The Funny Papers

Clay Bennett, RJ Matson, Pedro X Molina, Bill Bramhall, Benjamin Slyngstad, Ed Wexler, John Buss, Max Espinoza, Marc Murphy

Repost: Black History Month: Icons

African American abolitionist Harriet Tubman was born into slavery, but escaped to Philadelphia in 1849, and subsequently became one of the most successful “conductors” on the Underground Railroad. 

Returning to the South more than a dozen times, she is generally credited with leading more than 300 slaves--including her parents and brother--to freedom, sometimes forcing the timid ahead with a loaded revolver. She became a speaker on the anti-slavery lecture circuit and a friend of the principal abolitionists; John Brown almost certainly confided his Harpers Ferry plan to her.

During the Civil War, Tubman attached herself to the Union forces in coastal South Carolina, serving as a nurse, cook, laundress, scout, and spy, and in 1863 she played an important part in a raid that resulted in the freeing of more than 700 slaves.

African American civil-rights leader Julian Bond, was a student at Morehouse College, participating in sit-ins at segregated Atlanta restaurants. In 1960 he founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--serving as its communications director until 1965, when he was elected to the Georgia assembly. Bond was denied his seat because of his statements opposing the war in Vietnam, but was reelected in 1966 and began serving after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his right to hold office. 

A state representative until 1974, he then served as a state senator from 1975 until 1987. Bond led a group of Black delegates to the 1968 Democratic Convention where he challenged the party's unit rule and won representation at the expense of the regular Georgia delegation. In 1986 he lost a Georgia congressional race to John Lewis. In 1998 he became chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

African American civil-rights leader Ralph David Abernathy was a Baptist minister who helped Martin Luther King, Jr., organize the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. 

He was treasurer, vice president, and, after King's assassination in 1968, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). 

An advocate of nonviolence as a means to social change, he led the Poor People's Campaign on Washington, D.C., after King's death. 

African American contralto, Marian Anderson was the first African American to be named a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, as well as the first to perform at the White House.

Anderson first sang in Philadelphia church choirs, then studied with Giuseppe Boghetti. She began her concert career in 1924 and achieved her first great successes in Europe. Her rich, wide-ranging voice was superbly suited to opera, lieder, and the spirituals that she included in her concerts and recordings.

In 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her DAR membership in protest and sponsored Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial.

In 1955 Anderson made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera. She was appointed an alternate delegate to the United Nations in 1958 and in 1963 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

African American author Ralph Ellison was a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute. Originally a trumpet player and aspiring composer, he moved to New York City in 1936, where he met Langston Hughes, who became his mentor, and became friends with Richard Wright, who radicalized his thinking.

Ellison's earliest published writings were reviews and stories in the politically radical New Masses magazine.

His literary reputation rests almost completely on one novel, Invisible Man. A classic of American literature, it draws upon the author's experiences to detail the harrowing progress of a nameless young Black man struggling to live in a hostile society. 

African American playwright and poet August Wilson was a largely self-educated man. Wilson first attracted wide critical attention with his Broadway debut, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in 1984--a play set in 1927 that dramatized the clash between the blues diva and a member of her band, and the larger conflicts brought about by racist American society.

Wilson's plays center on the struggles and identity of African Americans and the deleterious effect of white American institutions on Black American life. Wilson's works draw heavily on his own experiences growing up in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, a black ghetto where nearly all of his plays are set.

His characters are ordinary people whose histories, frustrations, and aspirations Wilson astutely portrays. His cycle of ten dramas written over a period of more than 20 years include various overlapping characters and themes. In addition to Ma Rainey, it includes Jitney in 1982; Fences, a Pulitzer prize winner from 1987; Joe Turner's Come and Gone in 1988; The Piano Lesson the 1990 Pulitzer prize winner; Two Trains Running from 1992; Seven Guitars from 1995; King Hedley II in 2001; Gem of the Ocean in 2003; and Radio Golf in 2005.

Acclaimed as landmarks in the history of Black American culture, these works focus on the major issues confronting African Americans during each of the decades of the 20th century. In 2003, Wilson starred in a production of his autobiographical one-man play How I Learned What I Learned. 

African American James Lafayette Armistead was a patriot of the American Revolution. A slave in Virginia, Armistead sought and received permission from his master, William Armistead, to enlist under General Marquis de Lafayette, a French officer who joined Washington's army during the Revolutionary War.

Lafayette was seeking men to spy on British general Cornwallis and his army at Yorktown. Impressed with Armistead's intelligence, Lafayette had Armistead pose as a laborer looking for work.

He was hired at Cornwallis's camp and was able to relay information about Cornwallis's plans to Lafayette. Armistead also earned the trust of Cornwallis, who asked him to spy on the Americans. As a double agent, Armistead was able to move freely between both camps. He provided Lafayette with critical information that enabled the general to intercept Cornwallis's much-needed naval support and ultimately defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown in Oct. 1781, the decisive battle that ended the Revolution.

After the war, Armistead returned to the Armistead plantation as a slave. He met with Lafayette in 1784, when the general visited the United States. Lafayette wrote a glowing recommendation for his former spy, which Armistead used when he petitioned the Virginia House of Delegates for freedom.

He was finally freed on New Year's Day 1787, and assumed Lafayette as his surname. He spent the rest of his life as a farmer in Virginia. 

African American Stokely Carmichael lived in New York City after 1952 and graduated from Howard University in 1964.

Carmichael participated in the Congress of Racial Equality's “freedom rides” in 1961, and by 1964 was a field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--in Alabama. As SNCC chair in 1966, he ejected more moderate leaders and set off a storm of controversy by calling for “Black power,” a concept he elaborated in a 1967 book. His increasingly separatist politics isolated him from most of the civil-rights movement, and he emigrated to Conakry, Guinea, in 1969.

There he spent the rest of his life, calling himself a pan-African revolutionary but largely relegated to the political fringe. 

African American Alvin Ailey, Jr studied dance in Los Angeles with Lester Horton, whose strong, dramatic style and views about multiracial casting influenced his choreography and artistic direction.

Ailey moved to New York in 1954, where he studied dance with Martha Graham and Charles Weidman and acting with Stella Adler. In 1958 he formed his own company, the American Dance Theater, which, multiracial since 1963, has been internationally acclaimed and has brought recognition to many African-American and Asian dancers via works that combine elements of jazz, modern, and African rhythms. 

African American Joycelyn Jones Elders briefly served as the surgeon general of the United States under President Clinton. 

She was confirmed in September 1993 and angered conservatives from the get-go, as she was vocal in her support of sex education, the distribution of condoms in schools, abortion rights, and the medical use of marijuana.

But it was her December 1994 statement that “masturbation is part of human sexuality and a part of something that perhaps should be taught” that prompted President Clinton to seek and receive her resignation. 

African American Crispus Attucks was an American revolutionary patriot of mixed African and American Indian ancestry; Attucks was the slave of William Brown of Framingham, Massachusetts.

He escaped around 1750 to work on whaling ships. On March 5, 1770, Boston patriot Samuel Adams convinced sailors and dockworkers to protest the presence of British troops, and Attucks was the leader of the 50 men in the protest, shouting “Don't be afraid,” as they advanced on the British.

The soldiers fired on the protestors, killing Attucks and four others in what became known as the Boston Massacre. The bodies of the dead lay in state at Faneuil Hall for three days before receiving a public funeral attended by 10,000 people. Although the soldiers were acquitted of the shootings on the grounds that the sailors were inciting a riot, Attucks and the others became heroes. 

African American civil rights activist Ella Baker was a driving force in the creation of the country's premier civil rights organizations.

After graduating as valedictorian from North Carolina's Shaw University in 1927, Baker moved to New York City, where she lived in utter poverty, the result of the Great Depression. She and a group of others founded the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose members pooled funds to buy products and services at reduced cost.

In 1935, Ella Baker joined the NAACP as a field secretary and later served as its national director. She scaled back her national responsibilities with the group eleven years later but still worked at the local level to improve and integrate New York City's schools. Baker and several Southern Black ministers and activists established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--SCLC--in 1957; the SCLC was a major force in organizing the civil rights movement.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. served as the group's first president and Baker was the director, though she mainly worked behind the scenes, while King was its spokesman. In 1960 Baker left the SCLC when she helped students organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--at her alma mater, Shaw University. The SNCC's purpose was to give young Black people a more organized voice in the civil rights movement. 

African American writer and performer, Maya Angelou toured Europe and Africa in the 1950s in the musical Porgy and Bess. She sang in New York City nightclubs, joined the Harlem Writers Guild, and took part in several off-Broadway productions, including Genet's The Blacks and her own Cabaret for Freedom.

During the 1960s she was active in the African-American political movement; she subsequently spent several years in Ghana as editor of the African Review.

Her six autobiographical volumes, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, have generally been well-received. She has also published several volumes of poetry, including And I Still Rise. Angelou read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Clinton in 1993.

Repost: Black History Month: Billie Holiday

The facts of Billie Holiday's early life are uncertain. The facts of her life, however, are not. Billie was an icon, a prostitute, a drug addict, a nightclub singer, a desperate figure; she was also one of the first African American singers to appeal to both Black and white audiences.

She was born Eleanora Fagan, maybe in Baltimore; maybe not. Her mother, Sadie Fagan, may have been just thirteen, and her father Clarence Holiday, may have been just fifteen. And they may or may not have ever married.

But Clarence Holiday, did play guitar and banjo professionally, and he joined jazz-band leader Fletcher Henderson in the early 1930s. So Clarence was on the road much of the time and was not conceivably a family man.

Eleanora, as Billie was known, had a delinquent adolescence,. She was sent to a reformatory at the ten, raped at eleven, and a prostitute by age twelve. In Baltimore, hoping for a new career as a singer, she assumed the first name of her favorite movie star, Billie Dove, and the last name of her father, and Billie Holiday was born.

Soon after, in 1928 or 1929, she moved to New York City with her mother, and together they struggled to make a living during the Depression. Sadie and Billie worked as domestics when they could get no other work, and whenever her father came to town, Billie would confront him, threatening to call him daddy in front of his girlfriends unless he gave her money.

In her mid-to-late teens, Billie began singing in New York clubs, and by the time she was old enough to drink legally she had established a reputation as a stirring jazz singer. Hers was a natural talent with excellent musical instincts and an earthy voice that matched the honesty of her songs.

Lover Man Oh Where Can You Be

God Bless The Child

Don't Explain

Fine and Mellow

By the age of eighteen her fans included, among many others, Benny Goodman, with whom she recorded in 1933, and record producer-promoter John Hammond, who observed that "she sang popular songs in a manner that made them completely her own." Her nickname in Harlem was "Lady," and saxophonist Lester Young, an admirer, added the appellation "Day."

She was "Lady Day," the hottest singer in Harlem before she was twenty.

Her best recordings were organized by Hammond, with pianist Teddy Wilson, and after those sessions, Hammond was devoted to promoting Holiday's career. He arranged for her to appear with the best musicians of the era, and by the end of the 30s, Billie Holiday had sung with Count Basie and his orchestra, and with the Artie Shaw Band.

But life as a big band singer was too restrictive for Billie, and in 1938 she became a solo act. In January 1939 she opened at the new Greenwich Village club Cafe Society, where she sang for nine months and introduced her classic protest against lynching, "Strange Fruit." The Cafe Society audiences were mostly white, and Billie found a whole new group of fans who hung on her every song.

Holiday was a success, but she was also living her music with disastrous effects. In August 1941 she married Jimmy Monroe, and by the time of their breakup soon afterward, she was an opium user and a heroin addict. She made over $1,000 a week in the early 40s and spent most of it on her habit; she was also at the peak of her career.

In 1943 she was voted the best jazz vocalist in the Esquire magazine readers' poll, and with that acknowledgement, Decca Records began making a series of thirty-six recordings that are regarded among the finest jazz vocals of the time.

Lover Man

Porgy

Now or Never

My Sweet Hunk of Trash, sung with Louis Armstrong.

But those Decca recordings also seemed to mark the beginning of the end of Billie's career. In 1945, she married trumpet player Joe Guy, and together they formed a band, losing much of Billie's money along the way. Business woes, her drug dependency, and chronic depression brought her career to an abrupt halt.

In 1947, Billie Holiday was arrested on a drug charge and voluntarily accepted placement in a federal drug-rehabilitation center for a year and a day. Ten days after her release she appeared before a packed house at Carnegie Hall—one of the first Black artists, and the first Black female artist to do so. But because of her drug arrest, her cabaret license had been suspended, and Billie was not allowed to play in Manhattan establishments that served alcohol.

The years of drinking and the ravages of drug addiction took their toll on her talent as well. Her voice lost its resilience, and oftentimes she would appear on stage unable to perform. She toured Europe in 1954 and appeared triumphantly at Royal Albert Hall before an audience of six thousand. But increasingly the power of her performances was attributable to the pity the audience felt for a once extraordinary talent that had destroyed itself; it was as if her music described a life too terrible to endure.

Billie’s autobiography Lady Sings the Blues reinforced that image and did not hide the embarrassments of her life, her drug addiction, the rapes, the bad marriages, the prostitution. In the mid-1950s her last marriage, to Louis McKay , fell apart and she was unable to drag herself from the world of drug abuse. By 1958 she was on her last slide downward.

Billie Holiday died on 15 July 1959 in a hospital bed where she had been under house arrest for over a month for possession of narcotics. She had $750 taped to her leg.

But before you feel sad for Billie Holiday, remember all that she did for women, and Black women; all she did to pave the way for every single female singer that came after her. And don't forget that she opened doors to a world of music and nightclubs that had once been closed to Black performers.

Hers was a remarkable talent, and a horrendous personal life, but it was all Billie Holiday and because I have loved her voice for years and years, here are some of her songs …

Repost: Black History Month: MLK

Like the song by Billie Holiday these words bring tears to my eyes, especially knowing that these are some of Martin Luther King's last words.

Words that still resonate with me today. 

The Funny Papers

Michael de Adder, Marc Murphy, Pedro X Molina, Jack Ohman, Nick Anderson, Rick McKee, Jeff Stahler, Randy Bish, Marshall Ramsey, Chris Britt, 

RIP Mr President

There are but a few people I consider heroes but, alongside Rosa Parks and Harvey Milk there has long been a space for Jimmy Carter, who passed away at the age of 100.

I have always said that, while he accomplished some great things while president—promoting human rights for all at a time when many in this country were marginalized, adding to the national park and preserve system, reestablishing governmental credibility after the Watergate Crisis, and with  the Camp David Accords, forging a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel—it was his post-presidential life and work and message that proved him to be the greatest ex-President who ever lived.

In 1946, Jimmy Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and then joined the Navy submarine branch, working his way into “Rickover’s boys,” the unit of America’s nuclear submarine fleet championed by Admiral Hyman Rickover. Carter was on his way up until a death at home changed his destiny …

His father Earl, a farmer and businessman, passed from cancer in 1958 so Jimmy and Rosalynn, and their children, returned to Georgia to take over the family farming business. It was there he first ran for school board, then state senator. He was elected governor in 1970, serving one successful term before launching an improbable bid to become president, winning the Democratic nomination and then defeating Republican President Gerald Ford in November 1976.

 I remember seeing footage of inauguration day when Jimmy, Rosalynn, with their daughter Amy, chose to walk from the capitol back to the White House. He was an everyman; he was any man.

In November 1979, Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostages. Carter tied negotiations, then launched a rescue mission that never reached its target because of helicopter failure. Carter’s Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher completed negotiations under Algerian auspices to free the American hostages, who were released after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president so he often gets the credit, but it was Jimmy Carter who brokered the release.

Jimmy Carter returned to Plains and he could have lived a quiet life, but instead he chose to step up and live his last, best act. He and Rosalynn began volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, building houses for the poor; then the couple founded the Carter Center, which focused on making peace and spreading health and democracy around the world.

As leader of the Carter Center, he won the Nobel Prize, the United National Human Rights Prize and many other notable awards from countries, organizations and world leaders, and both Jimmy and Rosalynn were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, who said:

”Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have done more good things for more people in more places than any other couple on the face of the Earth.”

Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley wrote in his book “The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter”:

“People will be celebrating Jimmy Carter for hundreds of years. His reputation is only going to grow."

Rosalynn died a little more than a year ago; the couple is survived by their children Amy, Chip, Jack and Jeff; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.

RIP Jimmy

And thank you for showing all of us the way.

Bobservations

While doing our groceries over the weekend, Carlos stopped me, and whispered:

“Can you get me something?”

“What is it?”

He looks around.

“Preparation H.”

“You got a fire in the hole?”

“Stop that!”

But I can’t, so I jokingly tell him I don’t know where it is in the store so I’ll ask a cashier; then I mimic her on the loudspeaker:

“We have a gentleman in need of Preparation H! What aisle is the Preparation H?”

And then I say once we find it and head the checkout:

“I need a price check on Preparation H? Price check. Preparation H.”

Carlos mutters:

“I hate you.”

But he doesn’t because had the situation been reversed … uh huh.

We have had many, many cats over the years and almost all were good at following the rules; staying off counters and tables; not sitting on certain pieces of furniture. But this one time:

“Rule Breakers

We have rules at Chez Smallville. Cats can get on the beds, on the desk, on the sunroom furniture and on the living room couch. They cannot get on the counters, the tables, the dining room chairs or any of the four new chairs in the living room. And they listen. They know where they can go, and where they cannot.

So, imagine my surprise to walk into the living room and find Tuxedo and MaxGoldberg nesting in a No-No Chair! And look at Max; he's got that Uh-oh face. Tuxedo, on the other hand, couldn't even be bothered to wake up.

At least not until I yelled Geddownfromthere!

Cat scatter.”

And they never got on those chairs again … at least not while we were home.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] has issued a travel advisory for … no, not Ukraine, or Russia, Syria or Iran, China or North Korea … but for the state of Florida. The advisory is a response to Governor DeFacist’s attempts to erase Black history and restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools, and read, in part:

“Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”

And now the Human Rights Campaign, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Florida Immigrant Coalition and Equality Florida have joined the NAACP in advising people to avoid visiting or relocating to the State of Hate.

In America.

Tina Turner. Icon. Diva. Singer. Sex Symbol. Goddess. Survivor. She started out a little rough, and then it got rougher for her, but she came through and persevered and taught us all what it looks like to come out of the darkness and into the light.

RIP ... and thank you for the music and the strength.

A guy goes into a bar where there’s a robot bartender who says:

"What will you have?"

“A martini.”

The robot brings back the best martini ever and asks the man:

"What’s your IQ?"

"148."

The robot then proceeds to talk about physics, space exploration, and medical technology. The guy leaves, but he is curious, so the next night he goes back to the bar and the robot asks:

"What will you have?"

“Whiskey."

"What's your IQ?"

"100."

The robot then starts to talk about NASCAR, Budweiser, and John Deere tractors. And then the guy leaves but finds it so interesting that returns next night and the robot asks again:

"What will you have?"

“Beer.”

“What’s your IQ?"

"Uh, about 55, I think."

The robot leans in real close and says:

"Ain’t it awful the way Joe Biden stole the election?”

Could’a happened and could still be happening.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican Traitor and White Supremacist, was the highest bidder among House Republicans for a cherry “chapstick” used by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. Greene made the winning bid for the lip balm after McCarthy sweetened the deal by promising to attend a donor dinner.

And this occurred while McCarthy was ALLEGEDLY negotiating with President Biden over the debt ceiling. If Republicans refuse to raise the debt limit—which they do without a thought under Republican Presidents, but never Democrat Presidents—the US will default on its debt for the first time in history which could drive interest rates sky high, devastate the US and world economies, destroy confidence in the dollar, and permanently increase the interest rate the US spends on its debt.

Yes, while the country appears to be teetering on default, this is what the GOP does. Large Marge and her ilk ick battle over the lip balm KKKevin McCarthy slathers on his mouth before he places it directly on Thing 45's sphincter.

Democrat Representative Sean Casten put it the best:

“In today’s Democratic caucus meeting, we discussed how devastating a default would be for American families and what we can do to get the GOP to take this seriously. In the House GOP meeting, they auctioned off Kevin McCarthy’s used chapstick.”

That’s the GOP; they don’t give a flying fuck if the country is destroyed.

A nice slab of beefcake is Alvise Rigo, an actor, a model,  and an athlete. But all that matters not because all we need to know is: Would You Hit It?

Betty White ... Thank You For Being A Friend

Gosh, I loved Betty White … sweet and perky and naughty and sassy. I cannot see a picture of her or watch a video without smiling. But here’s one reason I loved Betty …

In 1954, she had her own variety show, The Betty White Show, and one week she featured tap dancer Arthur Duncan, a Black ,man. Betty received all kinds of hate mail for doing that and her response was:

"I'm sorry. Live with it."

And then she proceeded to have Arthur Duncan on regularly before her show was canceled. That was Betty White. In the 1950s she had zero fucks to give. And here’s how she’s remembered …

“I don’t drink vodka … but I will tonight, on ice, with a slice of lemon with a hot dog on the other side and just be ok being sad. I’ll have to buy some rose colored glasses because Betty was that for all of us.”—Sandra Bullock

"The world looks different now. She was great at defying expectation. She managed to grow very old and somehow, not old enough. We'll miss you, Betty."—Ryan Reynolds

"I loved Betty very, very much. The world has lost one in a million."—Carol Burnett

"RIP Betty White, the only SNL host I ever saw get a standing ovation at the after party. A party at which she ordered a vodka and a hotdog and stayed til the bitter end."—Seth Meyers

“I hosted one of the many attempted reboots of the Pyramid game show in 2010 and Betty was a celebrity guest. The only thing she asked for all day was two bean and cheese burritos from Taco Bell.”—Andy Richter

"I had the honor of working with Betty on the series Bob and the finale of Hot In Cleveland. Betty was a regular on Jack Paar’s late night show and in 1960 she was there when I did my first stand-up on national television. Betty practically invented television and was a total pro. We lost a giant one today."—Bob Newhart

“I grew up watching and being delighted by her. She was playful and daring and smart. We all knew this day would come but it doesn’t take away the feeling of loss. A national treasure, indeed. Fly with the Angels.”—Debra Messing

“Our national treasure, Betty White, has passed just before her 100th birthday. Our Sue Ann Nivens, our beloved Rose Nylund, has joined the heavens to delight the stars with her inimitable style, humor, and charm. A great loss to us all. We shall miss her dearly.”—George Takei

“Betty White dying three weeks before she turned 100 is the final act of performer whose timing was always sharp, always unexpected, and even with the warmest of characters, always a little dangerous. No one else could live to 99 and so perfectly leave us wanting more.”—Guy Branum

“Betty White brought a smile to the lips of generations of Americans. She’s a cultural icon who will be sorely missed. Jill and I are thinking of her family and all those who loved her this New Year’s Eve.”—President Biden

“A spirit of goodness and hope. Betty White was much beloved because of who she was, and how she embraced a life well lived. Her smile. Her sense of humor. Her basic decency. Our world would be better if more followed her example. It is diminished with her passing.”—Dan Rather

“Rest in peace, sweet Betty. My God, how bright heaven must be right now.”—Valerie Bertinelli

“Betty White was an icon in the entertainment industry and a true ‘friend’ to the LGBTQ community. Her character Rose on The Golden Girls was instrumental in drawing mainstream attention to LGBTQ issues on television, namely an episode that raised awareness about HIV in 1990. Throughout the rest of her career, White used her platform to advocate for many issues affecting the LGBTQ community, including marriage equality and supporting at-risk queer youth.”—Anthony Allen Ramos, GLAAD

“In 1974, I was an obscure opening act for Linda Ronstadt at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Passing through the lobby before the show, I saw Betty White and her husband Allen Ludden waiting in line. I loved Betty White, so I went up to them: ‘I’m so honored to meet you both.’ And then I said, ‘Isn’t Linda great?’ She said, ‘We came to see you … because we heard you were funny.’ I was elated.”—Steve Martin

Lastly, here’s Betty White, in her own words, on dying:

“My mother had the most wonderful outlook on death. She would always say, ‘Nobody knows. People think they do—you can believe whatever you want to believe what happens at that last moment—but nobody ever knows until it happens.' Growing up, whenever we’d lose somebody, she’d always say, ‘Now, they know the secret.'”

And now Betty knows it, too.

RIP Golden Girl