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Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
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JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review May 8, 2007 / 20 Iyar, 5767

That's disinter-tainment

By Malcolm Fleschner


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | As a journalist, I'm frequently surprised at how misinformed most members of the general public are about what it takes to be a media commentator. True, a great deal of our work involves hard-nosed news-gathering, by which I mean attending exclusive cocktail parties to discuss with other highly paid media commentators how misinformed most members of the general public are.


But beyond this sort of journalistic legwork (so called because standing around chatting for hours is brutal on the calves), success in the news business today often depends on developing an eye for emerging trends. Not to toot my own horn, but I did get in "on the ground floor" by purchasing Google stock when it was trading at just $450 (I bought 1/8 of a share) while I also recall watching Emmitt Smith during his record-setting football days and thinking to myself, "Sure, but what people really want to see is how he dances the Flamenco."


So you can probably imagine how my trend-attuned ears pricked up when I heard about plans to exhume the corpse of legendary escape artist Harry Houdini. If these plans go through, Houdini will join such other notables as Jesse James, President Zachary Taylor and the Big Bopper in the ranks of famous people whose bodies have been dug up in the past few years so that forensic science can answer unfounded questions about their deaths that almost no one was really asking.


This trend is driven mainly by the descendents of celebrities looking to bask in what's left of a long-dead forebear's reflected glory. First they find some oddball who's dreamed up a conspiracy theory about how their famous ancestor was murdered, faked his own death, had a vestigial tail, died while carrying Elvis' love child, etc. Next they send out a press release and — bam! — the following morning Matt Lauer is at the door with a camera crew and a set of shovels.


This was what happened to 1950s rocker The Big Bopper, who was dug up at his son's request in January. The ostensible reason for the exhuming was to settle rumors that the Bopper had suffered a gunshot wound aboard the plane prior to the crash that famously also took the lives of fellow music stars Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.


Predictably enough, the resulting autopsy revealed nothing unexpected except that the Big Bopper was, in his son's words, "in remarkable shape" for a 48 year-old corpse (The article where I got this information didn't mention how many other 48-year-old corpses the "Little Bopper" had dug up as a basis for comparison).


But my question is, what if they had found a bullet hole in the Big Bopper? Then what? Would they have dug up Buddy Holly to test his fingers for gunshot residue? And then, of course, to determine exactly what happened on the plane that fateful night, they'd have to unearth Ritchie Valens to see whether the "La Bamba" singer had died with his hand outstretched and his mouth shouting the word, "Nooooooo!"


So now, unless the old master can pull one last miraculous escape, Houdini will be the latest famous corpse unearthed, this time to prove whether he died, as long believed, of appendicitis, or was poisoned by his enemies in the phony psychic community. And, just to avoid having to do it all over again later, they also may be checking his tissue for signs of the newly discovered "gay" gene.


Well, since there seems to be no stopping this trend, I figure I'll just try to capitalize on it instead. That's why I'm reinvesting all my Google profits in a startup company that publishes maps to celebrity graves. But now they give you a free home DNA kit with every purchase!

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Malcolm Fleschner is a humor columnist for The DC Examiner. Let him know what you think by clicking here.


Previously:

05/02/07:You Are (not) Getting Sleepy...
04/18/07: No time like Father Time
03/15/07: Deface the Nation
03/08/07: More gifts? You shouldn't have
02/22/07: Relationships can be such a chore
12/05/06: Who's calling the shots?
11/09/06: I'm taking selling to a whole new level
10/27/06: Some skills are beyond repair
10/18/06: You can't tech it with you
10/04/06: Award to the wise
08/24/06: Phrased and Confused
08/09/06: We're Gonna Party Like it's $19.99
07/19/06: Just Singing in the Brain
05/24/06: Who says you can't go home again?
05/11/06: When nightly news stories go off script
04/26/06: Cents and sensibility: A thought for your pennies
03/16/06: The day the Muzak died
02/23/06: Checkbook diplomacy begins at home
02/15/06: Today's toys: Where learning means earning



© 2006, Malcolm Fleschner

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