A Night of Confusion and Confoundment

Last night the world of entertainment lost another star. Tom Petty died from a massive heart attack and the reporting world went nuts!

He’s dead, he isn’t dead went on like a virtual tennis match and Twitter, of course, went ballistic.

12 hours ago (8:30pm UK time) TMZ reported

TMZ‏Verified account @TMZ 12h12 hours ago
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BREAKING Tom Petty Rushed To Hospital In Full Cardiac Arrest

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Then this:

‘Tom Petty Died Twice in One Day Because He’s F**king Tom Petty’

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This report, though, has to have been one of the earlier ones to go up:

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POSTED ON OCTOBER 2, 2017 AT 4:19PM EDT

I saw one Twitter post saying something along the lines of ‘Dead, not dead, Tom Petty to play at his own benefit concert.’

At the end of the day, however, not even Tom Petty was so ‘Rockstar’ that he could survive such a cataclysmic event as a massive heart attack.

The sphere of entertainment has lost another Rock God and the world mourns.

I’ve written this post as a follow-up to my original one because of the utter confusion last night.

Sad to report the news, delighted that I was wrong and hoping for a full recovery for a musician that has been prolific throughout my formative years, and devastated to find the reports were right, if unconfirmed when some of them went out.

I know how easy it is to make and proliferate fake news and because I’ve been on the wrong end of hoaxes and such before, I’ve tried to check more than one or two sources before posting.

I don’t like apologising, (who does? LOL) but if I’m wrong, I do admit it and do my best to set the record straight.

Last night I posted a video of one of my favourite Tom Petty tracks – yes, it was done as a fast reaction to the news I’d just seen, but I did check the more reputable sources – Rolling Stone, which I thought was one of the better reporters of actual news received this response.

@rollingstone my dad is not dead yet but your fucking magazine is ⚡️⚡️⚡️your slime😵 has been pieces of tabloid dog shit. You put the worst artists on your covers do zero research. How dare you report that my father has died just to get press because your articles and photos are so dated. I will fucking shit down your throat and your family's . Try not being a trump vibe. This is my father not a celebrity. An artist and human being. Fuck u

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(9 hours ago – around the same time I posted my blog)

I do wish I was proven to be wrong and that Tom Petty was alive and recovering.

Also yesterday, the horrifying reports of the Las Vegas shooting went out. I stood in front of the television and looked on in utter horror – a similar feeling of abject disbelief as when I watched the planes crashing into the Twin Towers many years ago.

I didn’t report on that and I couldn’t have told you why until now.

I saw those reports of shooting those innocent people and it hurt my heart. I was upset, tears pricking my eyes and my heart did that sinking sensation thing. That was not a report I wanted to post on here, that was murder and vile.

Tom Petty dying is a tragic event and my heart goes out to his family in mourning right now. His death hits us in a different place, it hits us in our childhood, it hits in our memories of where we were the summer that Free Fallin was playing EVERYWHERE. Tom Petty’s death gives us a chance to smile at the memories we’ve shared with him and The Heartbreakers. And while we would love that to not be true and wish his family peace and send condolences in their time of mourning, he wasn’t mown down by a gunman as he was standing watching a concert in Las Vegas.

Why did I report Tom Petty’s death and not the Las Vegas shootings?

Because one is sad but a fact of life and the other is mass-murder.