How’s this for an oversimplification that nevertheless has merit? If you want to see the problem with America, you need do no more than turn on your television set. I’m not referring here to the generic but valid belief that so much of what permeates the airwaves truly is garbage; I’m speaking instead of the revealing public expression of idiocy associated with the passing of Michael Jackson.
There’s a lot I could say about Michael Jackson and his well-documented eccentricities and unfortunate proclivities…but even if Jackson was not the package of weirdness he came to be, what gives with the wailing and breathless mourning for someone few in the world actually knew and who was, well, just an entertainer? Nothing against entertainers, but when has the passing of one ever been worthy of the kind of coverage we’ve only previously given to the death of a sitting president (think JFK)? How will these nutjobs react when someone they actually know and hopefully truly love dies? Will they throw themselves from a bridge, or set themselves on fire? The uncomfortable truth is that they probably won’t be as upset at the passing of a family member as they are at the passing of Jackson, so screwed up are the values and priorities of so many in America these days.
I adored my own parents, but at the moment I came to learn of the passing of each, I didn’t disintegrate into a state of madness…and yet there are countless numbers of people around the world who appeared to do that very thing when the distant oddity that was Michael Jackson went to that great Neverland in the sky.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of all for the people who’ve managed to actually maintain a grip on reality is that we have to accept that these same people who are inconsolable over the loss of Michael Jackson are also people who vote…which means that the choice of our leaders, and, by consequence, the direction of our beloved country, is apparently, to a not-insignificant degree, in the hands of people who are quite obviously insane.
Agree or disagree; please register your comments below.
Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/robertyetman.
Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor-At-Large www.ChristianMoney.com
I suspect that in no small part, this disgusting, slobbering, outpouring of grief over the early death of a drug-taking pedophile is linked to the lack of personal shame the average Michael Jackson fanatic is capable of suffering. If you don't have a personal standard of ethical behavior, or if those standards are so low as to require measurement with a micrometer to acquire any meaningful evidence of existence, Michael Jackson was a great man, and his death is a horrible, inconsolable tragedy.
The only leavening aspect of this is that for his fans, Jackson was an idea, an idealized, magical individual who danced and sang and gave their lives the kind of meaning that others might find in going to church. A godling, if you will. Hence, the grief. I could be wrong, but I'm willing to bet a decent amount of money that there's an inverse correlation between the sorts of people who faithfully practice a religion that requires some form of self-denial and the sort of person who shed the slightest tear at Jackson's death. Or, more simply put: decent, churchgoing types weren't all that put out at MJ's biting the big one.
He was a pervert, and not just a kiddie-porn aficionado. He was an actual, PRACTICING pedophile, and despite his deplorable upbringing and emotional handicaps, he was as far from a laudable figure as we'll find in American culture.
Posted by: Dave Dubrow | July 13, 2009 at 07:34 PM