Les Paul died. 2009 SUCKS!

I couldn't agree more. 2009 sucks worse than probably any year has sucked before. And people keep dying.

Bumming about Les Paul... Character actor John Quade has also passed. He's one of those "Oh yeah! That guy!" actors - he was in Roots and lots of Clint Eastwood movies.

First Walter Cronkite, now Don Hewett, the creator of "60 Minutes" has died. The men who made the news what it was, is and should be. Considering their ages, it's not exactly a shock, but so much in the news business feels like the passing of an age.

Political columnist Robert Novak died.

That's one I can't feel sorry about. Not because of his politics, although I disagreed with him on virtually everything. But naming Valerie Plame in his column was inexcusable. I always picture how he and other conservatives would have reacted if a liberal columnist had done the same thing.

First Walter Cronkite, now Don Hewett, the creator of "60 Minutes" has died. The men who made the news what it was, is and should be. Considering their ages, it's not exactly a shock, but so much in the news business feels like the passing of an age. Replying in media thread. eta Realized media thread not appropriate because not House-related. And sadly, in a sense, this is death-related--as Namaste said, "the passing of an age." NPR's Fresh Air had Alex Jones on recently. He has book out "Losing the NEws and Why it Matters." In addition to audio and transcript, site has excerpt from book. He is specific about the sad state of newspapers, network and cable "news," and discusses the differences between objective journalism, fact-based opinion journalism and opinion journalism not based on facts. Because I am "of a certain age" and studied journalism eons ago, I related all-too-well to his message. When it came to reporting news, I was trained to "believe in fairness, objectivity and accuracy" as the interviewer quotes him. In addition, I was fortunate to debate for four years--one of the most formative experiences of my life. I learned that there are always at least two sides to every question, you can spin almost anything, especially statistics--and, although the search for truth and fact is rarely simple, we must never shy away from it. Alex Jones Fresh Air

I'll take my reply to the off topic postings thread.

Ted Kennedy just died. Knew he was close but thought he had a bit more time.

A true loss. The man was certainly flawed but he ended up doing an incredible amount of good.

Reading some of the coverage, which touched on both his and Eunice's deaths, I'm struck by both how frustrating and how invigorating it must have been to grow up in that family -- the expectations placed on you from the day you were born. I've never quite decided if Rose and Joe Kennedy were ruthless bastards for the way they treated their children, or people we should admire for the goals they set for them. Probably Ted came to represent both the good and evil inherent in those demands.

Crime story author Dominick Dunne died at 83 and that's number 2...

And number 3. This one particularly pains me: Ellie Greenwich dies at age 68.

It would appear that we can now add DJ AM to the 2009 List of Sucky-Ass Deaths.