Reactions to Brittany Murphy's Death

I'm sure most - if not all - have heard about Brittany Murphy's untimely passing over the weekend. I'm also sure you've heard many people talk about how tired they are of hearing about her death.

I'm not.

What I am tired of is hearing about how other people are tired of hearing about Murphy's death.

The fact is she had many fans. People are interested in hearing news about her. She died. Many want to know all of the details surrounding her death. If you don't like it, change the friggin' channel.

I literally have only heard about it from Facebook - nothing else. Nothing on the channels I watch on TV, nothing from the radio stations I listen to and nothing from the Web sites I frequent (except for Facebook). If you don't want to hear about it, don't.

People also said they were tired of hearing about Brett Favre, but ESPN and ESPNRadio's ratings were noticeably higher during their in-depth coverage of all his retirements/comebacks.

And every time a celebrity dies a young death, I always hear people complain about the news coverage, saying things like, "Young people die every day. How come they don't devote this much coverage to them?"

The answer to that question is those young people weren't in Clueless OR 8 Mile.

Sure, it's sad when people die, but in reality, you don't care all that much if a kid dies from malaria, AIDS or whatever. If someone tells you Tom Hanks was dead, you'd race to the remote control to find out more. If a kid in Nicaragua passes, you say "Oh. That's sad," and then you go back to what you were doing.

I know Brittany Murphy was no Tom Hanks, but the comparison is still valid. You don't know anything about those other kids dying, but you do know quite a bit about Brittany Murphy. It's the news' job to bring noteworthy information to the masses. And a celebrity's death is noteworthy.

The fact is celebrities are a figurative part of our families. We pay to see them in theaters, we pay to watch them at home. They might be in our homes more often than some literal members of the family.

When a family member dies, nobody expects the family Christmas card to give equal coverage to deaths across the country. Why do you then expect CNN to give a 20-something from Mobile, Alabama, the same play as somebody you've actually heard of?

It doesn't make sense, and neither does the "what about all the others?" argument.

In conclusion, the news can only repeatedly give you the information you let it. Change the channel or go to a different Web site. If you don't, then you're to blame for the constant coverage.