Grim Reader, June 24, 2011: Clarence Clemons, Yelena Bonner and Bill Haast
by Michael Schaffer
JUNE 24, 2011 TAGS:
The obits this week for Clarence Clemons feel like passages from one of the songs by his longtime collaborator and bandleader, Bruce Springsteen. “He was the spirit of the E Street Band, and the oaken staff that Bruce Springsteen leaned on,” says Newark’s Star-Ledger. “Clemons seemed to be a character out of a storybook — or better yet, a widescreen movie about the triumph of a romantic gang of rock ’n’ roll renegades.” The magical language of myth and lore also permeates obits from beyond the borders of New Jersey. The New York Times evokes the “unbreakable camaraderie between Mr. Springsteen and his sax man,” as if it were a verse from “No Surrender;” “A brotherhood loses its big man,” declares a Philadelphia Inquirer headline.
Brotherhoods! Comrades! Renegades! In fact, there’s plenty of life-story detail in the coverage: A minister’s son, the gigantic Clemons had a college football scholarship but got injured. He became a superstar with Springsteen’s Born to Run album. On its cover, “a spent yet elated Mr. Springsteen leans on a shoulder to his right for support; the flip side revealed that it belonged to Mr. Clemons,” the Times explains. Later, Clemons branched into acting and solo projects, but returned repeatedly to the E Street Band, playing a massive 2009 tour even as his knees required replacement surgery. The party poopers at the Washington Post bring out a rock critic to note that “Nobody would argue that he was a ground-breaking musician,” while arguing that his symbolism as a race-transcending friend was key to the band’s blue-collar appeal.
But pretty soon, it’s back to the mythology, with critic Anthony DeCurtis explaining that “Bruce created a whole mythology for the Jersey shore on his early records — a created landscape like in literature.... All the guys in the band had nicknames, they all had a role and the one who had the biggest role was Clarence — the Big Man.” Their meeting is mentioned in a Springsteen song and, according to the Times, “few E Street Band shows were complete without a shaggy-dog story about the stormy night the two men met at a bar in Asbury Park.” Naturally, that shaggy-dog story appears in just about every Clemons obit.
Gross-out stuntman
The straight obits for Jackass star Ryan Dunn remember him as a man who “along with his cast mates made Americans cringe and snicker through vulgar stunts in their multimillion-dollar television and movie franchise,” in the Associated Press’ words. One gross-out stunt highlight cited in many of the obits: the episode where Dunn swam in raw sewage. Getting other stunts into family newspapers requires creativity: The Philadelphia Inquirer references one that “involved a toy car, a condom, his rectum, and hospital X-rays.” But the circumstances of Dunn’s death at 34 overshadowed the story of his life in this week’s coverage. He wrecked his Porsche in a late-night, high-speed accident, hours after reportedly posting on Twitter pictures of himself drinking. It wasn’t the week’s only regrettable tweet: As news broke, film critic Roger Ebert pushed out a message that “friends don’t let jackasses drink and drive.” Ebert said he’d probably posted too soon. But Dunn’s demographic is more about Twitter than formal obits; several outlets commissioned stories about the Twitter response to his death -- most of which was more charitable than Ebert’s.
“Beacon of freedom”
Yelena Bonner was “a constant beacon of freedom in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, an advocate for democracy in Russia in the past decade, and the widow of Nobel Peace Prize winning Andrei Sakharov,” says the Boston Globe. The obits are inconsistent in how to play the third of those factors. The Wall Street Journal’s lede declares that Bonner’s “marriage to the Nobel Peace laureate Andrei Sakharov vaulted her into a life of dissidence and exile.” But the Washington Post says she “was a prominent activist even before she met Sakharov.” Either way, the story of her life is dramatic: A daughter of communists, she had a father who was killed by Stalin; she married the father of the Soviet H-bomb, then became his link to the outside world after he was isolated for criticizing the invasion of Afghanistan. It’s a measure of her success that Mikhail Gorbachev, who for a time was Sakharov’s jailer, issued a lavish condolence; it’s a measure of Russia’s troubles that the Kremlin said nothing.
The Imelda Marcos of Zambia
Overseas, most media note that when Frederick Chiluba was first elected, “he was portrayed as the Zambian Lech Walesa,” as the Telegraph puts it. Unfortunately, the obits make clear that the man who democratically ousted his country’s founding autocrat became known as the Zambian Imelda Marcos. Having failed to rewrite the constitution to allow a third term, the diminutive Chiluba turned power over to a vice president he thought would be friendly; instead, a corruption investigation followed: “During his decade in office, Chiluba spent more than $500,000 in a single shop, Boutique Basile, in Geneva,” the Independent says. “The shop's owner testified that payment sometimes arrived in suitcases stuffed with cash. Zambia's anti-corruption task force seized trunks stuffed with designer suits, monogrammed shirts, silk ties, pyjamas and dressing gowns as well as more than 100 pairs of size 6 shoes, each with raised heels.” Oops. The New York Times, though, doesn’t let the investigatory triumphs get in the way of the sad ending: Chiluba beat the rap, his corruption-busting successor died, and the current president praised the old crook as a “damn good president.”
Helping Oskar Schindler
The New York Times and the Telegraph both carry obits for Mietek Pemper, the Jewish WWII labor camp inmate who used his status as a stenographer for the camp’s sadistic boss to help industrialist Oskar Schindler compile his famous list of Jews who were ultimately saved from the death camps. Pemper’s role was downplayed in the movie, but the obits are plenty dramatic.
Conspiracy theorists’ muse
The obits for James Hosty offer a good example of how editing wire copy can make a huge difference. A long version of the Associated Press obit appearing on Yahoo! News identifies Hosty as “the FBI agent who inherited Lee Harvey Oswald's file the year before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.” A trimmed-down version of the wire story in Michigan’s Daily Tribune labels him the “agent who many blamed for not investigating Lee Harvey Oswald more closely before President John F. Kennedy's assassination.” A New York Times obit also explains why Hosty figured in so many conspiracy theories: Among other things, he admitted getting a letter from Oswald, but destroying it after the assassination. In his memoirs, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, he blamed J. Edgar Hoover for the FBI’s not flagging the killer.
Man with a scan
A pair of innovators are in the obits this week: Alan Haberman is remembered by the Los Angeles Times as the man whose “vision put the bar code everywhere.” Haberman didn’t invent the now-ubiquitous UPC symbol, but he led a grocery industry committee that selected it after food companies fretted that different chains might demand different scannable shapes. “What was once a novel technology with uncertain prospects is so widespread as to be almost invisible,” says the New York Times. An anecdote that didn’t age so well: The New York Times obit recalls how, after one particularly tough 1973 UPC-planning meeting, Haberman treated the execs to dinner and a showing of Deep Throat, an outing that would not likely get an industrialist positive press today. ... Meanwhile, Jim Rodnunsky is feted as the inventor of the cablecam, a “system of using a cat's cradle of synthetic ropes to suspend a remote-controlled camera over an event,” according to the Los Angeles Times. The high-quality overhead shots transformed TV coverage of sports like football, and also popped up in big Hollywood movies.
Snake-bit
Finally, the week’s creepiest obit -- literally. Bill Haast was “a roadside showman, a supplier of venom and a man seemingly immune to the bites of cobras, vipers and other deadly snakes,” says the Washington Post. Still, the obit is quick to note that Haast was more than just a guy who put on snake shows for Florida tourists: “His primary occupation was as the country’s leading producer of raw venom for use in snakebite serums.” The venom was extracted by grabbing one of Haast’s 10,000 snakes with his bare hands and prying their jaws open. Naturally, there were accidents and near deaths. But, starting in 1948, Haast began injecting himself with cobra venom as a prophylactic. “In time, Mr. Haast’s venom-enriched blood came to possess healing properties,” the obit reads. “Transfusions from his blood helped save the lives of more than 20 snakebite victims around the globe.”
Michael Schaffer’s Grim Reader appears Friday in Obit. He is the author of One Nation Under Dog, about culture and the American pet industry.
Brotherhoods! Comrades! Renegades! In fact, there’s plenty of life-story detail in the coverage: A minister’s son, the gigantic Clemons had a college football scholarship but got injured. He became a superstar with Springsteen’s Born to Run album. On its cover, “a spent yet elated Mr. Springsteen leans on a shoulder to his right for support; the flip side revealed that it belonged to Mr. Clemons,” the Times explains. Later, Clemons branched into acting and solo projects, but returned repeatedly to the E Street Band, playing a massive 2009 tour even as his knees required replacement surgery. The party poopers at the Washington Post bring out a rock critic to note that “Nobody would argue that he was a ground-breaking musician,” while arguing that his symbolism as a race-transcending friend was key to the band’s blue-collar appeal.But pretty soon, it’s back to the mythology, with critic Anthony DeCurtis explaining that “Bruce created a whole mythology for the Jersey shore on his early records — a created landscape like in literature.... All the guys in the band had nicknames, they all had a role and the one who had the biggest role was Clarence — the Big Man.” Their meeting is mentioned in a Springsteen song and, according to the Times, “few E Street Band shows were complete without a shaggy-dog story about the stormy night the two men met at a bar in Asbury Park.” Naturally, that shaggy-dog story appears in just about every Clemons obit.
Gross-out stuntman
The straight obits for Jackass star Ryan Dunn remember him as a man who “along with his cast mates made Americans cringe and snicker through vulgar stunts in their multimillion-dollar television and movie franchise,” in the Associated Press’ words. One gross-out stunt highlight cited in many of the obits: the episode where Dunn swam in raw sewage. Getting other stunts into family newspapers requires creativity: The Philadelphia Inquirer references one that “involved a toy car, a condom, his rectum, and hospital X-rays.” But the circumstances of Dunn’s death at 34 overshadowed the story of his life in this week’s coverage. He wrecked his Porsche in a late-night, high-speed accident, hours after reportedly posting on Twitter pictures of himself drinking. It wasn’t the week’s only regrettable tweet: As news broke, film critic Roger Ebert pushed out a message that “friends don’t let jackasses drink and drive.” Ebert said he’d probably posted too soon. But Dunn’s demographic is more about Twitter than formal obits; several outlets commissioned stories about the Twitter response to his death -- most of which was more charitable than Ebert’s.
“Beacon of freedom”Yelena Bonner was “a constant beacon of freedom in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, an advocate for democracy in Russia in the past decade, and the widow of Nobel Peace Prize winning Andrei Sakharov,” says the Boston Globe. The obits are inconsistent in how to play the third of those factors. The Wall Street Journal’s lede declares that Bonner’s “marriage to the Nobel Peace laureate Andrei Sakharov vaulted her into a life of dissidence and exile.” But the Washington Post says she “was a prominent activist even before she met Sakharov.” Either way, the story of her life is dramatic: A daughter of communists, she had a father who was killed by Stalin; she married the father of the Soviet H-bomb, then became his link to the outside world after he was isolated for criticizing the invasion of Afghanistan. It’s a measure of her success that Mikhail Gorbachev, who for a time was Sakharov’s jailer, issued a lavish condolence; it’s a measure of Russia’s troubles that the Kremlin said nothing.
The Imelda Marcos of Zambia
Overseas, most media note that when Frederick Chiluba was first elected, “he was portrayed as the Zambian Lech Walesa,” as the Telegraph puts it. Unfortunately, the obits make clear that the man who democratically ousted his country’s founding autocrat became known as the Zambian Imelda Marcos. Having failed to rewrite the constitution to allow a third term, the diminutive Chiluba turned power over to a vice president he thought would be friendly; instead, a corruption investigation followed: “During his decade in office, Chiluba spent more than $500,000 in a single shop, Boutique Basile, in Geneva,” the Independent says. “The shop's owner testified that payment sometimes arrived in suitcases stuffed with cash. Zambia's anti-corruption task force seized trunks stuffed with designer suits, monogrammed shirts, silk ties, pyjamas and dressing gowns as well as more than 100 pairs of size 6 shoes, each with raised heels.” Oops. The New York Times, though, doesn’t let the investigatory triumphs get in the way of the sad ending: Chiluba beat the rap, his corruption-busting successor died, and the current president praised the old crook as a “damn good president.”
Helping Oskar Schindler
The New York Times and the Telegraph both carry obits for Mietek Pemper, the Jewish WWII labor camp inmate who used his status as a stenographer for the camp’s sadistic boss to help industrialist Oskar Schindler compile his famous list of Jews who were ultimately saved from the death camps. Pemper’s role was downplayed in the movie, but the obits are plenty dramatic.
Conspiracy theorists’ muse
The obits for James Hosty offer a good example of how editing wire copy can make a huge difference. A long version of the Associated Press obit appearing on Yahoo! News identifies Hosty as “the FBI agent who inherited Lee Harvey Oswald's file the year before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.” A trimmed-down version of the wire story in Michigan’s Daily Tribune labels him the “agent who many blamed for not investigating Lee Harvey Oswald more closely before President John F. Kennedy's assassination.” A New York Times obit also explains why Hosty figured in so many conspiracy theories: Among other things, he admitted getting a letter from Oswald, but destroying it after the assassination. In his memoirs, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, he blamed J. Edgar Hoover for the FBI’s not flagging the killer.
Man with a scanA pair of innovators are in the obits this week: Alan Haberman is remembered by the Los Angeles Times as the man whose “vision put the bar code everywhere.” Haberman didn’t invent the now-ubiquitous UPC symbol, but he led a grocery industry committee that selected it after food companies fretted that different chains might demand different scannable shapes. “What was once a novel technology with uncertain prospects is so widespread as to be almost invisible,” says the New York Times. An anecdote that didn’t age so well: The New York Times obit recalls how, after one particularly tough 1973 UPC-planning meeting, Haberman treated the execs to dinner and a showing of Deep Throat, an outing that would not likely get an industrialist positive press today. ... Meanwhile, Jim Rodnunsky is feted as the inventor of the cablecam, a “system of using a cat's cradle of synthetic ropes to suspend a remote-controlled camera over an event,” according to the Los Angeles Times. The high-quality overhead shots transformed TV coverage of sports like football, and also popped up in big Hollywood movies.
Snake-bit
Finally, the week’s creepiest obit -- literally. Bill Haast was “a roadside showman, a supplier of venom and a man seemingly immune to the bites of cobras, vipers and other deadly snakes,” says the Washington Post. Still, the obit is quick to note that Haast was more than just a guy who put on snake shows for Florida tourists: “His primary occupation was as the country’s leading producer of raw venom for use in snakebite serums.” The venom was extracted by grabbing one of Haast’s 10,000 snakes with his bare hands and prying their jaws open. Naturally, there were accidents and near deaths. But, starting in 1948, Haast began injecting himself with cobra venom as a prophylactic. “In time, Mr. Haast’s venom-enriched blood came to possess healing properties,” the obit reads. “Transfusions from his blood helped save the lives of more than 20 snakebite victims around the globe.”
Michael Schaffer’s Grim Reader appears Friday in Obit. He is the author of One Nation Under Dog, about culture and the American pet industry.
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hope rye wrote on June 30, 2011 8:34am
can i get obits for the general public [Report Comment]
