On Aug. 31, the day during which these thoughts were penned, horses were pulling a silver casket in a one-hundred-year-old glass covered carriage on the Upper-East Side of Manhattan.

Inside the casket was the body of 22-year-old R&B star Aaliyah. 

Thousands of her fans lined the streets near and adjacent to the Frank E. Campbell funeral home to show their love and admiration for the native Brooklynite who spent most of her life in Detroit, but who chose to live here once fame and fortune came her way.

I was down in Orlando, attending a National Association of Black Journalists convention party, standing next to Patricia Wright, the wife of UPN 9 News Director Will Wright, when she nudged me and asked if I knew anything about Aaliyah and another singer dying in a plane crash. 

Her husband, whose station has probably covered more Hip-Hop and R&B stories, was going from person to person. 

I immediately picked up my cell phone and called my newsroom, which hadn’t heard anything yet at 11:03pm. 

It wouldn’t be long before the rumor would be known as a reality.  

Many people who have seen a lot of death in the world went from the festive heights of our last night of networking, to the lows of loss.

For even those in the older generations who may not have known her music, there was a sense of the end of such promise that could only peak at 22 years of age. 

Many drew reference to the 1959 Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Big Bopper plane crash in which Holly was the same age as the sultry, urban songstress and movie star.

Personally, I could only reflect on how all that promise and potential was just gone. 

I didn’t feel the sadness that is felt by someone who connected with her music. 

I knew only a few of her songs and never bought any of her CD’s for myself. 

But with just a little more time on this earth than my own daughter, I could only imagine what a mother would bear upon hearing that news out of anyone’s mouth.

Any human being, who doesn’t have a child, could probably find someone else they love at the same age to make some connection.

I could not have imagined what I would hear and read in the days following my return to New York. 

While surfing through stations I heard the sounds of a plane and then a scream and then a boom. 

I looked down at the dial to see that I had rested on Hot 97.

Not soon after that I heard the voice of a guy I’ve learned to less than appreciate in the last year — DJ Star of the Star and Buc Wild morning team.

Having heard outrageous things on WQHT’s air before that moment, I can’t say I was stunned by the mockery taking place, since this guy even talks about his own mother to get a laugh, but I was surprised with the relative ease death could also be turned into a joke all for the sake of ratings.

I would later read the words of New York Post columnist Rod Dreher, who basically said that too much was being made of her passing and her funeral. 

Also not surprising, commentary considering the source was the flip nature of this well-established white person who thinks he gets to decide for us how we do anything. 

DJ Star apologized the next day but the station suspended him anyway. 

They both got their mileage since a petition demanding his firing was circulating all around the country via the internet. 

But I have to ask why are we seeking to further de-sensitize our society to death.  Our teenagers already believe that like in the movies, they’ll get up after they get shot or stabbed. 

When this happened, a former radio personality wanted to say that it was only entertainment and that people shouldn’t take it seriously. 

Let’s not forget that radio used to be the only way we got any information. 

Star’s “Step and Fetchit” minstrel show and the attempt to be the black Howard Stern is an affront to our progress. 

Yeah, I guess along the way they can be funny, but we shouldn’t let humor lull us into feeling it’s ok to only feel bad about people we personally know. 

The Aaliyah incident proves there is no low they won’t sink to, no morale sacred enough to hold on to for some people like Star.

Even after he talked about me on the air, I still buzzed by the station, but now the numbers are not in my dial until they get somebody else in the booth. 

My dignity is not for sale.

— Gary Anthony Ramsay is a weekend anchor
and journalist on the all-news
cable station NY1 and along-time resident of Queens.