Drowning in Jackson

By Alan Caruba

The now day-long “coverage” of Michael Jackson’s death continues unabated. It is what I call the “Five Known Facts Syndrome”; the endless repetition of the time and place of his death, the speculation about a drug overdose—medicinal or not, the amount of record sales, ad nauseum.

This Jacksonalia, the complete submersion of the nation into a baleful mourning of the performer’s passing, suggests the low state of our supposed news media. It's the news version of water-boarding.

These are people who constantly tell us that they decide what the news is or isn’t, but they have managed to demonstrate their complete ignorance and complete indifference to events that will sink our ship of state.

The result is seen in this example from the Nielsen Wire report:

“The breaking news of Michael Jackson’s sudden death dominated the web yesterday (and today), causing spikes in traffic and overwhelming social networks such as Twitter and Facebook with bursts of information and updates from millions of users. In comparison, discussions of Jackson far exceeded those of the swine flu scare as well as the inauguration of President Obama.”

While this is going on, Congress is trying to pass the highest tax in the history of the nation, “Cap-and-Trade”, a bill that exceeds a thousand pages and whose co-author admits ignorance of what’s in it at this point. Essentially, it asserts that carbon dioxide, something that every living person exhales, is causing “global warming” and the government must “limit” it and, of course, come up with a crazed scheme of "carbon credits" to force companies to pay for permission to produce or use energy.

Typically, members of the House of Representatives are being asked to vote on it without the opportunity to actually read it. That's not just stupid, it's suicidal.

There are likely only a handful of people in the nation who grasp this concept and it is doubtful that the President is one of them since he keeps babbling about “clean energy” and "green jobs" while finding new ways to ensure there will be no energy and no jobs.

In a similar fashion, the news media has yet to have publish big headlines quoting the President saying, AMERICA IS OUT OF MONEY. This apparently is an unimportant detail as Congress pursues legislation that will require a totally broke nation to borrow more and more and more to pay for things we cannot afford and should not be doing at all.

But, while we're at it, let's also destroy the nation's healthcare system despite the fact that most people like their insurance coverage just the way it is.

So, Michael Jackson is an odd but appropriate symbol for what happens when one indulges in too much spending, too much self-indulgence, while passing off decadent behavior as “entertainment.”

An America led by stupid people, i.e., Congress and the White House, and composed of at least half the population stupid enough to have voted for them, is hanging by a mere thread while everyone pretends that everything’s just fine.

It’s like pretending that Michael Jackson wasn’t seriously deranged even while watching him “perform” or pretending that his odd behavior could or should have been excused by his “talent.”

Michael Jackson is dead.

The party’s over.

And the piper is demanding to be paid.

Michael Jackson: Redefining Weird

By Alan Caruba

We shall now be regaled with over-heated reporting about the life and death of Michael Jackson. The media will have a field day because he was always good for circulation and ratings.

When I think of Michael Jackson, I think of a grown man who, though born black, had a metamorphosis that left him with ghostly white skin. He also had a straight nose thanks obviously to plastic surgery, the long hair of a woman, and he appeared to wear lipstick and other makeup. Normal people do not do these kinds of thing.

He never dressed like ordinary people, not even very famous, but otherwise ordinary people.

In his later years, he always carried an umbrella or someone carried it for him to shield him from the sun.

The revelations of the trial for child molestation were fairly appalling even if he beat the rap. The circus and zoo he maintained on his estate in order to be able to surround himself with children was, shall we say, odd.

His voice was odd. Childlike barely begins to describe it. It did, of course, make him one of the most famous singers on planet Earth since Elvis Presley. I liked Presley. I didn’t like Michael Jackson.

His dancing influenced a whole generation of wannabes, but I always found it spastic and frequently obscene, particularly because he was always reaching for or touching his privates. Normal people don’t do that in public, even if or particularly when performing on stage.

The various show business experts will tell you that all this was the result of his enormous fame, but many performers enjoy such fame without turning into complete freaks though frequently they also abused drugs or alcohol or anything else they can sniff, snort, inject, drink, or ingest by any and all means possible.

Michael Jackson was a very weird person.

Kinky doesn’t even begin to describe him. You won’t hear too many show business reporters or news professionals say that. So I will.

He was one of a kind and for that we can all be grateful.

His death will spawn a dozen books, but I doubt any of them will ever explain why Michael Jackson was such a freak. Frankly, I don’t really care.

Let all the usual show business suck-ups, groupies, hangers-on and---yes, fans---mourn his death. He was, musically, a great talent.

His life, however, was a tragedy and I will not miss his androgeny, the clear evidence of his drug addiction, or the stench of his behavior around children. Everything about Jackson screamed deviation and excess. He was no one's role model.