I feel... guilty. Sometimes our thoughts are sins, or maybe that's the Catholic in me talking. Here was my embarrassing first reaction to all the coverage the news: "People die every day in stupid transportation accidents going while on their way to stupid jobs where they're unappreciated and underpaid, so I'll be damned if I feel bad for some... Kennedy who bites it on his way to Martha's Vineyard -- a place where I wouldn't be welcome even to deliver a pizza."

A little bitter anti-rich knee jerk, I guess. But now I feel bad about it. John F. Kennedy Jr. had a lot of opportunities, by virtue of his birth, for sure. Could anyone without his name have published George magazine? But then, his name caused him problems -- a lot of great lawyers don't pass the bar exam their first or even second times -- but they have the luxury of quietly retaking the test without People magazine hanging over their shoulders.

He was young, and I guess that's the real tragedy. He was bound to be happy had he lived on and he wasn't, as people keep saying, "royalty" nor are the Kennedys a "royal family."

They're privileged, for sure. Privileged in ways which most of us envy -- thus all the attention. It happens. The Bush family is privileged as well, as are the Gores. Hillary Clinton is doing well for herself as wife of the President and in entertainment -- well, it's good to be a Baldwin, Arquette, or Barrymore.

To paraphrase Shakespeare: Some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them, and some are born great. It's American to resent that latter quality, to occasionally curse fate and think how easy life would be if our parents had Hollywood connections, or political friends, or had at least left us a legacy that would get us into Yale University.

Class is still an issue. Rich people cavort with rich people, and they give opportunities to their friends. Part of the "glass ceiling" for women in the workplace still results from after hours business deals being brokered at gentleman's clubs or over a friendly round of golf with the boys. No one is trying to consciously keep the women out -- they just aren't around when the ideas and schemes are flying. Social interactions are as important as money.

John F. Kennedy Jr. wasn't just a rich boy. He was the son of one of our most beloved and martyred presidents, the 3-year-old addition to Camelot and a childhood part of American mythology. When the President was shot people wondered about the darling boy they'd seen on television having to grow up without a father. It's not all about money -- from his infancy, John F. Kennedy Jr. was a social phenomenon and the same media who are covering his death now watched this kid grow up through the media -- maybe they even covered his growing up. Why? For the simple human reason that they had developed an emotional attachment to him when he was a child and they remained forever curious about his life.

Yes, the cards were dealt in his favor because of his birth. But I wish he could have lived long enough to have enjoyed it. The chilling message of mortality is that it doesn't recognize class and status and that there's no force in the universe capable of prolonging life just because a person is enjoying it.

Death. All these notions of class, money, opportunity and fairness seem so small compared to the certain end. Sometimes, Nietzsche said, when you look into the abyss, it looks back at you. I didn't expect what this year would bring with Columbine, and the Balkan war and now this -- such a harsh glance back at our nation.

Michael Maiello doesn't have a good relationship with death -- he's allergic to walnuts and his doctor says that dying would be he worst thing for that condition.