quote: "Dirty Dancing" star Patrick Swayze has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and might only have weeks to live, a rep for the actor told the New York Post's Page Six gossip column.
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I got all drooly over him in the miniseries The North and the South. Then when Dirty Dancing came out and everybody got all drooly I moved on.
I was such an elitist snob in Jr. High.
Edit: wait, I was in high school when Dirty Dancing came out. I know this because I went to it on first dates with two different guys. When Bob and I were making plans for our first date Dirty Dancing 2 was in theaters and I thought it would be cool to go to it on my last first date, since I'd been to the first one on my first first date. But we'd heard it really sucked, so we didn't.
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I watched a bio of him on TV one time. He was trained in ballet, but pursued acting instead due to an injury, if I remember correctly.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Bah. Ghost is a lame chick-flick.
How many people does he beat into unconsciousness in Ghost? Exactly.
Um, he *SPOILERS!!! I MEAN IT!* kills a guy with a huge glass "knife," and whales pretty mercilessly on him before that.
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It's still a chick flick. I don't care if he skins the whale with his bear hands, it's no Roadhouse ;P
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According to the Sydney Morning Herald the National Enquirer has overstated the severity of his condition and he is responding well to treatments and continuing with current projects.
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The amount of irresponsibility, over and above of what I'm used to, in the press lately bothers me.
It doesn't astound me, I'm never surprised by the press anymore. But it does seriously anger me. This is just another small example. The biggest one lately was Prince Harry's Afghanistan service which was irresponsibly reported (I'm surprised there wasn't a thread about it). That seriously pissed me off.
I'm sorry to hear about Swayze, though from the REAL news, it doesn't sound like it'll kill him any time soon, so that is good news.
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Lyr, the part that really bugs me about the Harry thing was Eugene Robinson, whom I normally respect, did an article lambasting the press for not reporting it. He didn't feel the press should be collaborating on what not to report.
I didn't think that was fair. They collaborated to wait on braking the story until the kid was back home. While I have to agree with Robinson that it wasn't really a matter of national security, it was still nice to let Harry go actually practice his chosen career.
It's funny how much the world has changed. I remember reading about crown princes who served on the front lines in WWII. Now the guy third in line can't call in artillery strikes in Afghanistan without it being a huge thing. Frankly, I wish the press would butt out more often and let the kid serve his country. After all, isn't that supposed to be the whole point of having royalty?
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I think for Britain it was a matter of national security. I don't entirely, nor do I think anyone outside of Britain, could understand how they feel about the royal family. But the fact of the matter I think is, the only certain truth of reporting Harry's involvement in the war is that reporting it would have made him the biggest bull's eye in the Middle East. Killing him would have been the first priority of any enemy in the region. I'm sure it was nice for him to be free of royal constraints for awhile, but it's not just about protecting his right to lead his own life, which I think there's certainly some inherent value in, it's about him being alive to lead any life at all.
It's despicable because anyone who leaked that story had to know it would put him in serious danger, and they did it anyways. It's morally repugnant and negligent to an extreme degree.
Despite some poor personal choices I think some members of the royal family have made in the past, I think for the most part they are good, honest people who are doing their best in a very difficult atmosphere that affords them little to no privacy or choice in how they lead their lives. All three of the princes (including Charles) chose to serve their country in the military, and Harry even demanded to be put into harm's way to serve. Both the kids have taken up their mother's charitable efforts as well. They aren't Paris Hilton like celebutants.
The press needs to get a life, and a moral compass. Reporting everything with no respect to the reality of the situations they are reporting is irresponsible. Why don't they do their jobs and investigate something important instead of misreporting news, stalking celebrities or endangering the lives of decent people. I'm sick of their crap.
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The issue with Prince Harry being in the sandbox was that it endangered his unit, in addition to himself. This is also a different war from WWII in that the enemy engages in symbolic violence quite a bit.
I love Point Break. Next of Kin was incredibly surreal, particularly in featuring Liam Neeson and Ben Stiller, and the hillbilly/Chicagoland mafia smackdown.
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quote:Originally posted by Troubadour: According to the Sydney Morning Herald the National Enquirer has overstated the severity of his condition and he is responding well to treatments and continuing with current projects.
While it may be true that he has more than "a few weeks" to live, the five year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is less than 3%. The one year survival rate is around 15%. It's one of the least treatable forms of cancer, and if they didn't catch it soon enough for surgery the outlook is even worse. The Enquirer may have overstated the severity of his current symptoms, but it would be pretty hard to overstate the severity of the disease itself.
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The couple of people I knew who had that particular form of cancer went downhill very quickly. Not weeks, but definitely not years either.
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Lyr, Robinson's point was that any lieutenant can do what Harry is doing. If the story had been reported in the first place, he never would have left the country, his unit never would have been in danger, and productivity would not have been impacted in any way.
I agree with the rest of your points, though. What did it hurt to hold off on the story so the kid could serve his country? Absolutely nothing. In fact, the guys who didn't look classy while the Drudge guy just looks like a jerk grasping for another 15 minutes of fame.
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I agree that any lieutenant could have done it. But it's a stupid point. Why should Robinson or any journalist get to control his life like that? Knowledge is power. Journalists are there to report news, not to make the new or change the news. Sometimes by reporting it, you change it. I'd think even a small amount of common sense and discretion would tell them when to shut up and when to report it. We don't have a right to know everything.
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I'm not willing to legally regulate the media, because that's a door I don't want to open. It'd be far, far too easy to parlay that into something far more dangerous.
I just wish they'd police themselves a bit. Be humans for once instead of money making robots. I think they'd sell just as many issues if they stopped reporting celebrity gossip and stuff like that and got back to the roots of investigative journalism and did their jobs as national and local fact checkers. I think they are lazy and greedy. And I think their moral centers no longer exist.
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It's possible that you're overestimating the average American's desire for well-crafted investigative journalism and underestimating people's desire to tsk-tsk at the train wreck that Brittney Spears' life has become.
But honestly, I like the world you see better.
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Agreed, Porter. Though occasionally I'll surprise and horrify myself by turning my head to check out yet another Britney Spears story in People or some magazine like that.
The fact is, they print that stuff because it sells. Very few people want to hear the way things are. A lot of people want to know that no matter how bad their life is, at least it's better than Britney Spears. That's our wonderful culture, people.
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Why is pancreatic cancer so much more deadly than other types?
I don't think the media was exaggerating, I think they just have poor taste built in to their job, because their job is to announce things before it is the polite time to do so.
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