Dept. of Heard of Depp? (Daily Planet email #946)

Everything I know about the Amber Heard / Johnny Depp trial as of 3:05 p.m. 06/01/22
• Johnny Depp is a celebrity, known for 21 Jump Street, Dead Man, and Edward Scissorhands.
• Amber Heard is also a celebrity, known for a movie I have probably heard of.
• Johnny Depp is the one who looks like a young Keith Richards, if he was also middle-management in a drug cartel and/or the owner of a successful gentleman’s club out by the tollway.
• Amber Heard is the other one, the young watery woman who looked kind of sad, which is certainly to be expected in a court of law.
• It was a defamation suit. Somebody was defamed. Not sure who. Anyway, somebody done somebody wrong, and a celebrity’s good name is at stake here, so pay attention!
• Oh, he was also in that pirates movie franchise.
• And she was in a Marvel movie? And then they started editing her out? See, I was paying attention.
• Heard is unrelated to John Heard, and it is strictly coincidence that Depp is the german word for jerk, creep, or dolt.
• The kangaroo court of the internet didn’t like Ms. Heard. I don’t know why, and I’m OK with that.
• The usually-sensible internet clearly sided for Mr. Depp. Here I also maintain a comfortable ignorance.
• Was there violence? I thought I heard there was violence.
• Alleged violence. Did he hurt her? Did she hurt him? Either way, it isn’t right. People shouldn’t do that, even allegedly. Especially celebrities, whom everybody looks up to.
• Oh, is the adjudication of spousal abuse entertainment now? Asking for a friend. OK. Recalibrating…
• In any case, nobody died. A lot of people died this week. I got a little distracted.
• The trial went on a long time. …Ratings?
• I was on a jury trial once. It was a murder trial. There was enough tragedy for everyone! It didn’t go on quite so long as this one, and it certainly wasn’t on the news because it was a Chicago murder, we got plenty of them to ignore.
• Weren’t they married at one point? How did things become so bad between them that it came to this, I wonder, with an almost paralyzing passivity. Please do not enlighten me! I am content to wonder among the stars.
• And now it’s over! Was it worth it? Who knows? Will it make page 32 of People Magazine’s Terrible 2020’s wrap-up issue? Who can say? Boats sink, oranges rot, sparrows fall. They were all just things that happened.
• But in the end, somebody won. Wasn’t me.