Imagine this story on the front page of any major newspaper:

“Joe Smith, a middle-aged, average, blue-collar worker, died yesterday. He will be missed not only by his family, but by the entire world. Funeral services will be tomorrow at noon and are expected to be attended by the whole city and will be televised around the globe.”

Probably wouldn’t happen, right?

Of course not.

Front-page stories and extravagant, televised funerals are reserved only for the well-known, be they deserving contributors to society or low-talent opportunists who simply happened to be in the right place at the right time.

From Princess Diana to Sonny Bono, our society reveled in celebrity deaths this past year. Now, Linda McCartney has joined their ranks — more famous in death than in life.

Linda McCartney was a talented photographer. Her main claim to fame, however, was her husband, former Beatle Paul McCartney.

But does having a famous husband merit such a publicized death?

McCartney was just another woman, another wife and mother, to die from breast cancer.

How is her story more important and more tragic than that of Mary Bennett or Doris Boles Robinson or any of the other 46,000 nameless women who die from breast cancer every year?

The American public is obsessed with celebrity.

If someone is famous, for whatever the reason, Americans want to know about his or her every action.

And when he or she dies, Americans will flock to the newsstand to read all about the tragedy.

Perhaps it is better that the public ignores the unknown, commonplace death. After you die, do you really want around-the-clock coverage on FoxNews?

Right now, people across the nation will cry with the world about McCartney’s death. They’ll watch her funeral and miss her dearly, though they didn’t even know her.

Maybe a tribute will be written, and pictures of Paul’s mourning face will be plastered across the tabloids.

This time, we’ll let it go.

But the next time someone well-known passes on, let them rest in peace.