Two things went catastrophically wrong for Connie Francis after she shuffled off this mortal coil, and no, it’s not the fact that she’s dead. Kicking the bucket at 87 is practically a victory lap.
The real tragedies?
Let’s start with the media’s grotesque attempt to rewrite Connie’s life as a calamari sob-story while a horde of brain-dead internet weirdos invented funerals for Connie that never happened.
I’ll dissect this mess with the precision of a butcher carving up a cut of meat that will wind up in a pot of Sunday’s “gravy” — after mass, of course.
First tragedy: The media turned Connie into a walking Italian-American stereotype – Sunday gravy and all.
When Connie died on July 16th in Florida after a mysterious week of “pain,” the news media decided to play their favorite game of turning a legend into a pity party.
The mentally limited media droned on and on about “Connie Franconero, the little Italian-American girl from Newark, New Jersey,” as though Connie – dragging her accordion behind – had clawed her way out of a dumpster behind Mama Celeste’s house.
Newark’s not exactly a cultural mecca, and if anything, Connie’s only real handicap was being from there. It may have been lovely town when Connie was a child, but it ain’t now.
Basically, click-starved media types made it sound as though being an Italian-American from Newark was some kind of serious impediment.
Slapping Connie with a “crippled little greaseball” narrative just added insult to injury. Italian heritage isn’t a disease you overcome; it’s a flex that dates back to the Roman Empire. I mean, there’s a reason why the earth even had a Roman Empire.
Italy’s average IQ is 102, two points above Europe’s 100. This anthropological fact defines why the Italian scene has been outsmarting the continent for centuries while eating better food, painting prettier pictures and composing more beautiful operas. The Irish and English, however, beat them in language arts.
Still, the media painted Connie as though she was just another spaghetti-bender; dodging Irish cops, meatballs and mobsters in a quest to conquer the Top 40 charts.
Spare me the violins. This wasn’t a telethon for “Poor Italians of Newark”; it was Shriner’s Hospital for Italian-American children – a misguided ploy to milk sympathy from people who wouldn’t know talent if it wailed “Stupid Cupid” in their face.
Connie was a global superstar, not your balding grandmother’s grape-stomping cousin from Palermo. Sorry, folks, but that’s how the media mostly views Italians and Americans of Italian heritage. Hey, they might even deserve it because they seem to like being portrayed as Tony Soprano or Pauly Walnuts or a Seaside Heights Guido.
Second tragedy: Morons invented a menagerie of fantasy funerals that never happened.
When someone dies, you expect an obit, maybe a wake, and a dignified send-off—unless you’re Connie, apparently, because her fans (and I use that term loosely) decided to stage imagined mind-funerals instead. These fake stories were all over the internet where they were presented by grubs like Facebook and Instagram as genuine, star-studded events. No, these funerals never happened.
Meanwhile, Connie’s actual funeral was a quiet, private affair in Boca Raton—streamed online for anyone with enough sense to Google it. Sadly, the internet’s cesspool of delusional dimwitted simpletons, churned out fan fiction so stupid it deserves its own golden statuette of Francesca Rinaldi.
Picture this: Celine Dion, allegedly hobbling in on crutches like a Vegas stick figure on Ozempic, sneaking through the back door of a church to warble “Ave Maria” over Connie’s casket. Yes, that was one version.
Celine, who probably hasn’t stood upright since before her wheelchair struck an iceberg, wasn’t really there. Not for a minute. Neither was Dusty Springfield, who, despite being dead since 1999, found time to write a moving memorial piece about Connie in some UK news rag.
There was even one meme floating around in which Barbra Streisand – who now looks like George Washington – was in the house harmonizing with Diana Ross – who now looks like Diana Ross.
STOP, in the name of common decency!
Then there’s the fakery of Liza Minnelli jazz-hands-ing her way through a slurred eulogy, because, well, why not throw in an old and shaky diva for extra maudlin sentiment?
These stories didn’t come from fans; they came from unhinged weirdos who treat death like it’s an episode of Days of Our Lives. These are the same people who’d start a GoFundMe for Bette Davis’ tombstone refurbishing while crying “tragedy.”. They are mostly men, past middle-age, wearing compression socks, and dutifully grocery shopping with their elderly mothers.
Nope. Connie didn’t need this clown show—she deserved the quiet dignity she got, not a fan-fiction fever dream from people who think “icon” means “plot device for my Reddit thread.
The funereal truth?
Connie’s service was simple, and except for a misplaced eulogy by some hone-in-ski Rabbi who took a wrong turn somewhere in Miami, it was understated, and exactly what she wanted.
There were no A-listers, no melodrama, just respect for a legend who sold more records than most of these rumor-mongering idiots have brain cells. If you want proof, dig up the Boca Raton funeral stream—unless you’re too busy imagining Elton John parachuting in to sing “Candle in the Wind” for the encore that never was.
