The remaining questions
1. What are the amounts of the drugs?
2. Are all the prescriptions from the same doctor, or was there doctor-shopping involved?
3. Fentanyl??? What medical condition does a woman in her 40s have that calls for fentanyl?
The toxicology report will give us the amounts. It speaks to intent. Are the amounts consistent with an accidental overdose, or did she swallow a bottle of pills?
Drug abuse happens everywhere, so of course it happens in show business too. A “doctor” gave Michael Jackson surgical anesthesia. It was legal and crooked at the same time. Was it something like this?
People could say it’s none of our business what her medical malady was, but to me it’s fairer to Michelle to explain why she was taking it, because in the absence of an explanation the best guess is prescription drug abuse. Fentanyl had already killed Prince and Philip Seymour Hoffman. I wouldn’t let a doctor give me fentanyl, and I wouldn’t let anyone I love take fentanyl. Fentanyl is given to late-stage cancer patients. What the hell happened here?
Knowing the names of the drugs doesn’t tell us the story. If a woman in her 40s was driven to overdose, it changes who the other people in the story are. If a mother was addicted to dangerous drugs and the people around her did nothing, it changes who they are. I always thought the Harris Wittels story was awful in that way. The guy was doing podcasts about how much he liked taking heroin, and the people around him seemed to like having a heroin-addict co-writer as a fashion accessory.
If the toxicology numbers are big, it’s a whole different story. Carole Landis died from an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills. Conspiracy-theory types said Rex Harrison killed her. People who knew her better said Rex Harrison drove Carole Landis to suicide. Nobody found it an occasion to feel sorry for Rex Harrison.
The Trump voters have been nasty, of course, but to me it fits neatly into the category of You Reap What You Sow. Patton has spent a million bazillion hours calling them stupid on the internet. Did he think they were going to send him flowers? He called the Bernie voters stupid too, if you recall, for not switching to Hillary quickly and passionately enough. And then he seemed surprised when nobody went to Keeping Up With The Joneses and Nerdland. Not the kind of person I would choose to be married to. Is that part of the story?
There are still big questions remaining. And to me it’s fair to wonder about how hard Patton has worked to manage the story. A number of internet “journalists” reported his recent version as fact, but the professionals at CBS News took the trouble to note that the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office still lists the cause of death as pending. And remember, last April he had the internet reporting she had died quietly in her sleep, and now we know the EMTs told him it looked like an overdose as soon as they saw her.
People are entitled to ask for answers. The fact that the coroner’s office has been out so long on this tells you that the professionals are wondering themselves.