Dear E! Online, You Morons

Dear E! Online,

You people (a phrase I detest) are positively chapping my ass with your fucked-up priorities.
Donna Summer, the Queen of Disco, died yesterday. This was a woman with 5 (count ‘em 5) Grammies, gold and platinum albums and she OWNED the real estate on the Billboard charts like it was her own version of a Monopoly game. Donna performed an Oscar-winning song (“Last Dance”) and when disco faded away, she turned out to be a pretty good painter.

This was an artist as dominant in her time as Michael, Madonna, Whitney and Gaga in theirs.
Yet, what’s getting the big stories on E? Is it a tribute to the Queen of Disco with tweets and comments from her colleagues and those who looked to her as an influence?

No.

Was there a biography and discography noting her smash hits and award winners?

Not unless it’s in stealth mode.

What do we have…let’s see…red carpet “report” on “Men in Black III,” some non-story about some tart named Courtney, a missing person named Nick Stahl, the TV upfronts and, of course, space devoted to the Whoredashians.

E? Really? You take the “Who Gives a Fuck ashians” over Donna? The TV upfronts (and let’s be honest, based on past performance, a lot of those shows will be off the air by December) deserve press over the passing of an icon? Some attention-starved I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-she-is promoting herself is more worthy of attention than a multi-platinum recording artist who recorded with Barbra Streisand (“No More Tears (Enough is Enough)”)?

Jesus Christ Almighty, who’s running the show over there? You guys went nuts over the passing of Whitney and Michael, but an artist who helped blaze the trail gets short shrift.   Was it because Donna didn’t die under scandalous circumstances? Is it necessary to suck off Ryan Seacrest for E to cover a story? (That’s my Whoredashian theory)

Fine. Donna was a Boston girl (Dorchester, actually, like the Wahlberg brothers) as LaDonna Gaines. She was married twice and divorced once, having had three children, Mimi Sommer (she changed her name to an Anglicized version of her first husband’s name, going from Sommer to Summer) and Brooklyn and Amanda Sudano with her second husband, Bruce Sudano.  Donna’s hits began with “I Feel Love” (one of my least favorites) in 1974 and she was recording up through 2008.
And the Whoredashians have accomplished…[crickets] Right.

Donna hit and peaked before the advent of the almighty music video, but a little British film in 1997 chose one of her songs for one of the funniest low-key scenes ever seen in a movie. From “The Full Monty”:

RIP, Miss Summer. We'll miss you.