I was asked to write something about Michael Jackson. Also, since the verdict is coming up, we’ll probably be talking about it on our show. So, last night I was trying to figure out what I thought about the Michael Jackson case. And I realized I don’t give a rat’s ass.
I literally don’t care. This is unusual for me since I usually have a strong opinion on everything – that’s why I became a talk show host. But I realized last night I don’t care if Jackson goes to jail and I don’t even care if he doesn’t. I don’t know if he’s innocent of this particular charge or if he’s guilty (call me crazy, but I wasn’t on the jury).
This looks like it was tough case for the jury since there was a lot of persuasive evidence presented by both sides. So how would a bunch of people, who hardly heard any of the evidence, know whether he is guilty or not. And more importantly, what is the f’ing relevance?
Look, I enjoyed the OJ saga as much as anyone else. But those were lovely years when America was at its zenith and there was hardly any real news. We all enjoyed the soap opera and it even had relevance to the state of racial relations in the country.
I don’t want to be a humorless, sourpuss who bahumbugs these type of stories … but …
We just sent out a reporter to cover the story for The Young Turks. His job wasn’t to cover the substance of the case but to report on the media coverage. He just told me that there were 100 to 200 people – including reporters and their accompanying crews – covering the case out there.
Could you imagine if there were that many news people devoted to covering the Downing Street Memo?
Let alone the idea that those same two hundred people would go out every day for months on end pursuing the Downing Street Memo story. I know it seems a glorious dream. And we’re almost afraid of dreaming it because it seems so undoable. But is it so crazy to ask the media to trust the people of this country to care as much about why we invaded a country and lost thousands of our fellow citizens (not to mentions tens of thousand of Iraqi civilians) just as much as they care about whether a pop singer fondled a young acquaintance?
Maybe it’s too much to ask for, but we can, in this land of hope, dare to dream.