Death Watch: Kanye West's mom

While some speak of the death of irony, and others claim irony will be the death of us all, only those who die an ironic death are of interest to this death watcher.

Perhaps the best example of this phenomena is Jim Fixx, who best-sellingly touted the joy and health benefits of jogging to an unhealthy nation, only to suffer a deadly heart attack at 52 during his daily jog. Along that same vein, the more recent death of eat-more-meat diet guru Robert Atkins and his cholesterol-ravaged heart scored high on the irony scale.

A slightly different type of ironic passing occurs when the end comes during a cosmetic procedure which was intended to make the victim appear younger.

Judging from today's massive coverage of the liposuction-related death of the mother of Kanye West -- who isn't even that famous himself -- it isn't just professional death watchers who can't get enough of the ironic death.

In a further twist, any of the many blogs and news organization that have reported on Mrs. West's death and also use Google AdSense look a little bit like this right now:

While the jury is still out on whether or not Kanye's mom's death will actually drive traffic to services offering plastic surgery and financing for plastic surgery, this death watcher is willing to proffer that Donda West -- with the aid of a burgeoning new technology -- has just achieved the most ironic death ever died.

Britney as a nimble fingered Indoneisan child

To tie together a couple VMA subplots and make us all think, today noted social commentator Kayne West has accused MTV of not only failing to concern itself with black people but of "exploiting" an unprepared, unstable (and Caucasian) Britney Spears.

There is no arguing the effectiveness of the Viacom owned entity's use of the singer -- despite being universally nominated for the worst three plus hours of television programming in the history of Western civilization, the 2007 version of the VMA's were the highest rated since 2003. Yes the same year the station that used to play music videos "exploited" Britney into sharing a lesbian themed kiss with Madonna.

But did Kayne actually, literally mean what he said? I think not. A wise but subversive thinker such as West surely knows the best way to combat annoying and overused words is to employ them in ways which render them meaningless.

My only complaint with the recording artist's strategy is he stopped so arbitrarily at exploited, when he could have so easily took on other favorites of the dramatic and the morose. Oppressed, tragedy and atrocity come to mind, and I'm sure with Kayne's verbal dexterity and yen for pointed absurdity he could have used them all in a discussion of improperly chilled back stage bottled water.