Surprised there wasn't more about this in the Blogosphere. As most of you know, Bob Hope died yesterday, shortly after celebrating his 100th birthday. Sometimes the good do not die young.
* SmarterCop has some thoughts, and W5 has some personal memories.
* CNN's news report tells you more about this remarkable man
* Oddly, CNN's obituary focused more on Hope's career. Shouldn't it have been the other way around?
* The Sydney Morning Herald has some of his one-liners. LT Smash adds a recent one, from his personal experience.
Goodbye, Bob. You left us more than just memories.
I suspect the dearth of commentary is due to demographics. I have vague childhood memories of the television broadcast of Hope's Vietnam-era performances for the troops, but at age 40, I'm an old fogey by blogosphere standards. Folks 35 and under will remember Hope from his golf tournament, if they remember him at all.
It's sad, but Hope may have outlived his own fame.
Oops, forgot; I meant to mention Mark Steyn's retrospective on Bob Hope, published earlier this year on his 100th birthday. It's about the best tribute I've read so far.
Well, I posted something yesterday, with a link to my post on his birthday.
Kevin Shaum has part of the answer, I think; I'm two years older than he is and I have much clearer memories of Hope, but what I remember is that he wasn't funny. I'm planning on renting his earlier movies to see if he was funny earlier.
Dennis Miller did a joke on Saturday Night Live in the 80s that Chevy Chase would no longer be respected on the basis of funny, earlier work. Miller said the last person to be given that respect was Bob Hope, and Bob abused the privilege.
Another reason that Hope's death wasn't picked up more widely is that we just had his 100th birthday celebration, and that felt like an obit, same as the Sinatra TV special a few years ago.
Still, my personal tastes aside, Hope was extremely popular in his day, and he was a class act.