Fallen Soldier. Fallen Pop-Star.

I am getting so unbelievably sick of people posting things saying “What makes her death more important than the deaths of our fallen heroes?”, “How is it okay that a celebrity dies and its all over the news, but when soldiers die… nothing.”, and my personal favorite “How is this drug addict your hero, but this person who protects our country isn’t?”  

Fuck off. Yeah I said it. FUCK. OFF. Get off your goddamned high horse and look at the bigger picture. When a celebrity dies it will automatically get a certain amount of media attention. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE A CELEBRITY! Celebrity. A figure in pop culture who billions of people knew of, respected, looked up to. When it comes to media exposure for fallen soldiers, what really can be said other than who they were, where they were from, and how they died? Yes they are just as deserving of remembrance and admiration, but seriously? You want the news to dedicate an entire weeks worth of airtime for your cousin Phil who died in Iraq? Jesus god, if they gave the kind of media exposure to each and every fallen soldier, they would have to make an entire network just to keep up with it all. And it isn’t like soldiers don’t get recognition when they fight for our country and die. Every night on the news they mention people who died or were injured fighting for our country. They mention who they were, where they were from,  how they died AND even a quick story about their life. People get to learn about how amazing of a person they were, and how they died fighting for the country they loved. In the newspaper and online it is the same thing. They get recognition for what they did to protect us all. But you honestly can not expect CNN to spend as much time on each and every death of a soldier that they do on when a celebrity dies. I’m sorry, but you just can’t. As a whole, soldiers are first in our hearts. We all know and understand what they do for us each and every day, and we are all filled with the mix of being absolutely heartbroken that they are literally laying down their lives to protect us but proud of them for making that kind of sacrifice.

But we couldn’t take getting the kind of news coverage on each and every fallen soldier that we do when a celebrity dies. Literally, we would go insane. The media goes into horrific detail about the celebrities personal struggles, and then digs further and further into what exactly it was that killed them. Do you really think you could take the news every night if all they broadcasted was exactly how each soldier died? In graphic detail? About them getting blown up by roadside bombs. About what was found around their bodies after the explosion? Its not always rainbows, butterflies, and prescription pills. What you would get is coverage explaining how many limbs were blown off, the trajectory in which the limbs took, and where they landed. If the news was that in depth with soldiers deaths, you would be begging for incredibly detailed celebrity death coverage. 

I wish that wasn’t how things were though. I wish that the media didn’t cover the deaths of celebrities in graphic detail. I honestly don’t need to know what was in Michael Jackson’s system when he died. I don’t need to know the name of the doctor who gave him his final dose of the drug that killed him, and I definitely don’t need TMZ leaking the pictures of his dead body for the sick and twisted people to use as some sort of disgustingly morbid “Rick Roll”. All anyone REALLY needs to know is that they are dead. The media/worlds obsession with dead celebrities will never sit right with me. Ever. But what can I do about it? In a world that is driven almost completely by celebrity gossip it is to be expected that the media will cater to those types of stories. When you stop buying trashy gossip mags, and watching E! News or whatever other fucking celebrity gossip crap that is out there, then maybe the coverage when they die won’t be so goddamn all consuming. 

And how fucking DARE you people mention drug addiction as if it is some sort of thing to be shunned for. Saying that a person with a drug problem who dies is someone who is less of a person. Someone who doesn’t deserve to be recognized and loved by the people who miss them. Saying that they couldn’t possibly be a persons hero. Fuck you. Fuck you a thousand times over with sharp and rusty objects. Addiction is a disease. It is something that is incredibly hard to bounce back from. Sure, they put themselves in that position but you don’t know why. You don’t know why they decided to take something to escape reality. You have no idea the kind of life they have and the kind of things they get put through on the daily. And you couldn’t possibly understand the kind of strength it takes to overcome addiction after you are in too far unless you are directly affected by it. So don’t sit up there on your pedestal and preach about how fucked up a person with a drug problem is, and don’t you fucking dare say that I am not allowed to think of them as a hero. My Mom was one of my biggest heroes. My Mom gave me life. She struggled every day of hers. Everyday since childhood. She went through shit in her life that would make even you want to get so honed out on drugs that you can’t feel the world around you.  Whitney Houston was someone’s Mom and she was millions of peoples hero. She didn’t lay down her life to protect ours but she sure as hell worked her ass off and was good at what she did. She deserves to be called a hero by anyone who saw her as one. A drug problem does not define a person. A drug problem is just the side effect of the life a person lives.