Patrice O'Neal died yesterday.  Twitter told me so.  I couldn't put a face to his name, but a Youtube search jogged my memory of the comic's performances on Comedy Central, specifically the roast of Charlie Sheen.

I chose to view a CBSNews.com broadcast.  As the narrating reporter summarized highlights from O'Neal's career, details of his life, what it had been, and the circumstances of health surrounding it's finale, I drifted away.  

I heard the tone of lie's in the reporter's voice, I didn't need to see his eyes.  The facts were facts.  True, undeniable, unarguable facts.  The piece was written to be informative, as good journalism should be.  The narrator's voice though, it was a trained pacification.  It was a lullaby to the general public, a cue that their emotions should mourn, ever so slightly as his had.  He spoke with underlying empathy.  It was a conjured sorrow though - one that he had practiced in the bathroom mirror, in front of his wife.  "Does this sound sincere?" he would obsess to her.  Her reply, an appeasing, coldly insincere, "Yes."

He reported the true news with emotive lies.  Before he had been assigned to read this story with his just-so voice, he had not known who Patrice O'Neal was.  This was his career; pretending that he cared.

But it was just another man.  Just another dead man.  He forgets that some day he too will be just another dead man.

I know this to be true because he forgets to drop the about-to-cry intonation as he signs off, pouting - "Ken Lombardi, CBSNews.com."