Someone you’ve never met has died. How does that make you feel? Clearly, the rational response is to talk only about that death for the next week, or at least until Charlie Sheen does something weird again.
Spoiler alert: we’re all going to die. On a cosmic scale, we’re going to die very, very soon. The human species as a whole will one day perish. Before or after that, the earth will be devoid of all life. The cosmos as we know it will likely end in heat death. That’s a part of life. When there are over 6 billion people on the Earth and 70,000 of them die every day, how odd that someone in the public eye would be the thing to ruin your day.
Obviously I’m not talking about people who were close to the late Elizabeth Taylor. Let’s be clear: we mean no disrespect toward her or her bereaved family. But celebrity death is a strange thing to affect a culture. I’m not making a judgment call. Just sharing an observation.