A Bad Day For Guys Named John

John Ritter and Johnny Cash, both here yesterday but gone today. One a shock, the other no surprise at all.

When June Carter Cash died last spring, my first thought was "Johnny's not far behind." I hadn't seen him in ages, didn't know he was sick, but suspected he wouldn't last long without her. Saw him on Larry King a few days ago, a rebroadcast from last November; he looked awful, much older than 70, talking about some obscure neurological (?) problem recently diagnosed. (This morning, the paper says diabetes.) King asked him about the Man in Black phenomenon, what that was all about--why black? and when he played for convicts, did he consider himself one of them? Goodnatured but clearly tired--tired of posing--Cash replied that he wore black because he looked good in it, and no, he never identified with the Folsom guys, his brushes with the law really never amounted to much. (A graphic reminder to the rest of us that celebrities are manufactured commodities, not the people they "really" are, at all.) All he really was was That Voice. Nothing not-real about THAT, the voice that Bono reportedly claimed made any other man on the stage with Johnny Cash feel like a sissy. And that voice, we get to keep. That, he left behind, and no surprises.

But when I saw the headline about John Ritter, I gasped. Held my breath while I read that, at only 54, he keeled over on the set yesterday and died, cruelly, of an undiagnosed kink in his aorta. I wasn't a big fan (sitcoms do less than nothing for me), but I liked his other work. Ritter's public persona was wholesome, affable, decent. (Which he may not have been, in person; I don't know, never met him, but big comedians I have run into have been at least grumpy, and some downright vile.) Whoever he really was, Ritter was working well, back at the top of his game at 54, working the goofy grin, and then--whammo. Curtains. No notice. The big dirt nap, not even a nod to the wife and kids on the way down.

Here's a question: is life EVER fair? Does anybody EVER get what they deserve? Who or what determines just deserts? I suspect that somewhere in this category is an answer to Fabulous Fred's question the other day about why Americans are all so fat and depressed. Maybe the whole notion of deservingness is at the root of our discontent. The illusion that there is any such thing as a meritocracy, let alone life itself being one. Our attitude of entitlement--could that be (1) why we aren't happy in our amplitude of blessings, and (2) why most of the rest of the world hates us?

Comments

[marilyn]

I know a little bit about John Ritter and suspect that he was not par for the comedian course. He is second generation show biz. His father had a show on the little round black and white screen, the name of which I forget. Dad was named Tex Ritter and I remember him as a real nice cowboy with the first talk show which nobody knew what that was. I think he had kids on it, like from the audience, not from the casting agency, of which there werent any for kids either then. He seemed very much like the cowboys in my own family, which were more of the Larry McMurtry variety than the John Wayne variety. John Ritter also had a brother who had a profound disability, I think one of the congenital diseases associated with mental retardation along with the physical. From what I understand they were very close and John made his brother laugh growing up with his pratfalls. As you can probably tell I like the guy a lot, even if I didn't find his comedy always my favorite. I think he was a real one.