Michael Jackson Is the New America
On cue, the white guys, Peter King, a famously moronic congressman from New York, and Fox's Bill O'Reilly, possibly after a few martinis, rushed to express head-smacking incredulity about how anyone could believe Michael Jackson was a figure worth commemorating.
Similarly, the grand hussars of the black community were claiming, with no small amount of eloquence, that Michael Jackson was one of the epochal figures of our age.
Michael Jackson is hereby transmuted--to the choir strains of a rather extraordinary send-off--into not just a holy figure but a living icon of the racial and political wars (two issues in which he never had any evident interest).
It isn't just the racist and moronic white guys either who are scratching their heads. The young downwardly mobile trying-to-be professional white people over at Gawker seemed hopelessly confused by the vulgarity and sentimentality and, well, mass media-ness of the Jackson funeral. My friend Peter Rutten points out that, in Europe, when Elvis died, "kids wore buttons that read 'I'm so glad, Elvis is dead' as a statement of disgust with America's celebrity culture."
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The Jacksons were a rags to riches story. Instead of working in the steel mills, they made it to Hollywood.
By the way, Europeans have celebrities too. They call them Kings and Queens.
Good article, Michael. As sorry as I am for this young man who died so unnecesarilym, and left these little orphans and grieving music fans, I will be glad when the media comes to its senses and gets back to work from its self indulgent summer mentality. How to explain this bathos, innuendo, speculation and extrapolation from hardened news people? Unbelievable.
..also , I was throughly disgusted to read from USA today, ABC had Martin Bashir, present in their televised tribute of the memorial service. I was afraid of that ,so I had my remote set on Katie, and she did a fine job.
It was an extremely distasteful on the part of ABC to have this bottomfeeder, who made his career by talking utter nonsense about the superstar. If others feel the same way please do complain to ABC and Gibson....
I find it more disgraceful that we still pretend that those who die in Iraq die for our freedom... If we never invaded Iraq I'm pretty sure we sould still be free...Inf
Tiffanyroze / Right on. "free Iraq" was a slogan or is a slogan used to make flag waving Americans feel better about sending someone else's kid off to fight for oil control. A trillion dollars spent , most of it scammed by Iraqui politicians etc. A joke ,and those same people worry about a new health sysrtem being too expensive.
As for the Jackson funeral overkill, pardon the pun, something sick about the whole thing, even weirder than Michael.it is a disgrace but nowhere near the Iraq war disgrace, and the wars go on.
Name just one of the seven American soldiers killed in Afghanistan Monday?> Me neither. None of them were celebritys, except o thier families, who now actually get a new flag to wave to ease their pain. Wow. Thanks
peter king is famously moronic, on that i will agree. but all of this adulation for michael jackson is offensive to many of us. as a survivor of sex assault, i could give a rat's ass how many trends he started and how many records he sold. charles manson "moved" people too. doesnt mean we should immediately contract collective amnesia to the obvious.
keep drinking the jesus juice if you wish, but do not try and pretend that peter king did not have a good point. the spectacle of his funeral was a national disgrace. if people spent a tiny bit of that energy on what actually matters in their lives, maybe they wouldnt need the heroin of a michael jackson type.
Actually, all the dead American service persons for the WMD lie is a national disgrace.
So true, all for Haliburton and company.
Actually, BOTH are a disgrace.
I can't believe you just compared MJ to Manson....
1st - Manson was convicted, MJ was not
2nd - Even the kid came out and said that his step-dad made him lie about it for the money (2nd case)
3rd - The first case settlement came from the record company, not Michael.
4th - Seriously, with how many kids were around MJ all the time, don't you think there would be more of them coming forward if he was like that?
I'm sorry that you went through what you did, but just because there is an accusation, it doesn't mean the person is guilty. This is America, and we have a little belief called "innocent until proven guilty". If you don't like it, Iran has a system you might like.
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