{"id":179862,"date":"2017-10-02T19:05:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T00:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/10\/02\/well-this-sucks-7\/"},"modified":"2017-10-02T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T00:05:00","slug":"well-this-sucks-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/10\/02\/well-this-sucks-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Well, This Sucks"},"content":{"rendered":"
It appears that Tom Petty suffered a cardiac arrest, and may or may not be dead<\/a> though the most recent reports strongly imply that it’s just a matter of time:<\/div>\n

For several hours on Monday, rock star Tom Petty was dead to some members of the news media, even if he wasn\u2019t in fact. <\/p>\n

Though gravely ill and lingering near death, Petty was still clinging to life when CBS News<\/a> incorrectly reported that he had died. The report \u2014 which the outlet blamed on unidentified sources in the Los Angeles Police Department \u2014 was later withdrawn and corrected.<\/p>\n

But not before touching off a stampede of he\u2019s-dead\/no-he\u2019s-not reporting by other news organizations. The result was a monumental mishmash of confusion, joining the long history of misreporting<\/a> on the deaths of well-known people.<\/p>\n

TMZ, the tabloid website with a history of being first on celebrity deaths, was the first outlet to report that Petty was in the hospital and soon updated its story to say: \u201cTMZ reports that Petty had no brain activity when he got to the hospital and a decision was made to pull him from life support,\u201d while never pronouncing that the \u201cAmerican Girl\u201d singer had died.<\/p>\n

Rolling Stone<\/a> magazine reported around 4:15 p.m. EST that Petty had died and published a lengthy obituary of him. But the magazine upgraded Petty\u2019s condition to \u201chospitalized\u201d about an hour later without explaining what had happened to its earlier report. A note at the bottom of its story said, \u201cThis story is developing.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I rather liked his music, and he did the best Mad Hatter ever, so I will miss him.<\/p>\n