Linda Bowles Committed Suicide

Nationally-syndicated columnist Linda Bowles died April 30 at Merced-area hospital after she committed suicide, the Paradise Post learned yesterday.

Bowles, 51, whose column appeared in the Chico Enterprise-Record, the Houston Post, Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, Arkansas Democ-rat-Gazette and WorldNetDaily.com, reportedly never recovered from the loss of her husband Warren. She also appeared on and was a frequent guest host for Liveline with Bruce Ses-sions show on KPAY.

In a statement released by her only daughter Mi-chelle Bowles early Wednes-day night she said, "The coroner's re-port will tell you she purposely overdosed on antidepressants. The reality is she died due to complications of the heart."

"To say she had a weak or failed heart would be untrue," the statement continued. "To say she suffered from a broken heart would be an understatement."

John Arguelles, a deputy in the Merced County Coroners office said Bowles' death is still under investigation.

"We haven't completed our investigation and we haven't ruled on the manner of death," Arguelles said.

Her death comes nearly a year after her husband, Warren, died of an inoperable brain tumor. The illness forced Bowles to discontinue her column for Creative Syndicate on Feb. 25, 2002.

In her column that appeared on WorldNetDaily she told readers "This may very well be the last column I will write … I can't see beyond the battle to the future."

Joseph Farah, the CEO and editor of WorldNetDaily, said yesterday Bowles' death was a loss and she never recovered from the death of her husband on May 31 of last year.

"She told me she couldn't live without him," he said. "I kept telling her that she could, just one day at a time. She was devastated by her loss and, frankly, never recovered emotionally from it."

"Linda Bowles was an unusually gifted writer," he said. "She had a way of reaching deep into people's souls with her use of the language. It was our honor at WorldNetDaily to carry her column until the day she suspended it due to the death of her husband."

Former Butte County Sheriff Scott MacKenzie said he met Bowles once at a political function and was impressed by her.

"She seemed to be a straight-forward, very sincere person," he said "who was an honest individual and who wrote exactly what she believed."

He called Bowles' death a "real tragedy and a real loss to those who read it and was a good conservative?"

Republican Assemblyman Rick Keene, who represents the Ridge, met with Bowles a few times for dinner and saw her give a couple of speeches.

"Every time she spoke, she spoke about how special her husband was," Keene said. "She adored him. It's very sad to hear and she was gracious person."

"She stimulated good debate, pulling no punches and that is rare in this day and age," he said.

The company that syndicated her column to papers like Enterprise-Record, Creative Syndicate Inc., didn't know about Bowles' death until a reporter called Wednesday morning asking about it. No one at Creative Syndicate Inc had any comment yesterday.

Her columns also appeared at TownHall.com and for the Conservative Chronicle. A secretary for the Conservative Chronicle said she was unaware of Bowles' death, but had no further comment and TownHall didn't return phone calls yesterday.

Bowles began her writing career through a weekly political column in California's Mariposa Guide. This opened the door for a regular column in the now-defunct Sacramento Union n where Farah was an editor.

She also wrote, various self-syndicated and freelance articles for newspapers across the country until she met Creative Syndicate's Rick 051, through Farah. That led to that company's decision to offer her a"syndicate contract," which Farah said was "very unusual for a practically unknown writer."

She was known to enjoy irritating liberals, telling Townhall.com that "I believe a large audience awaits a good, thorough whacking of left-wing icons and ideology, done with parody and satire."

"To me, Linda was not only a gifted writer," Farah said. "She was my friend — a valued friend. I am feeling the loss today.""

The HUGH tragedy of Her Loss is the loss of Her Potential Gift of her unique Wisdom to "The Rest of Us!"

When a "GREAT ONE" leaves us--Whether or not "By Their Own Hand,"--we loose a significant portion of the "Great Lessons of Life" we ALL must learn to continue our Civilization.

"Each Man's Death Diminishes Me--for I am Involved in Mankind..."

We are ALL "Involved in (Parts of) an organism called 'Humankind'..."

The Loss of Some Parts of our "Organism" is more Devastating than the "Loss" of other parts.

The Loss of Linda Bowles was a True Tragedy for our Species!-----WE Needed Her!

Doc

The culture has changed, or, more accurately, has been deliberately changed. People in this land at this time are generally not as tough as their ancestors were. People are softer, more sensitive, less obdurate, less durable, less long-suffering, and more easily hurt than before.

The social-engineering has been done at the behest of the liberal elite, probably (initially) with the best intentions. Even giving them that assumption of good intents, I have never understood nor agreed with their beliefs. Being "sensitive" is not necessarily a good thing.

Though I was born in 1970, I am, in many ways, a throwback to the earlier culture. Unlike most of my peers, I understand that most of life is (to some degree) tedious, most of that which is not tedious is worse, very few moments remain which are unadulteratedly pleasant, and that most good things take a LOT of time and effort - and are never certain of coming to pass. That you can do EVERYTHING right and STILL LOSE. This may be a bleak outlook on life, and by modern standards might be considered "insane", but it is just the way it is. It is neither right nor wrong, it merely IS.

Understanding this from my earliest age has allowed me to grow callous. Not cruel, mind you, but callous. Little things, temporary difficulties, minor pains, they simply do not touch me. Major pains (as in, the untimely death of my brother a few years ago) do touch me, wound me, hurt me deeply (after all, I remain human) but I have learned to accept the pain and let the wound turn into the inevitable -I say again: INEVITABLE- scar. Callouses on the soul have the same function as do callouses on the hands and feet: They spare the tender, vital parts from the inevitable pains of life and allow you to do the work that life demands. Psychological scars serve a purpose like unto physical scars: They patch up a wound, allow the surviving tissue to return to some level of function, prevent the wound from reopening and getting worse, and can serve the purpose of an ever-present reminder of where one has been and what one has endured.

There is nothing wrong with hard-bought callouses.
There is nothing wrong with honorable scars.

Where the modern culture fails of its notional good intentions is the failure to understand the vital function of callouses and scars. Far from being "bad" or otherwise undesirable, these toughenings allow one to survive relatively intact what would otherwise be crippling or fatal, and to ignore the sundry unpleasantries of life THE BETTER TO ENJOY THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE PLEASANT.

The modern overuse of prescription mood-altering drugs is a symptom of the liberal softness infecting our culture. We try to buffer every little pain, prevent every little trauma, alter the feel of the outcome of every natural zero-sum game. We have raised two full generations up under the dominant credo that one can do everything wrong and not only can but SHOULD still win, that all pain is flat-out bad and equally intolerable and to be doped-out or avoided or -God help me, the very notion makes me wish to vomit- paraded before one's peers for collective empathising and some mythic catharsis, that sensitivity to even the slightest or remotest thing is always good, that scars and callouses are always bad, that being tough is no virtue.

Liberals consider this a path to enlightened humanism.
I consider this an insanity, a denial of reality, a path to weakness, despair, and suicide over trivial matters.

I am not castigating Linda Bowles. I have no knowledge of her outlook on life, her toughness, and so far I have yet to suffer a like hurt, so I have no right to judge her response. However, my pessimism informs me regularly that soon or late I SHALL suffer a like hurt -save that I myself die before such a blow falls upon me- and I am reasonably certain that my callouses shall sustain me even then, that I will live to add to my collection of scars.

I am also not condemning suicide. There are a few scenarios which I can readily envision in which I would certainly kill myself. All of them, however, involve my own imminent and extremely unpleasant demise, so in those scenarios my act of will would merely be a more direct route to an end already certain. Suicide as commonly used as a permanent solution to a temporary problem? THAT... I do condemn.

People should be tougher than that.

Thank you for that wonderful post. You write eloquently, and put me to shame (I was born in 1970 also.).

I'd quote the whole article here, but I truly admire this portion:

The modern overuse of prescription mood-altering drugs is a symptom of the liberal softness infecting our culture. We try to buffer every little pain, prevent every little trauma, alter the feel of the outcome of every natural zero-sum game. We have raised two full generations up under the dominant credo that one can do everything wrong and not only can but SHOULD still win, that all pain is flat-out bad and equally intolerable and to be doped-out or avoided or -God help me, the very notion makes me wish to vomit- paraded before one's peers for collective empathising and some mythic catharsis, that sensitivity to even the slightest or remotest thing is always good, that scars and callouses are always bad, that being tough is no virtue.

My dad - from one of those "tougher" generations has met himself a New Age Aussie wife (they married so she wouldn't have to leave the US, and so he could sleep with someone every night), took on Gestalt at Esalen Institute in Big Sur. The nonsense coming out of his mouth after that made me cringe. Lots of "getting in touch" "sharing emotions and how they make you FEEL", etc. I let him know in no uncertain terms it was a load of garbage and he knew better. A year and a half later, and after being whacked twice by his Pacifist wife, he says he sees my point.

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