A Sad Day

Sad day today. I had planned on blogging about Donny Osmond being a grandfather or the fact that Brad Pitt was planning on adopting Angelina Jolie's kids but I just read that both Richard Pryor and Senator Eugene McCarthy died.

Richard Pryor was one of the funniest comedians, and one of the first black superstar comedians. Without him, there would be no Dave Chappelle and no Chris Rock. He wasn't just a comedian though. He was an Oscar nominee for his role in Lady Sings the Blues opposite Diana Ross. He survived almost killing himself when he set himself on fire smoking crack only to spend his last few years battling MS.

Senator McCarthy famously lost to Richard Nixon in the 1968 election. If Bobby Kennedy hadn't been shot and killed in June of that year, perhaps we would have been spared Nixon and Watergate. After Bobby's death, McCarthy won the Democratic nomination, but lost to Tricky Dick that fall.

McCarthy served two terms in the U.S. Senate, and before that five terms in the House of Representatives. His political zenith came in 1968. His opposition to the Vietnam War turned into a crusade to capture the Democratic presidential nomination. McCarthy didn't win. But his candidacy, and the 1968 campaign, left lasting imprints on American politics.

McCarthy was one of the first Democrats willing to take on a sitting president. As we've learned from the recent war in Iraq, you risk your career speaking out against a sitting president's policies. At the time, the protestors against the war were students, and what were considered radicals. McCarthy risked his political future to speak out against the war.

So good-bye to men who in both their ways were an influence on our lives.