John Gibson is a pathetic excuse for organic material. We all know this. However, there are some people out in the real world who don’t really know who John Gibson is to begin with. It seems no one is more concious to this fact than Gibson himself, who seems to make career descisions based on how many people he can piss off. He did it with John Stewart once, which I guess might have raised him up a notch or so in the media’s collective concsiousness. But Gibson likes to think big, and what’s bigger right now than Heath Ledger’s untimely death? Besides Gibson’s ego, that is.

The FOX News employee decided to, like all media outlets responsibly did, make a not of Ledger’s death on his program. Reasonable, decent human beings stop there. Johnny Boy didn’t. Think Progress kept track, though, especially as Gibson joked that Legder committed suicide as a result of the economy:

GIBSON: Maybe he had a serious position in the market.

TOM SULLIVAN: And possibly today, he looked at the window and said…

GIBSON: “Oh my God.”

SULLIVAN: His name’s not Keith Bledger, right?

GIBSON: He was depressed about yesterday’s downturn in the world stock markets.

We also know that a FOX News man isn’t a FOX News man without somehow creating a link between human tragedy and the Democrats, though:

GIBSON: Apparently Heath Ledger was suicidal and his friends saw it coming. I think he watched the Clinton-Obama debate last night. I think he was an Edwards guy, cause he saw his Edwards guy was just completely irrelevant.

Ugh. The saving grace is that, if we know anything about this world, people car about their movie stars. Ahmadinejad or Chavez, not so much. Offend Hollywood, though, and the people will clamor. Heads will be handed to the masses and we can only hope that Gibson, this sorry excuse for a human being who seems to link success to the demeaning of others’ suffering, will be the first sacrifice.

UPDATE: Gibson’s FOX co-worker, O’Reilly, actually aired a segment about the lack of “anything really egregious” as a result of Ledger’s death.

Featured Song: “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts” by X

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Sources:
John Gibson Mocks ‘Weirdo’ Heath Ledger’s Death Think Progress
O’Reilly: ‘I really don’t go’ on the Internet Think Progress

Perhaps of the greatest of indivuals apart of the American tradition of doing crazy things for attention, Evel Knievel rose to prominence in the 1970s by jumping over shit on a motorcycle. He retired in 1980, and yet, for some reason, I still knew who he was when I first started to know about things as a little kid in the early 90s.

Since then, sensationalist entertainers have foregone much of the, er, refinement of Knievel’s whole shtick: the most significant among the legion of idiots he inspired are the guys from Jackass. His cultural impact is undeniable. After all, would the Fonz have gone and jumped the shark if Knievel hadn’t done it first?

Source: “Iconic Daredevil Evel Knievel Dies at 69,” Associated Press

Thanks for the memories, Goulet.

Today is a popular day to die it would seem. But while others are devoting words to Ingmar Bergman and, we suppose, Tom Snyder, those losses were trumped by the death of Houston’s ABC 13 Eyewitness News commentator Marvin Zindler. He died of cancer at 85, probably due to overexposure to the ice machine slime he spent his life battling against. For full coverage of the death that is no doubt being felt in every corner of the greater Houston area, visit ABC 13. We leave you with Zindler’s trademark sign off and the memory of a life well spent.

Of the hundreds of millions of dollars the Bakkers bilked from their followers through their Praise the Lord Network, they diverted a mere $3.7 million for themselves. That, among today’s leaders - political, evangelical or both - makes Tammy Faye quite virtuous indeed. The craziest thing about her passing is we just saw her like three nights ago on Larry King. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Featured Song: “When I’m Gone”by The Carter Family

Fire is generally bad for business

It’s easy to read about how a stupid fire accidentally burnt up the building that houses the indoor portion of Eastern Market. But looking at this picture of this man coming to grips with the destruction of the business his family has owned for four generations is heartbreaking. As a cheesemonger, I can say with some limited authority that cheese is not necessarily a profitable business. It may be expensive, but unlike say, an expensive shirt, cheese goes bad. The amount of waste is huge, and to see cheese you really have to love it. I had only been to bowers once, and that was before I started selling cheese, and I could see that they were a tight community and they had fun. I’m sure that the same could be said for every business destroyed in the fire. These people put the emphasis on the customer and were truly a part of DC; much more than any monument. The rebuilding has already begun, but let’s at least recognize what’s been lost. For all that to be ruined is really fucked up.

Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first post-Soviet leader, died yesterday. In the early 1990s there was a brief moment during which the thugs than have run that country for the past 500 years were on vacation. Yeltsin was watching the shop during that time. He will be missed, but probably not so missed that anyone will investigate how exactly he died. [NYT, WP, BBC]