Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Crikey

In a world swimming with the overly tedious reporting regarding Rosie O'Donnell returning to television with The View, Katie Couric taking over an evening news cast, and the first images of the borrowed child that Tom Cruis-azy is trying to pass off as Suri, it's nice to know that there's some sanity left.

Who would've expected that the sanity would come from the camp of the Crocodile Hunter. For those that somehow escaped the news, Steve Irwin was killed while filming a segment with some stingrays for a new show. Of course, this means that his death has been captured on video, and people are clamoring for its release.

The big question is, "Why do people want to see this?" Are we that fascinated with the death of celebrities that we want to watch a man in his final moments? Thankfully, Irwin's manager was recently on Larry King and practically begged, once the video was released by the police from their investigation, that it be destroyed, never to see the light of day. Of course, someone somewhere is going to end up getting ahold of a bootleg, and "One Barb in Irwin" will end up outselling "One Night in Paris" handily. After all, if there are "Faces of Death" films (and a full series of them), then of course there's going to be interest in what could quickly amount to being a snuff film.

Ultimately, there are people who also believe that Irwin was completely guilt free in this exchange, when it should be pointed out that he has a history of prodding animals that were otherwise docile into a state of aggression, all for the benefit of the camera. The scariest thing of all is that Irwin was always so willing to pump out the notion about the danger he was in while dealing with these creatures, he would probably be one of the first ones to suggest mass producing the video of his demise.

Crikey indeed.

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