Courtney’s Thoughts
On August 2, 1979, my father came home from the firehouse in tears. My mother quickly assumed that there had been a bad blaze and perhaps a line of duty death. When my father was finally able to explain the reason behind his grief, it was that New York Yankees catcher and team captain Thurmon Munson had died.
It’s funny how we connect with heroes. We may never meet them, but we think we know them. They’re in our papers, on the big screen, or the nightly news. A die-hard Yankees fan, my father was gutted.
I was only six at the time but remember the story. And I wonder now, is this why I always chose Munson’s number 15 for the back of my jersey when playing sports? To honor one of my dad’s heroes? (Adding this to the list of topics for my next therapy session.)
Last month, the most bizarre trifecta of celebrity deaths took down Hulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne, and Malcolm-Jamal Warner in one fell swoop and that got me thinking. Are you still a legend once your star dims, or your sex tapes appear, or you make an inappropriate comment?
Hulk Hogan is a racist. Ozzy ate a bat. Theo Huxtable.
You rise to fame – then you leave. Are folks prone to only remember your most marked act or the act they enjoyed the most?
Hulk as Sugar Lips in Rocky III. Ozzy, the husband and dad, mumbling and stumbling around his estate in England on reality TV. Malcolm-Jamal’s Grammy for spoken word poetry.
What do we choose to celebrate? Who are we celebrating?
I know what you’re thinking. I’m thinking it too. While we’re debating the legacy of these three men, we are ignoring what we should really be talking about right now. The pop culture item that has me riveted. Playmate, Baywatch beauty, the “Tool Time Girl,” and Tommy Lee’s ex-wife is dating Natasha Richardson’s widower, hot Brit, the star of Love Actually. This is a love story for the ages. This is where legends are made, legacies cemented. Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson collided and the spotlight was primed, pumped, and ready for it.
This is a love story for the ages. This is where legends are made, legacies cemented.
Anderson’s early fame was largely tied to her bustline (shame on us). Today, a poised 50-something, she walks the red carpet sans makeup and in couture. I am here for it. I am cheering louder than anyone. You. Go. Girl. This is your most compelling chapter.
But, if next week, next month, next year, there is a scandal – which Pamela will I remember?
Sigh.
I have been trying for the past year to justify in my brain the father I am mourning who wasn’t the father I knew at the end. In fact, I hardly knew him in the end. His mental health issues made that hard. But I have a lifetime of the good stuff. So that is the legacy I choose to hold onto.
In my dad’s words, “If ever time were to end – all of its moments through – I would go back and find each I had spent with you.”
Barry’s Thoughts
It was February 5, 1988, that I first shed a tear for one of my heroes.
On that date, impossibly, Hulk Hogan was defeated by his most trusted friend, Andre the Giant, falling to a three count on The Main Event in front of 33 million little Hulkamaniacs at home, myself included.
You have to understand, Hulk Hogan simply did not lose in the ’80s. That was his whole thing. He said his prayers, he ate his vitamins, and he unleashed those 24-inch pythons on anyone who dared mess with Hulkamania. “Wholesome” was his brand, but somehow on that February day the bad guys had won.
On that date (February 5, 1988), impossibly, Hulk Hogan was defeated by his most trusted friend, Andre the Giant, falling to a three count on The Main Event in front of 33 million little Hulkamaniacs at home, myself included.
Obviously, we’ve seen Hogan face defeat several times since then. His public image, held so high for so long by the marketing machines of the ’80s, had crumbled under headlines about sex tapes and racial slurs. Stories came out about steroid abuse and him screwing over other wrestlers. Over time, he became less an all-American hero and more of a punchline. Not to those who knew him, of course. They knew Terry Bolea. We just knew Hulk.
Which is why it’s so interesting that he and Ozzy Osbourne died back-to-back and found their reputations reversed. Unlike Hogan, Ozzy was no hero in the ’80s. You young kids might not be able to appreciate this, but Ozzy back in the day was terrifying. To those of us on the schoolyard, he was spoken of like the boogeyman, a devil-worshipping hell spawn. The teenagers listened to his music, in between smoking cigarettes and probably sacrificing goats. If Hulk Hogan wanted us to say our prayers, Ozzy wanted us to bow to the dark lord of evil.
And yet, sometime around the premiere of his reality show, Ozzy became everyone’s favorite rock star grandpa. He shuffled around the house, irritated at his dogs, mumbling out sentence fragments and we all found it adorable. We put the guy in Trolls 2, for crying out loud. He was literally charged with attempting to murder his wife Sharon in 1989 and think I saw him in a Go-Gurt commercial a few years back.
So, you have two guys with completely opposite trajectories. One, the Great American Hero who inspired millions, undone by his own actions and reduced to a caricature of someone we once looked up to. The other, a sinister agent of Satan, reformed by reality TV, sanitized into a family-friendly icon, and held up as an edgier Betty White.
We want to remember people in the simplest ways possible. But that’s not how the world works. Even if someone was a hero, you can remember their failings while still honoring their legacy. Even if someone seemed like evil incarnate, you can look at how they worked to change that and use that second act to keep their memory alive.
Everyone is far more than what they put out there. Which brings me to the third member of this particular round of celebrity deaths, Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Forget that he won a Grammy for his jazz-funk music and was nominated for his poetry. Forget that he broke conversation around the AIDS epidemic into the classroom by directing “Time Out: The Truth About HIV, AIDS, and You.” Forget that he had been a working actor for 40 years, in guest spots and as part of ensemble casts.
To our pop-culture-addled brains, he was just Theo from The Cosby Show (speaking of public figures whose reputations went down the toilet). But look closer. He wasn’t just the kid from TV. Hulk Hogan wasn’t just a racist sex fiend. Ozzy wasn’t just a coked-up satanist. As with anyone whose death puts the final punctuation on their reputation, there’s always more to a person than any obituary can hold.
