What Does the Hysteria About Michael Jackson Tell Us?

All kidding aside, and whatever his (apparently) millions of fans are saying, Michael Jackson was a washout musically. The music was trite, stupid and shallow. His performances were bizarre, annoying and infantile.
Thriller, an essential document for understanding our rapid slide from the capital of the Free World to a debtor nation beholden to the Chinese colossus, was the shovel that broke the grave into which we--and I use that term advisedly, since I was always suspicious of the developing catastrophe, and I know many people shared this skepticism--flopped like a dying cow.

The hysteria which we've been witness to in the last week or so, complete with weeping testimonials and a new rap tribute from the idiotic basketball player Ron Artest, is testament enough to the fact that it's now official. We have no press anymore, and television is a black hole into which energy, imagination and money flow, for the sole purpose of further enriching the media machines like Time Warner that own us, nut, leaf and stem.

There's really nothing left to pick over but the bones of a country that once, within living memory, saved the world, with plucky determination, from worldwide fascism. We should not forget, however, that even in that proud moment, we were governed by people who considered the Abraham Lincoln Brigade "premature anti-fascists".

I've seen press reports that estimate Jackson's personal debt at anywhere from 500 to 800 million dollars.
How is that even possible? The minute I exceed a credit card's limits or, worse, miss a payment, I become the subject of a virtual manhunt. The harassing phone calls, the threats of retribution, even the personal feelings of guilt, are overwhelming. And my personal deficit, even in the worst of times, like right now, has never exceeded $300.

So who lent him all that money, and why? Perhaps lenders were counting on a comeback. But even the casual observer could see that the only comeback MJ was going to make was when he came back as an anorexic white woman with extremely bad taste in clothes and a penchant for spending too much time with other people's children.

The celebrated court cases, including the time he showed up in pajamas--which would have earned you or me 30 days in the lockup for contempt of court--failed to convict him of child molestation only because, as everyone knows, he paid off the parents. Apparently with borrowed money.

One question I'd like to see answered is, why weren't the people who allowed their children to visit his fantasy world brought up on charges? They apparently used their children as a kind of cottage industry, paying off big when the inevitable questions were raised.

All the evidence is that he wasn't physically capable of molesting anyone in the usual sense of the word, since he probably had his unit sliced off as part of his physical overhaul and transformation into the poor man's McKenzie Phillips. But does anyone seriously doubt that he diddled and dandled and otherwise violated those kids, including the unlucky ones he had custody over?

My first post on this topic generated just what I expected--a smattering of illiterate attacks, people using cliches which they probably don't even understand, asking me to "get a life." Now what the hell does that mean? I'm manifestly alive, which is more than I can say for MJ since the mid-80s, and those poor deluded saps who lined up around the block to kiss his scrawny ass goodbye obviously didn't have much going on in their lives or they would have been doing that instead of making pilgrimages to the Staples Center.

What have we got to look forward to? Years of courtroom reporting as creditors and relatives and assorted leaches fight over his imaginary fortune. It will make a nice distraction from the final collapse of our economic system. And it all began with that incredibly stupid album, and the apparently dazzling ability to make it look like he was walking backwards.

Parlor tricks. Snake oil. A brilliant world of illusion. Thanks, Michael.