You're realizing your age today if you grew up in the 1970s or '80s. Farrah Fawcett, whose iconic image was as ubiquitous on the bedroom walls of American teenage boys as Kim Il Sung's was in the homes of North Koreans, died of cancer at 62 yesterday. Age is the cruel fate of all sex symbols. In Fawcett's case, she not only contended with Father Time but with the public's changing tastes that dated what once symbolized sex. Demographics, and Sir-Mix-a-Lot, killed the bleach-blond anorexic's pin-up girl monopoly. But even twenty years after her heyday, '70s postergirl Fawcett so symbolized sex that her 1995 appearance in Playboy became the bestselling issue of the 1990s. To put this in perspective, an over-the-hill Farrah Fawcett beat Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, and Denise Richards in their primes. Six years after Farah Fawcett appeared on the bestselling poster of all time, Michael Jackson released the bestselling album in history. Thriller was so big that, not only did it inspire fashion and dancefloor trends, it outsold numbers two and three on the all-time list combined. Jackson, who before our eyes morphed from cuddly, precocious singing/dancing machine to the world's biggest pop star to Howard Hughes, died yesterday too. For Jackson, life's victory lap--that even an overweight and jumpsuited Elvis enjoyed--eluded him. The last image embedded in the public's mind is that of Michael Jackson in a courtroom rather than on a stage. A court of law acquitted him of sexually abusing a minor. The court of public opinion convicted him of being strange. Seeing Farrah Fawcett in her red bathing suit, or Michael Jackson moonwalking, brings us back to a time when we were young. News of their deaths reminds us that we're old.

The three prophecy has been filled...McMahon, Fawcett and Jackson.

While I can give credit to Jackson for his work,I don't think he was acquited in the court of public opinion, or mine, of the charges against him. The nature of those charges overshadows anything else he ever did in life, as well they should.

I find the slobbering over Jackson by the public and the media hypocritical, as when he was alive they feasted on his weirdness and his troubles.

I would agree. The slobbering is obnoxious. This was not a great man (boy?). He as a decent entertainer who was very weird and marginally dangerous to children and himself.

Like all beautiful icons, through no fault of her own but as dictated by time, Fawcett left the public's consciousness long ago. Her ending though was so sad but not unexpected as we all understand.

Jackson was wonderfully talented, but his creative output ceased about 20 years ago. Since the late '80s he has been notable for nothing as much as his unbalanced mind, behavior, and checkbook. The media continues the unrelenting attention that in all likelihood contributed to his madness. Good grief, stop.

"The media continues the unrelenting attention that in all likelihood contributed to his madness."

People like him are the reasons that media exist and vise versa. Without the media attention that he obviously so craved, he would likely not be as famous or well known.

All depends on how one handles it and Jackson was not equipped to handle much.

Jackson was not equipped to handle much.

Now that is tasteful understatement.

Well??

"Jackson was not equipped to handle much."

Apparently he handled children too much. I will mourn no ones death who has hurt an innocent. Rot in Hell MJ.

After you get past his music, which was great, I will remember him mostly living in the white community, like some other Black celebs, but when they get in trouble they immediately discover their Blackness, for their own benefit and surround themselves with Black Radicals; and Black people except that.
Back around 1990, I am now 67, I loved his music and taped his TV concerts; on VHS. When I played them back my 15 year old son thought that was kind if weird that his Father loved his music. He has since died but I wonder if he was happy I did or embarrassed that I did.