DAVID CARRADINE KILLS HIMSELF JERKING OFF, MEDIA MOPS UP

According to media reports, actor David Carradine died in Bangkok last night or this morning at the age of 72. He was found in his hotel closet. While earlier reports from the U.K. mentioned rope tied around his genitals and his neck, the stories have since been sanitized of all mention of his genitalia and the implication of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Compare the following screen captures of the story from bbc.co.uk taken 61 minutes apart:

In fact, there was an intermediate edit between the two versions above that only mentioned the cord being around his neck (Sorry, no screencap.)

Compare also the following two versions of this story at telegraph.co.uk, both marked "Published: 3:34PM BST 04 Jun 2009".

Reports in the U.S. media are even shorter on details such as the story at abclocal.go.com, which initially reported Carradine's agent suggesting that he had died of natural causes.

Carradine was best known for his work on the TV series Kung Fu and a number of movies including Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2. He is survived by his wife Annie Bierman and their three children.

UPDATE (16:26 04 June 2009): Commenter friendlyfires on thesuperficial.com makes some interesting points about Carradine's death and says author David Foster Wallace died of auto-erotic asphyxiation and it was covered up as a suicide.

UPDATE (19:08 04 June 2009): While most other media outlets are just hiding the details of the incident, Fox News is trying to sell this as a suicide despite all the evidence against it. Who commits suicide half-naked with rope around their dong?

UPDATE (04:42 04 June 2009): The Huffington Post has a good article about what happened.

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