Posted on 02/06/2008 12:09:42 PM PST by Berlin_Freeper
No. I save my respect for people who earn it, like Dads who do their job and go home to be there for their families. People who off themselves and leave their family to suffer the consequences forfeit any hope of respect from me, because I've been on the receiving end of one of those self-destructive narcissists. I don't care if it's because they were addicted junkies or intentional suicides, they earn no credit for merely dying.
"Accidental overdose" is a euphemism. I don't give a damn what some medical examiner rules, putting six different redundant drugs into your mouth and swallowing them isn't an accident. It's at best reckless stupidity. Slipping in the bathtub is an accident, abusing drugs is not. Ledger wasn't a 6 year old mistaking the pills for candy. Is there anyone here on FR that DOESN'T know that taking 6 different depressants concurrently could kill you? It wasn't a "hidden danger", it says so right on the labels.
But I guess it helps the adoring fans to think their icon was the victim of tragic circumstances, instead of the epic failure he turned out to be.
Well, here's some more slaps in the face by reality: Judy Garland wasn't Dorothy, she was an aging junkie. Kurt Cobain was a drug-addled moron. Ernest Hemingway was a burnt out drunk. If Marilyn Monroe was a candle in the wind, it was a self-snuffing candle. Britney Spears is a pathetic attention whore, and when she finally manages to OD, she won't earn any respect for proving it.
It's all about being a survivor in the Jungle of Hollywood.
I just read this thread. It just seems odd that Heath Ledger would be dating an 80 pound anorexic in the first place. And Ms. Olsen certainly seems to be covering up something.
And I have to say, 98% of the posts on this thread suck. Talk about mean and heartless. And too many people trying to be funny.
#73 should have some links to the Ledger/Olsen story. It is said to be tight lipped in the Olsen camp, plus hands off.
Newest: http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_272618765.shtml
Excerpt: Michelle is guilt-ridden and friends say that she doesn’t want to be associated with Mary-Kate. After separating from Michelle in September, Heath’s life deteriorated rapidly, reportedly due to his grueling work schedule and re-immersion in the Hollywood party scene, in which Mary-Kate, 21, is a fixture.
According to an insider, Michelle left Heath because she didn’t want him partying near their 2-year-old daughter, Matilda: “Michelle did what she had to do to protect their daughter.”
Ledger had talked about his difficulty sleeping after back-to-back roles as a Bob Dylan figure in “I’m Not There” and the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” part of the “Batman” series that is due out this summer.
The combination of drugs could cause the brain and brain stem to “fall asleep,” halting heart and lung function.
“Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” Ledger told The New York Times in November. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.”
In the hours leading up to Ledger’s death two weeks ago, a housekeeper, identified as Teresa Solomon, arrived at the apartment about 12:30 p.m., a police source with knowledge of the investigation said.
She saw Ledger lying on a bed face down with a sheet pulled up around his shoulders and heard him snoring, the source said.
Masseuse Diana Wolozin arrived at the apartment about 2:45 p.m. to give Ledger a massage, according to the police source. About 15 minutes later, when he had not come out of the bedroom and the door remained closed, she went in, saw him lying in bed and set up a massage table.
She shook Ledger, but he did not respond, so she used his cell phone to call actress Mary-Kate Olsen, a friend of Ledger’s, in California, the source said.
Wolozin told Olsen that Ledger was unconscious, according to the police source.
Olsen reportedly told her that she would call private security people in New York.
At 3:26 p.m., Wolozin called 911 and told authorities Ledger was not breathing. While on the phone with dispatchers, Wolozin tried to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Ledger, but he was unresponsive.
Emergency personnel arrived seven minutes later, according to the police source, at about the same time as a private security person summoned by Olsen.
The medical technicians performed CPR on Ledger and used a cardiac defibrillator, but their efforts were in vain and he was pronounced dead at 3:36 p.m. By then, two other private security people summoned by Olsen had arrived as well as police.
His former fiancée, actress Michelle Williams, has asked the public to respect the need for her, the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Matilda, and others “to grieve privately.”
“My heart is broken,” Williams said in a statement issued last week via her publicist. “I am the mother of the most tender-hearted, high-spirited, beautiful little girl who is the spitting image of her father. All that I can cling to is his presence inside her that reveals itself every day. His family and I watch Matilda as she whispers to trees, hugs animals, and takes steps two at a time, and we know that he is with us still. She will be brought up in the best memories of him.”
Condolences poured in from Ledger’s friends and co-stars.
“He was a wonderful guy, he was a wonderful actor, he had a wonderful future ahead of him, and I liked him,” said actor Eric Roberts, who worked with Ledger in The Dark Knight.
Colleagues on Terry Gilliam’s film “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” which Ledger had been shooting in England, said the actor apparently had been suffering from a respiratory ailment in the days before he died.
Christopher Plummer told Entertainment Weekly that Ledger had a “terrible, lingering bug in London, and he couldn’t sleep at all. We all — I thought he’d probably got walking pneumonia.”
http://popcornjunkies.insidepulse.com/articles/73550/2008/02/06/ledgers-death-ruled-accidental-overdose.html
Pretty much it..ruled accidental, drugs were all legal drugs so perscribed or over the counter..Olsen could have been a friend, but no crime in being a friend. She’s a pretty fragile personality, herself. Ledger could have been taking on an intense work load to prove himself to his family and break from the party circuit. Olsen had just given a speech on anorexia in Feb, and described often she just wanted to give up.
Update: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/article485792.ece
MARY-KATE OLSEN has been rushed to hospital to have emergency surgery on a kidney infection.
The former child star made the dash alongside her twin-sister ASHLEY to the emergency room in New York yesterday.
Her rep NICOLE CARUSO said: “She’s resting comfortably and will be released in the next day or so.”
Mary-Kate has had a brief history of health problems in recent years.
She spent six weeks in rehab after suffering with anorexia and was reported to have a drug problem, which her publicists have always denied.
Always tragic for family and friends, whether celeb or not—a human tragedy
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