Archive for April 13th, 2022

Obit watch: April 13, 2022.

Wednesday, April 13th, 2022

Your Gilbert Gottfried roundup, as promised: NYT (Note the correction. What did I tell you?). Variety. THR 1. THR 2.

I don’t have a lot I want to say about the late Mr. Gottfried. My close friends know how I felt about his work, and for everyone else: “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in all mankind” and “De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est.”

I will say:

1.

…the actor succumbed to a heart abnormality called recurrent ventricular tachycardia, an arrhythmia caused by myotonic dystrophy Type 2.
Myotonic dystrophy (DM) is a genetic disorder marked by progressive muscle wasting and weakness which predominantly affects the limbs and face but can create increasingly dire complications for respiratory, skeletal and cardiac muscles.
People with DM are at a higher risk of irregular heartbeat, including ventricular tachycardia, an arrhythmia in the lower chambers of the heart (ventricles) that causes the heart to beat faster. A sustained sped-up rhythm can cause a fatal drop in blood pressure.

I’ve never heard of this disorder before, but damn, what a sucky way to go.

2. It surprised me, but Mr. Gottfried’s version of the joke in “The Aristocrats” documentary was, to me, the best of them all. Apparently, I’m not the only person who felt this way.

In other news: Michel Bouquet, French actor.

Mr. Bouquet appeared in more than 100 films, and won a new generation of admirers with his performance in 1991 as the older incarnation of the title character in “Toto the Hero.” His two best actor Césars, the French equivalent of the Oscar, came when he was in his 70s. The first was for his understatedly menacing performance in “How I Killed My Father” (2001), as a feckless parent who sows emotional chaos when he re-enters his sons’ lives.

…

Mr. Bouquet won a second César for his tour de force as François Mitterrand, the ailing French president, in “The Last Mitterrand” (2005).

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You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#88 in a series)

Wednesday, April 13th, 2022

South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg was impeached yesterday.

That doesn’t mean he’s out of office, just that he’s going to an impeachment trial in the state Senate.

The impeachment is tied to a traffic accident in 2020.

…he initially told authorities he thought he had struck a deer or another large animal.

He actually hit a man, Joseph Boever, who died.

Ravnsborg, who took office in 2019, initially told aides and a 911 dispatcher he did not know what he hit on a rural highway as he was returning home from a Republican dinner in September 2020. He went back to the scene the next day and found the body of 55-year-old Boever, who had been walking on the highway’s shoulder.
The Highway Patrol concluded that Ravnsborg’s car crossed completely onto the highway shoulder before hitting Boever, and criminal investigators said later that they didn’t believe some of Ravnsborg’s statements.

Ravnsborg pled to two traffic related misdemeanors in the accident, but apparently there are a lot of people who don’t believe his story. Including Governor Kristi Noem, who is also a Republican: Ravnsborg claims she’s out to get him because he’s been investigating her.

In its 36-31 vote, the House rejected the recommendation of a GOP-backed majority report from a special investigative committee and sided with Noem, who has argued that Ravnsborg lied to investigators. Democrats also had pushed for impeachment, arguing that he was not “forthcoming” to law enforcement officers and had abused the power of his office.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed