NOT done in by a crocodile. Really, this is kind of sad. For a few years, if nothing else, Irwin made people pretend to care about the animal kingdom because of his utter enthusiasm for the subject.

But now our charismatic crocodile hunter is no longer with us, and we have stingrays to blame. I guess maybe there are more important issue in celebrity gossip, but really, even people who didn’t watch the show knew about this guy. After all, remember the “South Park” episode where the fake Steve Irwin went around sticking his thumb in crocodile’s brown holes to piss them off?

This is one of those deaths that, like Rodney Dangerfield or the inevitable demise of Weird Al Yankovich, is going to involve headlines like “Crikey! Look who got stung!” I’ll spare you that for now.