Editor’s note: The following is the second entry in Fashionable Amish that is factual. Sometimes the truth is more compelling than bullshit I make up. Enjoy.
One of the truest tests of fame is whether people will remember you when you’re dead. Many people have committed acts when living that cause people to remember their names and deeds long after their deaths. Other people achieved a small level of fame (enough to warrant an obituary in several newspapers) but are remembered by few today.
Then there are people remembered mostly for their death, like Lupe Valez. She was a minor actress in the 1930s whose name would be lost to history with all the other minor actresses of the 1930s if only her suicide weren’t so graphic. Today, her death is immortalized forever in an Andy Warhol movie and references in TV shows like Frasier and The Simpsons.
Perhaps more unfortunate is the case of film composer Maurice Jarre who died in 2009. Newspapers around the world published his obituary, and he would have been quickly forgotten, except he was the subject of an experiment in media fallibility by college student Shane Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald made up a quote attributed to the deceased Jarre and posted it on Jarre’s Wikipedia page. The fake quote was included in Jarre’s obituary in newspapers throughout the world. As a result, instead of being famous for his multiple Oscar wins by the handful of people that pay attention to these things, Jarre will be remembered for his death punking the media for using Wikipedia for primary source material.
Editor’s note: I used Wikipedia as source material for this post. I can do this because I am not a journalist. That said my choice of source material may make some of this entry fictional.
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