How many times have you and 300 of your closest friends joked on Facebook this year about which great icon will fall victim to 2016 next? When the news broke on Christmas that George Michael died , was part of you nonplussed, given everyone else this year has claimed? Did you tell everyone in a status update to hang on until January, when the slate will be wiped clean and all the icons of our youth will be safe again from the vicious claws of 2016?There's something not quite right about blaming a year for celebrity deaths, various disappointments, and the outcome of political skirmishes. For one thing, very few of these events are related, except in the sense that people who were famous in the '70s and '80s are getting older. David Bowie had liver cancer. It was not, as far as we can tell, caused by some evil poison given to both him and Leonard Cohen at a party for famous people. Phife Dawg's diabetes was not related to Prince's alleged prescription drug problem. Muhammad Ali Alan Thicke , and Alan Rickman were felled by different ailments, and they weren't Zika. My dog's fatal brain hemorrhage and Hillary Clinton losing the election both wrecked me this year, but they weren't exactly related.