Michael Jackson is dead. Just in case you have been traveling the outer planets and missed the news. I don’t mean to be cruel or unfeeling by the way. He wrote some great songs, was a great dancer, was a superb showman. He was also filled with self-loathing which translated into some of the worst plastic surgery money can buy. He was probably a child-molester and deeply troubled.
That said, I’m exceedingly tired of the media coverage, which is virtually non-stop. It seems that all our media outlets, but of course especially those who run 24-hours, are at pains to reduce their work load even more than usual, giving us nothing but one insipid “interview” after another with every “hanger-on” they can find, down to the pool boy.
Enough already. The Contrarian is busy trying to tear out what is left of hair on his head, muttering, “Good, God, doesn’t anybody have anything else to talk about?” I explained, “This is all you’re gonna get until at least the funeral. And be ready, there will be full coverage of that, probably even on the major networks.”
This is their chance to take a summer vacation. Just bring out the footage, of which there is a plenty, and the aforementioned “interviewees” and we have a plan. It’s just the usual game plan, with the usual issues, that we have so grown to love and admire in our “super stars,” movie or music or sports.
The “weird” doctor who was the “personal” physician, now cast as the mad enabler of the addictive personality. The legions of family members, who just days ago didn’t speak to one another, all now in loving support of the “tragedy.” The children, subject of endless speculation as to who will raise them, poor things that they are. The money angle, how much, who can get the most, who can turn this into a money maker, all for the kids of course. The autopsy, the toxicology, all dripping with possible causation, but far enough off in the future so that we can speculate with abandon for weeks. The slimy “employees who will inevitably be caught trying to “sell” the inside story, and steal mementos on their way out.
Oh the fun is just getting started. Except that a majority of the freakin’ world doesn’t give a rat’s behind. Yet, we will be forced to imbibe this tripe anyway. BECAUSE THAT’S ALL THEY TALK ABOUT.
I have visions of the future. Earth is trashed, and humans have long gone in search of a new planet to ruin. Aliens stop by and begin wandering through the trash, trying to figure out who these beings were.
I rather think they would assume we had committed mass suicide. That is if they got a look at our data stream from the media.
“If it smacks of sensationalism, and portrays another human as failed, they will come.”
That seems the battle cry of those that pass themselves off as journalists these days. Oh I cry a cry long made. There are innumerable articles, books and so forth decrying the demise of journalism in favor of the slick silly celebrity “breaking news.”
They do it because we watch it. You can’t get away from that. That is of course, contrary to what we claim. We claim we don’t want it. We always, it seems, have loftier allusions about what we will do or say or think than we end up doing. Don’t we? Who hasn’t planned to spend vacation time reading that stack of books we “just must read,” only to find we watched a bunch of junk movies and read a couple of romance novels instead.
We don’t watch PBS news. We do, for a while, then we hunger for less “serious” fare. We miss the fluff. And they read the numbers, and then grin at each other, and sip martinis and nod as one says, “The great unwashed love this trash. They don’t have the intellect for serious journalism.” And the great unwashed are all of us who are not them.
And politicians and other CEO types, and all the hangers-on K Street types, nod at the cocktail parties around the Beltway, and agree that they need to do what’s best for the great unwashed, since they are too simple minded to make these decisions themselves. We, the elite, they tell themselves, are destined to care for the serfs and plebeians. It comes with the territory of being superior.
And it goes on. We’re way to busy carting kids to soccer games, getting the groceries, trying to make a difference somewhere to someone. So we sit down exhausted and flip on the TV for some diversion, and there it is in all it’s glory. The same old crap. We have enough to argue about, no time for this fight.
Oh, by the way, did you hear that the mother of Michael’s children is claiming she doesn’t want custody? Just want you to keep up with what’s important today. Stay tuned!
Existential Ennui 