I was contemplating this morning just how much everyone here is a fan of compartmentalization. Unlike many (most?) forums, we have huge threads under which most content fits. We've got a range of whine-rant-victory-win threads for everyday personal events, we have a politics thread, movies, sex, pictures (funny, political, self), a handful of big sports threads, etc, etc. And in case there is any doubt, there's the random crap thread.
Sure, we get a few new threads now and then for other topics, but a surprising amount of forum activity occurs in these huge thread compartments.
So the brazelton threads tend to stick out. If we broke out even 10% of the content we put in the other threads into their own threads, the brazelton threads wouldn't stand a chance - they'd fall off the page pretty quickly unless a lot of people were mourning.
It would also look like the forum was much busier than it actually appears to outsiders.
If we bottled it up into a single "People you've not met but their lack of respiration saddens many" thread I don't know that it would serve any particular good purpose, other than Jay's personal unhappiness at having too many minor celebrity's lives celebrated post death.
I suspect that if we continue to compartmentalize everything, though, it will not increase participation over the long run. Having a few overly active threads seems like it would be as bad for the community as having too many inactive threads.