Celebrity Deaths 2026

Things
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Saw him recently in that Jack Reacher movie and he made it watchable . Was excellent as usual.
The most famous German Irishman ever

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Robert Duvall was terrific in A Shot at Glory alongside Brian Cox and Ally McCoist. Manager of League of Scotland side Kilnockie FC.

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Jesse ‘shakedown’ Jackson - he certainly fooled alot of people in Ireland. Jesse will fool no more - dead at 84

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SSSSSHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTT

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pleeeeeeezz

Jesse lived off this photo for his entire ‘career’

Todays TFK competition - caption MLK’s thoughts

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The Most Rev. Jesse Jackson RIP.

He opened the front door of a venerated central Dublin establishment in December 2004 to let me into a talk he was about to give when the local jobsworth stewards had said there was no room at the inn for me.

Thank you for that Jesse.

I wanted to ask Jesse a question about whether he thought the recently elected senator Barack Obama of Illinois would be the first black president of the USA, but there were a lot of hands asking rubbish questions, time ran out, and now time has indeed run out.

You might have heard this speech before somewhere. Jesse Jackson is only one of two celebrities I ever saw in real life who are now dead. The other is Uaneen Fitzsimons. Uaneen liked to play these words on the radio.

The curse of Screamadelica goes on.

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Other celebrities I have seen in real life who are now no longer with us include Popstars contestant Darius Danesh, Jack Charlton, Maurice Setters, Alan McLoughlin, Mani from the Stone Roses and Primal Scream, Austin Currie and former Manchester United, Everton and Glasgow Rangers winger Andrei Kanchelskis.

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Jimmy’s not dead?

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Tom Noonan, one of the all time great screen villains.

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The racism is strong in this one.

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The Reverend Jesse Jackson was a great man. RIP

JesseJackson (1941-2026)

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

When Jesse Jackson Came to ‘Sesame Street’: ‘I Am! Somebody!’

His memorable appearance was brought to us by the letter ‘I,’ for inspiration.

Listen to this article ¡ 3:53 min Learn more

[

A black-and-white image of a man with an Afro and wearing a large necklace medallion, who sits on the stoop of the "Sesame Street" set, modeled to look like a New York City block. He is smiling and addressing a group of smiling, clapping children of different ages, genders and races.
A black-and-white image of a man with an Afro and wearing a large necklace medallion, who sits on the stoop of the "Sesame Street" set, modeled to look like a New York City block. He is smiling and addressing a group of smiling, clapping children of different ages, genders and races.600×400 47.2 KB

Jesse Jackson, right, in a 1972 episode of “Sesame Street,” in which he encouraged children to assert their dignity as human beings, however small they were.Credit…Via Sesame Workshop
](nyt://image/6e3a6cea-c166-525b-

James Poniewozik is the chief television critic of The New York Times.

Feb. 17, 2026

A young Black man sits on a brownstone stoop, his hair in an Afro, a medallion around his neck the size of one of Cookie Monster’s favorite treats. Before him is a crowd of children of different races and ethnicities. “Here we go,” he tells them.

“I am!” he says.

“I AM!” they repeat.

“Somebody!”

“SOMEBODY!”

The young man is the civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. The stoop is on the set of “Sesame Street,” in 1972. The call-and-response is a version of one that Jackson, who died on Tuesday at 84, led at rallies for years and recorded on an album.

And the scene remains one of the most stirring minutes and a half of children’s TV ever produced.

The cultural reach of Jim Henson’s Muppets is so great that we can forget that “Sesame Street,” first and foremost, is a show about kids. The kids here are boys and girls, of many ages and sizes.

But what they are being told is that they are people. They are not learning to be people. They are not playing at what it will be like to grow up and become people. They are people already, with the same entitlement to dignity as any towering grown-up.

(https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/arts/television/jesse-jackson-sesame-street.html#after-story-ad-1)

They take the message in and belt it back.

“I may be small! But I am! Somebody!”

“I may be on welfare! But I am! Somebody!”

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“I am Black! Brown! White! I speak a different language! But I must be respected! Protected! Never rejected! I am! God’s child! I am! Somebody!”

The kids kick their feet and fidget. Some answer with gusto, some mouth the words shyly. But there is something potent in the moment: the tiniest, most vulnerable members of society declaring that they have value and deserve respect. After all, what is a child’s first experience of rebellion and conflict with authority? It’s some version of: I am a person too! You need to listen to me!

It’s hard to imagine the “Sesame Street” of today — whose new episodes now land on Netflix — airing a statement like this (either the references to God or to welfare). But at its inception, “Sesame Street” very much was a statement. It was dedicated, like public TV generally, to reaching every part of the public. It was noticeably inclusive, to the point of encountering racist complaints and bansover its diverse casting.

Jackson’s appearance underlines that message. Here, he does not speak with the fire of a protest leader or a politician. He’s like a hip teacher or youth group leader. He engages and encourages the kids in the tones of a classroom. He is, perhaps, asking us to imagine that this is what classrooms could be like.

The message of Jackson’s litany is the beginning of education, and the beginning of democracy. It says that you have worth as a person, simply because you are a person. It says that you have a voice. And it says that your voice is most powerful when it joins with other voices.

Jesse Jackson was a lot of things as a political figure. What we see here was how much he was a true populist. His politics were centered on people, as people, as a people. And he emphasized that any movement that brought people together had first to affirm the importance of personhood.

Watching the “Sesame Street” video today, I can’t help but think about those kids on the set. They would be well into middle age today. Maybe they have children, even grandchildren. They’ve lived long enough to see that people don’t always live by the lessons they recite in school, that not everyone, in fact, has his or her somebody-ness acknowledged equally.

Chants can’t make the world perfect, nor can educational kids’ shows. They just give you tools for life, like arithmetic and the ABCs. All us “Sesame Street” kids had to go out into the world and apply those tools ourselves. But at least, if there comes a moment when you have to speak up, it helps to remember when a grown-up cared enough to tell you that you deserved to be heard.

James Poniewozik is the chief TV critic for The Times. He writes reviews and essays with an emphasis on television as it reflects a changing culture and politics.

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the ol wacist trope agin -
shows how little you know - MLK had he lived would not have been friends with Jesse. Mr Jackson became disliked amongst blacks because of his shakedowns, oh white liberals doted on Jesse for a period that he was useful but slowly slowly he made himself persona non gratis

maybe a Black American can enlighten you… Teddy: Yes, in fact today I was talking to a friend from the States and he mentioned a scandal that Jesse Jackson was involved in: the one involving Toyota. Toyota sells a tremendous amount of cars to African-Americans but they don’t have many dealerships owned by African-Americans. People like Jesse Jackson go in and do what we call “shaking the company down”. They say, okay you don’t have any African-Americans, we might call a boycott against your product if you don’t do this for us. Jesse Jackson being a political leader of sorts, Toyota is forced into the position of saying okay, you tell us how to go about getting minorities involved as owners of dealerships and so forth. Jackson set up an office and one of the things he was doing was having people submit their applications but he was charging them for them. The people that he was supposed to be helping. So actually he was shaking down both sides. That’s the kind of thing that incenses me and it seems that there are more problems for African-Americans now that they have more black politicians than when they had fewer black politicians. So that just goes to show that skin colour is not a factor in uplifting the race. I say that to say this: the book after the one I am working on now is called Welcome to the Big Shakedown and it will deal specifically with the issues of corrupt politicians and that kind of thing that I think is plaguing America. It will ask America to take a new look at the myth that people who look like us represent us because they like us, but are they in fact doing what they are supposed to do? I think that this is very much something that Africans have always known. But Americans are a bit naïve in that they don’t know that in the same way that Africans do.

Fitzy - in the words of Teddy Hayes - ‘are you a bit naive?’

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Had a minor role in Heat as well where I first remember seeing him

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Another poor take…

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You guys have been a bit tardy getting your racist talking points out about The Reverend Jesse Jackson. Did the KKK meeting go over time last night? Were your latest Nazi cos play costumes ill fitting?

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You’re the dope who thinks Liam Cunningham is an alright sort.
Your views are simple, at best, on such matters.

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Barname logs out, MAFIA logs on.

Kyle is very silent these days.

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Eric Danes, 53. You don’t outrun ALS.

RIP Dr Sloan