"Oh God," Jacqueline Kennedy said after learning the identity of her husband's murderer. "Some silly little Communist. He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights." That reality became so difficult for tens of millions of people to swallow that they bought into tales of the CIA, the mafia, or some other shady power assassinating John F. Kennedy. Ordinary people won't allow extraordinary lives to suffer ordinary deaths. Elvis Presley didn't die on the toilet; he's in aisle six at WalMart. The British Royal Family, not a car crash, killed Princess Diana. The Kennedys, rather than the drugs, offed Marilyn Monroe. It's less than a week since Michael Jackson's death. We don't know exactly how he died. When we do know, count on people telling us that we really don't know how he died. They do. Many can't accept that larger than life figures are mere mortals when it comes to death.

The more you read and find out about how bad off this guy was when he passed and how physically and mentally twisted he was, the sadder the situation becomes.

The details of his demise run in line with the topic of this post.

For those who idolized him, his was not a quiet or noble death as they would have hoped or liked to have believed.

Agree mostly, but of the people you cite, Monroe was in bed with the shady-est of characters.

Good article about her is here: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/spress/2009/06/17/marilyn-monroe-and-the-cheapening-of-women/

To take the Monroe story to the next level (or, down a few), somebody once wrote here:

"I remember seeing a story a few years ago when this happened, and the poor girl involved was saying how that porn life was supposed to be temporary for her. That she hoped to have a family some day, kids...and that now that she had AIDS, any hope of that sort of life was gone."

How, after not only exposing yourself on camera for all the world to see but being engaged in sex acts (not to mention the risk of disease), does one have a "normal" life of family and kids?

Although, I suppose there is hope that the twins Jenna Jameson and the aforementioned Tito Ortiz just had will be normal and well adjusted. But the odds are likely against it.

I agree, you can't have a normal life again, assuming that was your point (I think it was). Women deserve, and even have a right to, men's protection.

I heard once that Adam's great sin was not eating the apple that Eve gave him, but it was letting the snake into the garden in the first place.

It's become an outdated concept but I do think that women deserve and should expect protection from men.

But some of them these days make it pretty darn difficult if not impossible.

My contention has always been that society goes as women go and that a strong stable society is backboned by strong stable women.

So, where does that leave us today?