erik Loomis has called "the Kobe-Industrial complex."  Americans like their dead heroes pristine.  Disturbing the mourners with facts will get you death threats, or at least a brief suspension.

I understand this.  When little John-John saluted his daddy's casket and America let out a collective sob, it was not the moment to talk about Marilyn Monroe or venereal disease.  No question, the rules have changed since 1963.  If you cheated on a college exam or got drunk and drove into a tree, you can expect it to be in your obituary, no matter what you may have done since.  And with Bill Cosby in prison, Harvey Weinstein on trial and Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, this is a particularly raw moment for crimes of sexual violence and the people who still seem to think they're no big deal.  A lot of men are astonished at how angry women are, and giving a medal to the popularizer of the term "feminazis" has only made them angrier.

When Kirk Douglas died at the age of 103, he left a trove of excellent movies, a heroic record of defying the McCarthy-era blacklist, and I'm sure a grieving family.  And almost the first thing to hit the internet was an old rape accusation reported by "an anonymous comment on a blind-item gossip blog" which might have originated with Robert Downey, Jr., who spent years seriously fucked up on drugs.  Apparently that's all it takes now, the alleged victim, Natalie Wood, having died in 1981.  I've read too much about the glory days of Old Hollywood to dismiss the story out of hand, but now I'm angry that this is how Kirk Douglas is being remembered.  And I wasn't that big a fan, as much as I admire Ace In the Hole, A Letter to Three Wives and Paths of Glory.  In law, you can't slander the dead.  You could start a rumor that Fred Rogers was a kiddie-diddler and a multitude would believe it.  Such is the state of play in 2020 CE.

So I keep checking, but nobody has yet accused Orson Bean of inappropriate touching or a long-term relationship with a goat.  He was 91 and it took two cars to kill him.   That's impressive enough, isn't it?