The Associated Press has prepared an advance obituary for Britney Spears -- you know, in case a piano falls from the sky and squashes her dead.
Given the propensity for a certain proportion of today's young stars to live hard, should news organizations be prepared for their possible demise?
It's a complex issue, a complex debate," says Washington Post reporter Adam Bernstein, one of the news media's most respected obituary writers. "It's unclear to what degree somebody really is on the edge. So do you spend the time to put something together when you're wondering whether it will run now or 70 years from now?"
Of the approximately 100 prepared obituaries The Washington Post has in its files, Bernstein couldn't recall any on a person under 30. He also questioned whether an obituary on someone like the troubled pop star could be much more than a recitation of bizarre public behavior, as opposed to focusing on real accomplishment.
"Somebody like Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan or Amy Winehouse, you could arguably put something together," he said, naming three young stars who have lately become more prominent for bouts of bizarre behavior than displays of talent.
"But it takes a significant chunk of your time to do it and there are people who are incredibly more accomplished and in their 100s," Bernstein added.
He didn't deny, however, the huge public interest in anything any young star does. When Anna Nicole Smith, mainly famous for being famous, died at age 39 of a drug overdose last year, The Washington Post and numerous other newspapers put her obituary on their front pages.
Such interest, veteran Hollywood publicist Michael Levine believes, is being driven by the Internet. He speculated that the Web's ability to make stars of people overnight is forcing news organizations to be more prepared to tell those celebrities' stories within minutes of their demise.
"Technology makes all this stuff much more present in the consciousness of the culture," said Levine, former publicist for one of Hollywood's most bizarre personalities, Michael Jackson.
"There's much more pressure to get the news out right now," he added. "You distribute or you die."
I loved the closing lines:
(Los Angeles Times obituary editor Jon) Thurber said it's too much of a guessing game to invest the time on a full obituary on someone who might turn their life around in the next year or so. He cited Robert Downey Jr. and Courtney Love as two prime examples of once troubled people who seem to have worked through their problems.
At the same time, he said, there's no way to deal with the unpredictability of death.
"Who in the '60s," Thurber asked, "would have thought Keith Richards would have outlasted John Denver?"