A woman in Ontario, Canada, wrote her own obituary, because … why not? At least she had a sense of humor about it.
“It hurts me to admit it,” Sybil Marie Hicks wrote in her pre-written memorial to herself, which ran in the Spec after she died on Feb 2. “But I, Mrs. Ron Hicks from Baysville, have passed away.”
In the obituary, she affectionately wrote about her husband, Ron, whom she called a “Horse’s Ass,” and her children, clearly labeling which ones she liked best.
“I also left behind my children whom I tolerated over the years,” Hicks said, listing Bob as her favorite. She jokingly jabbed at “Baby Bruce” who “wouldn’t eat homemade turkey soup because he didn’t want to be alert looking for bones while he ate.”
“I finally have the smoking hot body I have always wanted,” Hicks quipped. “Having been cremated.”
Adding that her husband’s “special friend” Dorothy is now taking care of her horse’s ass, Hicks clarified that nobody helped her write the obituary, and it was hers alone.
Twitter users believe Dorothy is the family pet, and Hicks had a last laugh stirring up some drama for her husband.
I think “Dorothy” is the family dog, It seems like Sybil is having one last joke at her husband’s expense.
Happy thank u, next day! Ariana Grande‘s fifth album arrived into the world on Friday (February 8), just in time to gloss over all that drama concerning her scrapped Grammys performance. Ever the generous queen, Ari also shared the video for the album’s closing track: the iconically titled “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored.”
As previously teased, the trippy clip stars Riverdale hunk Charles Melton, who has his eyes fixed on Grande… but his hands all over model Ariel Yasmine, who’s styled to look exactly like the singer, sky-high ponytail and all. When the scene moves from a nightclub to a house party, Grande does a little Single White Female-inspired makeover by ditching her platinum wig and attempting to steal Melton away. Or is it actually the girl she was after the whole time? You’ll have to wait until the steamy makeout-in-a-pool scene at the end to decide for yourself. Let the theories begin.
As for the song itself, it finds Ari back in “7 Rings“-esque boss mode, lusting over some glossy pop-trap beats and stirring up all the drama: “Break up with your girlfriend / Yeah, yeah, ’cause I’m bored / You can hit it in the mornin’ / Yeah, yeah, like it’s yours.”
For just the second time in league history, NBA players drafted the All-Star teams. For the first time, we got to watch.
LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo, the two leading vote-getters for the 2019 game, got to select their squads from the pool of 24 All-Star players for the Feb. 17 exhibition in Charlotte, North Carolina.
James and Stephen Curry were elected captains last year in the first All-Star draft, although the event was not televised. Both wanted to keep their selections private at the time but said a future televised version would be a good idea.
So here we are. With allegiances tested, enemies becoming friends, friends becoming enemies and even a post-draft trade, which team came out on top?
Who Has the Better Starting 5?
First, a look at both team’s final rosters, including starters and reserves:
NBA @NBA
The 2019 #NBAAllStar #TeamLeBron & #TeamGiannis rosters as drafted by #LeBronJames and #Giannis! https://t.co/AbvnyJjMsv
James, the overall leading vote-getter, had the first pick and selected Kevin Durant. Antetokounmpo responded with Curry, proving once again just how insanely talented the Golden State Warriors are.
From there, James selected former Cleveland Cavaliers teammate Kyrie Irving third, Kawhi Leonard fifth and James Harden seventh. Antetokounmpo took Joel Embiid fourth, Paul George sixth and Kemba Walker with the eighth and final starter pick.
While both opening units are stacked, there’s a clear winner.
James and Durant are the two best humans on the planet at playing basketball and combined for 48 points in last year’s game. Starting a team with this pair seems almost unfair.
Antetokounmpo didn’t have the opportunity to draft Durant, so he took Curry, the best player available. His mistake came in drafting Embiid over Leonard and Harden—a move that appeared to surprise James, who pounced on Leonard with his next pick.
In the end, James has perhaps the three best two-way players in the world (when they want to be) in himself, Durant and Leonard. Add in the reigning MVP, Harden—he of a league-leading 36.5 points per game this season—and that’s an incredible amount of offense. Oh, and then there’s Irving, who was built for the All-Star stage and hit the shot that helped deliver James his last NBA championship.
For Team Giannis, a backcourt of Curry (6’3″) and Kemba Walker (6’1″) is great but a little undersized. Walker, like DeMar DeRozan last year, doesn’t quite carry the level of star power as his starting peers. The good news? The 7’0″, 250-pound Embiid will be nearly impossible for anyone on Team LeBron to cover because of his size and strength, and both George and Antetokounmpo are terrific two-way players.
Still, the combination of having to pick second (and then last overall) hurt Team Giannis.
Advantage: Team LeBron
Who Has the Better Bench?
Layne Murdoch/Getty Images
Antetokounmpo had the first pick of the reserves. Anthony Davis was the obvious choice. Russell Westbrook and Damian Lillard seemed like smart picks as well.
Instead, Antetokounmpo chose loyalty and went with Bucks teammate Khris Middleton.
This was great for team chemistry—but not for winning the All-Star Game. Had anyone but Antetokounmpo been this team’s captain, Middleton would have likely been the last player taken.
Davis was then the obvious choice for James. Even though they didn’t become teammates in real life, James’ team needed size to combat that of Embiid on Team Giannis. The 6’10”, 253-pound Davis is the second-leading scorer in the NBA (29.3 points per game) and was the All-Star MVP just two years ago.
With Westbrook, Lillard and Klay Thompson still on the board, Antetokounmpo’s next selection of Nikola Jokic was another shock. Jokic is perhaps the league’s best passing big man, but this is his first All-Star game. Guys playing in their first All-Star gala tend to be a little more passive and defer to veteran teammates. Jokic needs to be aggressive and show off his overall game if he wants to validate being picked this high.
James did a good job of filling his lack of size with Davis, the 6’11” LaMarcus Aldridge (who LeBron hoped Spurs coach Gregg Popovich would let play more than two minutes) and the 7’0″ Karl-Anthony Towns. He also drafted some excellent shooters in Thompson, Lillard and Bradley Beal, who somehow went last overall.
While James originally took Westbrook, he eventually traded him to Team Giannis for fellow Klutch Sports client Ben Simmons. Dwyane Wade was his obvious pick among the legends, although playing time for both he and Dirk Nowitzki of Team Giannis will likely be limited. The difference is Wade can still contribute in spurts, while Nowitzki is struggling to run up and down the court.
For Antetokounmpo, there were some head-scratching choices. He went with Simmons over Lillard, Blake Griffin over Westbrook and first-time All-Star Nikola Vucevic over Towns. Antetokounmpo should have taken Beal over Lowry with his last pick, but said he had already told Lowry he would make sure he wasn’t the final selection in the draft.
Again, loyalty hurt Team Giannis.
Advantage: Team LeBron
Team LeBron Wins If
Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images
James’ squad is more talented, and talent typically wins these games.
Experience is also a big factor for Team LeBron. His starting lineup alone has a combined 41 trips to the game compared to 20 for Team Giannis. Antetokounmpo also has four players who will make their first appearance, compared to just one (Simmons) for James.
Team LeBron has the better starting unit and better bench. There’s an argument to be made that Davis, the sixth man for James, would be the best player on Team Giannis.
If there’s a close game in the fourth quarter, Team LeBron has three of the top-five clutch scorers in the NBA this season (Harden, Leonard and Irving) compared to just one (Walker) for Team Giannis. Lillard, Durant and James have all hit their share of game-winning shots as well.
Team LeBron doesn’t need to do anything special. As long as everyone is healthy and at least somewhat motivated, it has the talent to win.
Team Giannis Wins If
Stacy Revere/Getty Images
One major area of strength for Team Giannis is size. The 6’11” Antetokounmpo drafted six players 6’9″ or taller, not including himself. Team LeBron contains five total, including one (Simmons, 6’10”) who’s a point guard.
If it wants, Team Giannis could put out a lineup with Antetokounmpo running point guard with George, Griffin, Jokic and Embiid. Forcing Team LeBron to go big at times would help keep backcourt assassins Harden, Irving, Lillard, Thompson and Beal off the floor.
By trading for Westbrook, Team Giannis also has a two-time All-Star Game MVP on its bench—one who tends to take these games seriously.
Curry, perhaps the best shooter in NBA history, could neutralize a lot of what Team LeBron does as well.
Wild Card
Having the game in Charlotte could carry a big advantage for Team Giannis.
Both Walker and Curry (a Charlotte native) should have plenty of family at the game and will be extra motivated to show out. With 50.4 percent of all shots in last year’s All-Star Game coming from the three-point line, having Curry helps Team Giannis if this turns into a shooting contest.
There’s also the off chance that James will get distracted while trying to tamper with talk to all of the expected upcoming free agents (Durant, Leonard, Thompson, Irving) that he just so happened to select for his team.
Prediction
Team LeBron 154, Team Giannis 148
Greg Swartz covers theNBAfor Bleacher Report.Follow him on Twitter.
In case you missed it, Jeff Bezos called the National Enquirer’s bluff by posting their attempts to blackmail him on the internet.
Published on Thursday, the Amazon CEO’s Medium post contained plenty of lurid detail about the intimate photos the newspaper was threatening to release if he did not comply with their demands.
Amid the revelations was Bezos’ admission that his ownership of the Washington Post had posed some problems for him, or as he put it in his post (emphasis ours):
“My ownership of the Washington Post is a complexifier for me. It’s unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy.”
Call us nitpickers, but “complexifier” doesn’t appear to be a word in the English language, but it sure got the attention of people online.
I like that he used the word “complexifier,” bc it means that he definitely wrote it himself and is an actual person who would get into a petty argument with a copy editor.
Dibs on The Complexifier, a Jason Statham action thriller about a billionaire who goes rogue to destroy an evil tabloid who violated the rules of Journalism
“Complexifier,” however, does appear to exist in French.
Predictably, the definition of the word according to French dictionary Larousse is to “make something more complex, more complicated.” A direct translation in English would be “complicating.”
According to Google Books, the word has been in English books since 1953, although its frequency is a fraction of a percent.
You could say the word is quite the, ahem, complexifier.
Confidence is apparently coursing through the Los Angeles Lakers following Thursday’s 129-128 victory over the Boston Celtics at TD Garden.
“I wouldn’t want to [play] us in any seven-game matchup, that’s for sure,” general manager Rob Pelinka said when asked about the Purple and Gold potentially reaching the playoffs, per Mike Bresnahan of Spectrum SportsNet.
Thursday was a day fans may look back at come season’s end as a turnaround moment for the Lakers.
They appeared well on their way to a third straight defeat when they fell behind by 18 points in the first half against Boston a mere two days after a stunning 42-point blowout loss to the Indiana Pacers. However, they battled back, and Rajon Rondo gave them the win by collecting the loose ball after Al Horford swatted Brandon Ingram and drilling a buzzer-beater.
Had the ball bounced a different direction, there would be questions about Los Angeles after it missed on Anthony Davis prior to Thursday’s trade deadline.
Instead, it is just 1.5 games back in the race for the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference behinda Los Angeles Clippers team that traded its leading scorer, Tobias Harris, to the Philadelphia 76ers. It also has the best player in the league leading the way in LeBron James, and the King is coming off 13 straight playoff appearances and eight straight NBA Finals trips.
Rather than folding on the road following all the drama of the trade deadline and an embarrassing loss to the Pacers, the Lakers battled back and potentially set the tone for the rest of the season.
A first-round matchup with the Golden State Warriors would surely end quickly for Los Angeles, but it could pose a threat to any other team in the Western Conference. As long as James is on the floor, the Lakers will have one of the all-time greats who can take over a game or series at a moment’s notice.
They have to reach the playoffs first, but they took a significant step in that direction Thursday.
As the clock crept toward 3 p.m. ET on Thursday and a trade that would send Anthony Davis to the Lakers died a slow, quiet death, front offices around the league watched with a vested interest. Especially those front offices located in cities not unlike New Orleans—cities that wear the NBA’s small-market albatross with both a sense of pride and dread.
When Anthony Davis’ agent, Rich Paul, revealed 10 days before Thursday’s trade deadline that Davis wanted out of New Orleans, it set the wheels in motion for a bold power play led by LeBron James. Paul, of Klutch Sports Group, also famously represents James. And James needs another superstar by his side to accomplish his goal of winning a championship in Los Angeles.
“[Davis] wasn’t asking to go anywhere but the Lakers,” a Western Conference executive told Bleacher Report. “He wasn’t asking to go to another small market.”
So James, Davis and their agent saw an opportunity: Put the pressure on the Pelicans to trade Davis now—to his desired destination, LA—before the Celtics would be eligible to step in and blow the Lakers’ best offer away. (Since Davis and Kyrie Irving are both on designated player contracts, the Celtics can’t acquire Davis without including Irving in the deal until July.)
Never mind that this new stance contradicted Davis’ previous statements on his impending free agency.
“I’ve got two years, to ’20-‘21,” Davis said in November, according to Marc Spears of The Undefeated. “I’m here and whatever happens after that, happens.”
That plan changed once Davis and Paul realized that they could accelerate Davis’ free agency by 17 months simply by making – and publicizing – a trade request.
“It was all designed to try to get him to the Lakers,” an Eastern Conference executive said.
Andrew D. Bernstein/Getty Images
It didn’t work, so another star’s hasty departure from a small market was averted, if only temporarily. Pelicans GM Dell Demps refused to capitulate under pressure from the unholy trinity of James-Klutch-AD and decided that nothing the Lakers could possibly offer would be enough to force his hand.
Is this a victory for the NBA’s small markets, who can’t get superstars in free agency and increasingly struggle to keep their own even after they get lucky enough to draft them? Or just a temporary reprieve?
“All of the small-market teams are in such a bad position when a guy doesn’t want to play there because they instantly lose a lot of leverage,” a prominent agent told B/R. “It’s such a player-driven league on and off the court, and so they often have no recourse but to make the trade and get as many assets as they can.”
Although The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported that Davis informed the Pelicans he’d only sign an extension with the Lakers, Clippers, Knicks or Bucks if traded, the Lakers were the only team to gain any semblance of traction on trade talks with New Orleans. That’s how the play was drawn up, straight out of the Klutch Playbook.
The only problem was, the play didn’t work; it backfired.
New Orleans GM Dell Demps froze the trade talks in their tracks, refusing to engage with Lakers president Magic Johnson and GM Rob Pelinka since Monday, in a call described by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne like this: “You could place a Domino’s pizza order in the time that call took.” And the way this played out, it makes you think that Demps was sitting back and eating popcorn – not pizza – as the Lakers’ chemistry was obliterated by reports that half the team was on the trading block.
Now, Davis is still in New Orleans and Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma et al are still with the Lakers, who got obliterated by 42 points Wednesday night in Indiana before earning a much-needed victory over the Celtics in Boston on Thursday night.
On one hand, it was a repudiation of the latest LeBron-Klutch power play—one that was met with cautious approval in small-market front offices across the league, another Western Conference executive told B/R.
“When one of these guys leaves one of these cities, how can the franchise survive?” the executive said.
On the other, it was also a repudiation of the Lakers’ talent. If the Lakers had selected, say, Jayson Tatum, De’Aaron Fox, Donovan Mitchell or Dennis Smith Jr. with the No. 2 pick in the 2017 draft (the first overseen by Johnson and Pelinka) instead of Ball, “They would have AD right now,” another executive said.
Andrew D. Bernstein/Getty Images
The point is, it’s only a matter of time before Davis is traded, because a franchise in a city with no hope of landing a free agent even close to his ability only has a few options:
Do what Sam Presti did in Oklahoma City and take a calculated risk by trading for a star (Paul George) and hoping he stays (he did).
Do what Masai Ujiri did in Toronto and do the same with Kawhi Leonard. Toronto isn’t a small or financially challenged market, but it isn’t a free-agent destination market, either.
Do what GM Jon Horst has done in Milwaukee and make a series of smart, underrated moves to surround a your star (Giannis Antetokounpo) with enough talent to climb all the way to the top of the Eastern Conference. The latest stroke of genius came on Thursday, when Horst added Nikola Mirotic from the aforementioned Pelicans.
“The only way you can ever win in those markets is by outsmarting people and taking calculated risks,” the agent said. “Presti took a calculated risk going after Paul George, knowing he may never have another shot at a guy like that. Masai took a calculated risk with Kawhi. New Orleans decided, ‘We’re not going to concede to LeBron and Rich Paul. If AD wants to go to LA, he can go to LA after we trade him somewhere else.’”
So in the end, in all the cities that have—or hope to have—a top-five player, and keep him, was the unraveling of AD-to-LA a victory? Or just a reprieve?
“Did small markets win on this?” one of the Western Conference executives said. “I don’t know if they won, but they definitely didn’t lose. New Orleans said, ‘No, you’re not going to get our guy for free.’ They won this battle, and they won it in the right way. But they haven’t won the war.”
The battle royale game launched on Monday at the same time as it was revealed by Respawn Entertainment, the developers behind Titanfall. The game is free to play and is available on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, which surely helped it reach a high number of players in such a short time — why not try a free game?
Apex Legends was inspired by other wildly popular battle royale games like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds where players drop down onto an island where the playable area gets smaller and smaller as people fight to be the last survivors.
Apex Legends distinguishes itself from the competition with its unique characters, each with distinct abilities and personalities, as well as the fact that if you play your cards right you can revive your dead squadmates.
Right now it looks like Apex Legends could be going the way of Fortnite and PUBG in terms of popularity, but we’ll have to see how the next few months go. If Respawn Entertainment manages to keep a steady stream of content updates coming, things could go in their favor.
For perspective, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, one of the most popular games of 2018, sold 3 million copies after 11 days, to Apex Legends‘ 10 million. Of course, Smash was $60 and Apex Legends is free, so it’s tough to compare them directly.
Fortnite was also a slower burn than Apex Legends, given the fact that it didn’t even launch with its popular Battle Royale mode – but that mode still took two weeks to hit 10 million players.
It’ll be hard for Apex Legends to beat the eventual records hit by PUBG and Fortnite, which have racked up hundreds of millions of players. But 10 million players after just 72 hours is an impressive start.
When the NBA announced last season that the All-Star teams would be picked by two captains, everybody had pretty much the same reaction: Great idea, but why isn’t it televised?
The All-Star Game badly needed a shake-up. The weekend has created lots of memorable moments, but when was the last time anyone talked about the game itself? With the exception of first-time honorees and players like Russell Westbrook who don’t know how not to go 100 percent, most players are too injury-averse to risk putting in much effort on the court. The last truly indelible All-Star Game moment came in 2009 when Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant were named co-MVPs and gave an awkward press conference pretending they didn’t still hate each other.
This year, the NBA listened to everyone’s requests and took the extra step of televising the draft. Sort of.
Brian Babineau/Getty Images
The broadcast began with a hype video mostly consisting of clips of heavy hitters like LeBron James and Rachel Nichols imploring the league to broadcast the draft, as if to say: We heard you.
What resulted was more or less a conference call. The two captains, James and Giannis Antetokounmpo, FaceTimed into the TNT studio with the Inside the NBA crew and took turns picking teams. Both made the picks you’d expect—James took Kyrie Irving and Dwyane Wade, Antetokounmpo took teammate Khris Middleton as well as all five international players in the pool—as well as the ones designed to set up the most social-media jokes.
James took Kevin Durant first, perhaps a nod to Durant’s infamous December comments about the “toxic environment” James creates. He later took Russell Westbrook, just in case people still cared about the animosity between them following Durant’s departure from Oklahoma City in 2016.
His two headlining picks, of course, were Irving and Anthony Davis—Davis being his first choice among the reserves. This led to an exchange that was both hilarious and kind of stunning.
Bleacher Report @BleacherReport
Giannis accused Bron of tampering when he drafted AD
On Thursday morning, after spending the last week-plus blatantly attempting to engineer a trade of Davis to the Lakers, James denied trying to force any trades, telling reporters in Boston, “There’s nothing I need to get in this league that I don’t already have.” James’ and Davis’ mutual agent, Rich Paul, has made no secret of their desire to team up, and so it was no surprise that James took Davis first in the second round.
The exchange went like this:
Ernie Johnson: “You sure you want him to be your teammate?”
James: “Uh, you know, I’m very sure of that.”
Antetokounmpo: “Isn’t that tampering?”
Johnson: “Shots fired!”
James: “Tampering rules don’t apply on All-Star Weekend.”
When Antetokounmpo dropped the “tampering” line, he looked nervous, like when you want to make fun of a friend for something sensitive but don’t quite know whether you’re crossing a line. He displayed an unexpected instinct for gamesmanship when he drafted Ben Simmons, another of James’ fellow Klutch clients. James pretended to be thrown off. Laughs were had.
Gary Dineen/Getty Images
Overall, Antetokounmpo played up his nice-boy persona. He drafted Curry first because Curry drafted him last year. He took Middleton, a first-time All-Star, as his first reserve with Davis, Klay Thompson and Damian Lillard still on the board. He complimented each of James’ first few picks. He took Paul George as one of his starters and dropped a self-deprecating reference to George’s recent poster dunk over him.
Even the first-ever All-Star draft-day trade of Westbrook for Simmons was an obvious joke setup, allowing James to reunite the Klutch mafia and making Westbrook and Joel Embiid teammates after their recent back-and-forth.
Antetokounmpo is too nice to be a GM—when James proposed the trade, he jokingly suggested James throw in Wade. He should have been serious about the request and forced James to choose between his Klutch family and the Banana Boat Squad. The next time there’s an All-Star draft trade, someone should throw in a future first-round pick or a Celebrity Game player to be named later.
The All-Star draft telecast was entertaining and hit all the right notes, but it was an incremental step toward the ideal version of what was a very good idea. It didn’t help things, either, that it took place hours after the trade deadline as fans were still processing their favorite teams’ moves. By the time the game rolls around on Feb. 17, no one will remember Giannis’ tampering joke or LeBron’s trade proposal.
If the NBA wants to make the draft an event, go all the way. Make it part of All-Star Saturday night so the captains and players can all be there in person to react to being picked. Better yet, do it on the court on Sunday right before the game tips off so the snubs and rivalries are fresh in everyone’s minds.
That’s one way to make players take the game seriously.
Sean Highkin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. He is currently based in Portland. Follow him on Twitter at @highkin.
In an unprecedented move, Thailand‘s Princess Ubolratana Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi has been nominated as prime minister for the country’s long-delayed general elections by Thai Raksa Chart, a party founded by allies of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The registration of the 67-year-old, the elder sister of King King Maha Vajiralongkorn, as a candidate on Friday means this is the first time in the country’s history that a member of the royal family is to become directly involved in politics and run for office.
The princess was stripped of her royal title when she married a US national in 1972. She returned to Thailand in the late 1990s after getting a divorce. Although her formal title was not restored, she is regarded and treated as royalty by people in Thailand.
Ubolratana is also known as a long-time friend of the Shinawatra family, which has an influence on the March 24 election through its proxy political parties without fielding a direct family member this time.
“The unpredictable nature of Thai politics just went up another level,” Al Jazeera’s Wayne Hay, reporting from Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, said/
“This has never happened before in Thai politics; the royal family has always been seen as being above politics even though everyone knows that it’s the most powerful body in Thailand.”
INSIDE STORY: Will Thailand’s election be free and fair? (24:46)
Separately, Prayuth Chan-ocha, the head of Thailand’s military government, said in a statement on Friday he would also contest the elections as a prime ministerial candidate for the pro-army Palang Pracharat party.
Prayuth is the army chief who seized power after the military toppled the administration of Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s sister, in a 2014 coup and made himself prime minister.
Princess Ubolratana is expected to be one of his main opponents.
Hay said Thaksin – who was also ousted in a coup in 2006 – and Yingluck “have always been seen as being ant-establishment.
“Their supporters and the supporters of the elite have clashed many times over the past decade, so to now come to this stage to have a member of the royal family running to be potentially the prime minister for a party backed backed by the Shinawatras is definitely an intriguing development for Thai politics.”
Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since 1932 but the royal family has wielded great influence and commanded the devotion of millions.
John Dingell’s tenure in the House lasted for 11 presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama. | Lauren Victoria Burke/AP Photo
Former Democratic Rep. John D. Dingell Jr., the longest-serving member of Congress whose tenure stretched from Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama, died on Thursday. He was 92.
The cause of death was prostate cancer. Rep. Debbie Dingell, his wife of nearly four decades and successor in Congress, was at Dingell’s side when he died.
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“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of John David Dingell, Jr., former Michigan Congressman and longest-serving member of the United States Congress,“ Debbie Dingell’s office said in a statement Thursday night. “He was a lion of the United States Congress and a loving son, father, husband, grandfather, and friend. He will be remembered for his decades of public service to the people of Southeast Michigan, his razor sharp wit, and a lifetime of dedication to improving the lives of all who walk this earth.“
Dingell‘s legendary tenure in Congress — he served in the House for 59 years and 21 days — is matched only by the scale of his contributions to American society. He was involved in crafting and passing legislation that aimed to ensure clean air and water, safer food and health care for Americans. He worked vociferously to protect the American automobile companies — the dominant industry in his southeastern Michigan district, which stretched from Detroit’s edge to the college town of Ann Arbor.
Dingell’s power came from his chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the panel he controlled from 1981 until 1995, and then again from 2007 to 2009, when he was knocked off by California Rep. Henry Waxman, whose candidacy was tacitly backed by Nancy Pelosi, a longtime Dingell foe.
So vast was Dingell’s jurisdiction atop “E & C“ that the entire planet came under his purview. “If it moves, it’s energy, if it doesn’t, it’s commerce,” Dingell declared.
The son of a House member, Dingell served in Congress from 1955 to 2014. He was sworn in by the late Speaker Sam Rayburn, Democrat of Texas, and exited Congress as “Dean of the House,” with John Boehner, the Ohio Republican, as speaker.
Dingell’s congressional career was 18 months longer than any of the more than 12,300 individuals ever sworn into the House or Senate. In fact, a Dingell has served in the House for nearly 86 years straight, a congressional dynasty that will likely never be equaled. His wife, Debbie, is in her third term.
A proud liberal on most issues, Dingell strove for decades to carry on his father’s legacy, especially on health-care reform. Yet Dingell also forged close ties with Republicans and was able to use those relationships to help move dozens of pieces of legislation throughout his lengthy career.
“Most everything that my dad spent his life in Congress trying to accomplish, and his unfinished goals that I had worked so long and hard to complete, had now been achieved,” Dingell wrote in his 2018 memoir.
“Sixty-seven years after he’d first introduced health reform legislation, I’d helped get it signed into law. Our food was safer. Our air and water were cleaner. Endangered species were protected. We’d looked after the widows and the orphans and all those who, as my father always said, ‘Needed a hand up, not a handout.’ I’d carried on his lifelong commitment to protect the unspoiled open spaces of our beautiful country.”
Yet in many ways, Dingell was a walking contradiction. While Dingell called himself a “child of the House,” the Michigan Democrat also played the role of the average American. For all his love of Detroit and Michigan, the overwhelming majority of his life was spent in Washington. Tall and intimidating, Dingell was both profane and subtle, charming and callous, humorous and deadly serious.
But maybe most important, Dingell served in a Congress that has long since vanished, an insular world ruled by white men who spent months and years living and working closely together. These men shared common values, and often, a common vision for the future of the country.
The House of Representatives Dingell was first elected to in 1955 was largely controlled by Democratic committee chairmen, not the speaker, and those chairmen used their power to pass legislation. They faced comparatively little scrutiny from the press and public. Members had more in common with each other than they do now, and the partisanship was far less intense. “I was part of our government when it worked honorably and well together,” Dingell said.
Born in Colorado, Dingell first came to Capitol Hill in 1933 at age 6 when his father, John Dingell Sr., was elected to Congress as a Democratic lawmaker from Michigan. The elder Dingell was the son of Polish immigrants who had Anglicized his name and got elected as a strong backer of President Frankin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
The younger Dingell became a House page at 11 — his father made sure he served with Republicans to ensure no special treatment — and he was in the chamber on Dec. 8, 1941, when FDR declared war on Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Dingell attended the Capitol Page School and Georgetown Preparatory School. He went on to Georgetown University for his undergraduate and law degrees. The younger Dingell moved back to Detroit after law school, got married and had a son.
But his father’s unexpected death in September 1955 changed everything. He jumped into the special election to fill the vacant House seat and won the general election that December. Only 29 at the time, Dingell wouldn’t leave the House for nearly six decades, rising to become one of the most powerful men in Washington.
“I gave Dad about a week to get comfortable and then I went and ran,” Dingell told the New York Times in 2013. “It turned out to be a great thing. I’ve loved the job.”
Like his father, who first introduced a universal health care bill in 1943, Dingell focused on that issue once he was sworn in. Hereintroduced his father’s bill in 1957 at the start of the 85th Congress, a tradition he would continue at the start of each Congress throughout his long career. Dingell was in the speaker’s chair when the bill creating Medicare passed the House in 1965, and he played a big role in passing the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
By 1981, after patiently clawing his way up the then-sacred seniority ladder, Dingell became chairman of what would become the Energy and Commerce Committee, a post he held for a total of 16 years during his career. Dingell turned it into one of the most powerful panels in the House, with jurisdiction over three-fourths of the legislation that moved through the chamber. Waxman, who ousted Dingell as Energy and Commerce chairman following the 2008 elections, jokingly referred to him as “Mr. Big Chairman.”
Dingell was known for aggressively questioning witnesses, as well as for using an investigative subcommittee to take on everyone from presidents to the Pentagon to powerful CEOs. He sent thousands and thousands of letters — known as “Dingellgrams” — to corporate, government and military officials, demanding documents and information. Not complying with those missives was unthinkable.
The list of legislative accomplishments for Dingell is extraordinarily long. He played a key role in passage of the Endangered Species Act, the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and legislation to create the first international wildlife refuge in North America.
Dingell was also involved in drafting the 2010 Affordable Care Act, the Patient‘s Bill of Rights, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, civil rights bills, a ban on marine waste dumping, and legislation to protect marine mammals and to require drug-labeling.
As American automakers faced an onslaught of better and cheaper Japanese automobile imports in the 1980s, Dingell chaired hearings on the issue. He pushed legislation through the House requiring a percentage of American-made parts to be used in any car sold in the United States. He was the eyes and ears of the Big Three on Capitol Hill.
Dingell had a strained relationship with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), although they remained outwardly civil.
Dingell backed current-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) in a 2001 leadership race instead of Pelosi, a slight she never forgot, or forgave. In 2002, Pelosi supported an unsuccessful Democratic primary challenger to Dingell. And in 2008, when Waxman took on Dingell for the Energy and Commerce gavel — a move that stunned House members — many Democrats believed Pelosi was supporting Waxman, although she didn’t endorse anyone publicly. Waxman won that race, ending Dingell’s hold on the Energy and Commerce panel.
Dingell, though, hadn’t moved quickly enough on issues like climate change and auto fuel-efficiency standards, which angered other Democrats. He was also strongly anti-gun control, which put him out of step with Pelosi and other party leaders.
Despite his success in Congress, Dingell’s personal life was difficult, although he later found happiness with Debbie Dingell, now in her third term in Congress.
In 1952, Dingell married Helen Henebry, a Denver native and airline flight attendant. The couple had four children, but were divorced in 1972.
According to his memoir, Helen Dingell suffered from bipolar disorder throughout their marriage. Despite years of treatment and numerous medications, Helen Dingell wasn’t able to overcome her illness, and John Dingell was awarded custody of their children in the divorce. Helen Dingell died in 2016 at age 89.
Dingell met Deborah Ann Insley on a plane from Detroit to Washington in 1977, according to the magazine People. Twenty-eight years his junior, Insley was a Republican lobbyist for General Motors, as well as being the wealthy heiress to the Fisher Body fortune. The couple married in 1981. She gave up lobbying and became a GM executive after their marriage in order to avoid any conflict of interest.
“I love Debbie — more than the air that I breathe,” Dingell said in his memoir. “I love her enough to do what is probably the hardest thing to do in any situation: keep my big Polish mouth shut about the decisions she makes about her own life, personally and professionally.”
By Morgan Sung
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