We now know what did in actor Heath Ledger: an accidental overdose of prescription medications, according to MSNBC.  The combination of drugs in his system took their toll on the physically and mentally exhausted young man, and killed him.

John McCain -- again, according to MSNBC, has pulled into a clear lead over his rivals on Super Tuesday.

For just over three minutes on Saturday morning, TV talk show host Montel Williams owned the hosts of Fox and Friends.  A former Marine and Naval officer, Montel lectured the stunned hosts on the stupidity of spending air time on the death of Heath Ledger, rather than covering the war in Iraq.  It was a spectacle rarely seen on live cable television, as Montel exposed and condemned both tabloid "news" shows and much of American culture for what they have each become: shallow and greedy.

Three minutes into this awkward segment on Fox, one host cut off Montel in order to go to a commercial.  Montel did not return after the break.  Four days later, after 17 years as a television host, Montel lost his job.  Variety reported on Wednesday that the

Fate of "The Montel Williams Show" was sealed when key Fox-owned stations opted not to renew it for the 2008-09 season.

by Jessica Vozel/North Star Writers Group

In the days following 28-year-old Heath Ledger’s tragic, too-young death on Tuesday, possibly the result of an overdose – as suggested by the prescription medications scattered around his body – I hope that the media will start to loosen their grip on the similarly troubled young females in Hollywood.  

There are a plethora of lessons to be learned from a familiar face losing his or her life to preventable causes, as seems to be the case in Ledger’s death. And granted, many of these lessons are more pressing than the amount of attention given to each gender in the media.

But it seems relevant to explore why the media salivate over the drug use, drunk driving and other mental instabilities of blonde, troubled young women, but tend to give males of similar celebrity a free pass. Did anyone know that Heath even had a drug problem? A close friend of Ledger told US Magazine, "To tell you the truth . . . we saw it coming. Heath has gone though a rough road of trying to get sober."  

Read more here: http://www.northstarwriters.com/...

Good flipping Jesus on a bicycle.  These guys are morons.

Westboro Baptist Church is going to protest Heath Ledger's funeral.

Because he portrayed a gay man in Brokeback Mountain.

"You cannot live in defiance of God. He (Ledger) got on that big screen with a big, fat message: God is a liar and it's OK to be gay," said Shirley Phelps in a statement sent out by the Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised...but I am

I recently posted a diary that aimed to take "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" to task, borne out of a fear that the show was slipping into a pit of mediocre interviews and Britney-fueled psycho-babble.  A few commenters thought that I (and others) should refrain from criticism.  christine20 said she hopes "Keith will learn to ignore our everyday likes and dislike about his show."  LithiumCola feared that if DailyKos turned into a "letters to Olbermann" site, Olbermann's decision to post diaries here "will have turned out to be a very bad one..."  And pasadena beggar argued against the title I chose ("Countdown w/Olbermann is starting to suck") while Olbermann "is a guest in our house."

I've given it some consideration, and have decided to level a fresh complaint at the show regardless.  (Perhaps somebody at Olbermann was listening, as we've gone two entire days without a single Britney mention.)

...and it's a shame that it took his death to do it.

What did Mr. Ledger do, you ask?

He made the most stubborn politician in modern times change his itinerary:

The death of Heath Ledger prompted the White House to postpone President Bush's event Wednesday promoting an ad campaign aimed at preventing prescription drug abuse.

Ledger, 28, who was nominated for an Oscar for "Brokeback Mountain," was found dead Tuesday in his New York apartment. There were sleeping pills near him, but the cause of his death remains under investigation.

The president was to make a statement in the Roosevelt Room on the Office of National Drug Control Policy's television advertisement about preventing prescription drug abuse. A federally financed study released in December at the White House showed illicit drug use by teens continued to gradually decline overall this year, but the use of prescription painkillers remained popular among young people.

Learn more about Health Ledger with some aura reading and face reading. In tribute to this exceptional actor, I share an article published about a year ago where I read him for the Chicago Sun-Times. If you're a fan, too, accept this offering from my heart to yours.

My heart just felt like it had been ripped out.

CNN Breaking news on my laptop: Heath Ledger found dead.

I bonded with that guy . . . with the Ennis Del Mar in "Brokeback Mountain."

I was that same age in the 60’s.  I didn’t have the guts to live my true identity.  It would be decades before I had the courage to break from that horrible closet.  It was after a divorce where I refused to meet the marriage counselor because I was terrified that a skilled counselor would get it out of me that I was gay.  I could not deal with that reality at that time.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

The actor Heath Ledger was found dead this afternoon in an apartment in Manhattan inhabited by the actress Mary-Kate Olsen, according to the New York City police. Signs pointed to a suicide, police sources said. Mr. Ledger was 28.

At 3:31 p.m., a masseuse arrived at Apartment 5A in the building, at 421 Broome Street in SoHo, for an appointment with Mr. Ledger, the police said. The masseuse was let in to the home by a housekeeper, who then knocked on the door of the bedroom Mr. Ledger was in. When no one answered, the housekeeper and the masseuse opened the bedroom and found Mr. Ledger naked and unconscious on a bed, with pills scattered around his body. They shook him, but he did not respond. They immediately called the authorities.

And we now return you to our regularly scheduled broadcast of "Here are some lies about why your candidate is teh sux0r and my candidate is teh megaRAD."

Wow, this is really really sad.  He's such a good actor and he looked like he was going to be an awesome Joker in this summer's Batman sequel.  

So sad.

It took a bit for the local theaters to carry Brokeback Mountain.

My spouse refuses to go see Brokeback Mountain with me since I REFUSED to waste money on I Robots several years ago - LOL!  But I'd been very curious about the movie and after Jarhead, have turned into a HUGE Jake Gyllenhaal fan.  So I went last night for the 10:15 show at a theater in the 'burbs.

WOW

The current December - January issue of Rolling Stone magazine has a tribute to "Mavericks, Renegades, and Troublemakers."

It's a special issue that you try especially hard to not spill coffee and get foody finger smudges on. My comments are in brackets [].

[With their typical brashness, they start off with the 7 words you can't say on television! Yes, you know the ones:]

Read them in print after the jump: