Some Bloggers Doubt Ken Lay Died
Posted on July 10, 2006
Most blogs still discussing Ken Lay's death or discussing how he died and what will happen to his money. However, A New York Times article says some bloggers and blog commenters doubt Ken Lay actually died in Aspen last week."I wanna see the body," wrote a commenter at Metafilter.com. Another simply wrote, "$."Indeed, alongside a broad mixture of lampoon and good riddance - perhaps to be expected - was a wide lack of credulity at the idea that the man had died at all. "Word on the street is that he's actually chillin' in the Dominican Republic, fanning himself with his offshore money he squirreled away and sharing a pitcher of sangria with Tupac," wrote NemesisBecoming, a New York City blogger, on Thursday. "It's too [expletive] convenient, people."
From one corner of the Web to another (and with varying degrees of tongue in cheek), Mr. Lay was imagined skulking about the shadows (or getting the party started at one island resort or another), with nearly every fugitive or famous person whose death remains, at least for some people, a matter of debate - from the rapper Tupac Shakur and the comedian Andy Kaufman to the mobster Whitey Bulger.
The article quotes primarily blog commenters as sources including comments found on Metafilter. That may be a little unfair as commenters may not always agree with a particular post and sometimes can say something completely off the wall. The Times article also cites blogs with names like Evil Bobby and Ken Lay Lives, but the posts on these sites don't even sound all that serious.
Oddly, the Times article left out the New York Post cover story that fanned the flames of the developing conspiracy theory. The Post's front page read, "Before They Put Cheato Lay's Coffin in the Grave CHECK HE'S IN IT."
Moonbattery found another blog post questioning Ken Lay's death on Dvorak Uncensored. Dvorak writes: "Question: is he really dead, or is something weird going on? Was there any foul play? This is just too convenient. The report says his heart 'just gave out.' What does that mean? I think this should be thoroughly investigated."
Ken Lay is reported to have had heart troubles so maybe that is evidence enough for his death. Wikipedia had trouble with Ken Lay's death and Ken Lay may never really die in some parts of the blogosphere. The beauty and the crux of user generated content is that sometimes the users decide when, where, what, why and how a story should end. They also decide what they facts are for themselves.