MB Civic

Jacob Weisberg: Death styles of the rich and famous
>By Jacob Weisberg
>Published: June 14 2006 19:28 | Last updated: June 14 2006 19:28
>>

There are diseases of poverty, such as tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/Aids. There are diseases of affluence, such as lung cancer, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. And then there are the hazards of extreme affluence, such as being thrown off a polo pony, flipping your speedboat or succumbing to altitude sickness on a vanity expedition to the Himalayas.

This point was brought home this week by the presumed death by drowning of Philip Merrill. The 72-year-old Washington-area press baron was sailing alone on his 41ft boat, probably without a life jacket, when he disappeared into the Chesapeake Bay. I mean no disrespect to Mr Merrill – or to the late Robert Maxwell – when I say that the risk of meeting this sort of end goes in to the small but poetic category of problems unique to the rich and famous. Members of the middle class do not have to worry about falling off $250,000 sailing boats, because they do not have $250,000 sailing boats off which to fall.

In fact, the rich are less likely to perish in expensive boating accidents than in expensive flying accidents. Travel by private aircraft and chartered helicopter may be the ultimate corporate perk, but it is much riskier than flying commercial, claiming in recent years figures in entertainment, politics and business including the rhythm and blues singer Aaliyah, US senator Paul Wellstone and John Walton, the Wal-Mart heir. The accident that killed golfer Payne Stewart and four others in 1999 was particularly grisly: their Learjet depressurised. After the occupants suffocated and froze, it coasted another 1,500 miles on autopilot before crashing into a field in South Dakota.

An even greater hazard for the wealthy and privileged is the urge to fly their own aircraft. This costly hobby killed the country singer John Denver, who died when he pressed the wrong pedal on an experimental Rutan Long EZ. John F. Kennedy Jr, his wife and wife’s sister died when the single-engine aircraft Kennedy was piloting plunged into waters off Martha’s Vineyard. Although the precise cause of the crash could not be determined, there was speculation that Kennedy was impaired by a foot injury from an earlier paragliding accident. If true, that would make the tragedy doubly wealth and fame- related. Of course, the Kennedy family is in a risk category all its own. One wonders if the surviving members are insurable at all, given the family history of driving off bridges (Teddy), smashing into trees while playing football on skis (Michael), death by drugs (David, Christina Onassis), air crashes (Joseph Jr, Kathleen, Alexander Onassis and, very nearly, Teddy again) and assassination (John and Robert). These are tragic fates, but ones that members of the struggling middle class do not have to worry much about.

If you survive pay cheque to pay cheque, you can also rest easy about dying while fleeing paparazzi (Diana, Princess of Wales), at the hand of a servant jealous of your other servants (the banker Edmund Safra), at the hand of the president of your fan club (singer Selena), at the hand of a lunatic stalker (John Lennon), at the hand of an impatient heir (the royal family of Nepal), from a face lift (author Olivia Goldsmith), in your Porsche, while drag racing (basketball player Bobby Phills), in pursuit of a speedboat record (Stefano Casiraghi, husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco), while diving off your yacht (Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys), while trying to buzz Ozzy Osbourne’s tour bus (Randy Rhoads), from injuries sustained in a dressage event (Christopher Reeve), in staged violence on a film set (Brandon Lee), as a former vice-president, atop your mistress (Nelson Rockefeller), or of a disease that gets named after you (baseball player Lou Gehrig).

Given the increasingly democratic nature of the game, middle-class people as well as corporate executives are occasionally struck by lightning on the golf course. But relatively few are victims of less democratic ego-sports such as off-piste skiing (which killed 25 people in the French Alps this year), yacht racing, hot-air ballooning or trying to set various speed records with test vehicles. Americans who are not worried that the Senate might fail fully to repeal the inheritance tax for estates above $5m (€4m) probably do not need to worry about these perils either.

The problem of having more money than sense also drives fatality statistics in the world of high-end travel. Given the cost of a tour to the top of Mount Everest (between $10,000 and $40,000, according to the Los Angeles Times), it is safe to assume that no one collecting unemployment insurance was among the 10 people who died attempting the summit last season. Similarly, while the poor of Africa are sometimes eaten by wild animals, it is only the safari-joining well-to-do from other continents who face the risk of being mauled by lions or trampled by hippopotamuses, which surprisingly kill more people than any other large animal.

The next frontier for extravagant death is, of course, outer space. Sir Richard Branson is currently taking reservations for his Virgin Galactic airship, which promises “the world’s first affordable space tourist flights” to view the aurora borealis, possibly as soon as 2008. Affordable, in this context, is somewhere around $200,000. Let us hope it will be a round trip.