Millions of people connect with his media persona, he was/is a cultural phenomenon. There is a picture of him that is treated like a shrine at my cousin's very good restaurant. Why did a man who seemingly had everything to live for take his own life? Not through an OD or other excess, but by hanging himself from a doorknob? The guy could score drugs in a second, why not ride it out in a heroin haze?
This whole thing is a puzzle to me and it seems wrapped up in his romantic life somehow? I remember seeing a picture of his girlfriend who was obviously cheating on him while "training" MMA etc...
I lose a lot of respect for people that "trade up" after they get famous and ditch their long time spouse that supported them when they were just a normal person, turnabout is fair play? Was it really that he could dish it out but couldn't take it?
Is this someone that people should look up to because he could be a charming bad boy for the cameras? I almost feel like it was too many 3rd world trips, I could actually see the pain he experienced while getting an "authentic" experience over and over again from people that wouldn't make in a lifetime what he made in a day. One or 2 fixers/guides even angled for some wealth or a chance to move to the US and pointed out the extreems, and that is just what they showed us on camera.
Anyhow, I'm a few glasses of wine in. Nowhere in my rambling, incoherent response did I come close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. We are all dumber for having read it. I award myself no points and may God have mercy on my soul.
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Notes -
I think Folamh3 is close to it ITT. He had confronted his cheating partner who then emotionally abused him, leading to his suicide just hours later. If he were already depressed and planning suicide, he wouldn’t have cared about her infidelity or would have messaged her something else. The fact that he attempted to reconcile the relationship hours before taking his life indicates that he had no plans to do so before the event. So the overwhelming probability is that the experience was causal to his suicide. Which then should make us disgusted that the woman who caused it received attention and pity after the event.
Now what’s the deepest reason he committed suicide? We could blame it on the immoral woman — iirc, the actress he was seeing took Harvey Weinstein as a date to the premiere of her movie, likely indicating she sold her body for status. But I don’t think this is the deepest reason, because as a rich icon Bourdain could easily have found a morally upright partner. The reason definitely isn’t depression; that to me is a truly dangerous “just so” story that thwarts all thinking. I would assert that the reason is poor moral value.
Here is the liberal-individualist boomer par excellence. He tours the world and waxes poetic on the quaint social life, yet considers himself above their primitive family and social ties. He sits down with large families to eat, he attends their communal festivals, and he transmits this all to the solitary Americans in their living room. He is the rootless cosmopolitan, an omni-tourist, an enjoyer of spectacle over substance. Seeing all these wonders of the world, he’s yet unable to internalize their moral significance and necessity. He is self-worshipping; he cooked himself an identity in Kitchen Confidential and was too blinded by pride to ever revise it. Bourdain wanted to be the cool Western individualist loner, enjoyer of all but adherent to none. He attended every place’s ritual meal — each one a eucharist, essential, consuming God — but only as the aloof tourist, the narrator. It was this pride and absence of self-reflection (one’s real needs and obligations) which is the deepest reason. He let his heart be captured by an exotic woman to fulfill his own self-image, the idol he worshipped, which led to his demise.
Wow.
You've really cut to the heart of what I was fumbling at here https://www.themotte.org/post/933/what-caused-the-suicide-of-anthony/202738?context=8#context
Progressive types see him as a hero. Purely virtuous, a man to aspire to. Implying his suicide could have anything to do with his spectacle is the closest one could come to commiting a sin.
The irony. It's too much.
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