What do you get when you put Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Magic Johnson, Mariah Carey and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee together at one event?
Answer: A freakin’ three-ring circus. A bunch of ego-centric, narcissistic prima donnas fighting to get in front of the camera and bathe in the vacuous celebrity worship. If you value your life, stay the heck out of that space between Jesse Jackson and a TV camera. That’s a dangerous place to be!
The Michael Jackson memorial, held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, was truly a circus — made for TV, the paparazzi, and our celebrity-obsessed culture. Forty-seven theaters in 24 states showed the event live, according to the Los Angeles Times. There was even a letter from Nelson Mandela read aloud, and yes, performers did sing “We Are the World.” I'm surprised Martha Quinn from MTV didn't put in a cameo appearance.
Mariah Carey, as beautiful as she is, should not have shown up for a memorial service dressed like a cocktail waitress, but that’s the way the Hollywood types roll. The City of Los Angeles, despite facing a $500 million budget shortfall, may be on the hook for the estimated $3.8 million cost of police and emergency services, although efforts are being made to find private donors.
As I stated in a previous blog, I have a lot of respect for Michael Jackson as an entertainer, composer, dancer, and singer. I give him props for donating time and large sums of money to charities. But I also fully acknowledge he was a deeply troubled and mentally ill man, a tortured soul with a drug addiction.
His love of and desire to associate with children was creepy, and who knows what really went on behind closed doors. But he did suffer through a dysfunctional childhood (some suspect he was abused by his father) which may explain his desire to think and live like a child to recreate what he never had. He may also have been the victim of gold diggers trying to strike it rich. Janet Arvizo, the mother of the alleged molestation victim in the 2005 trial in which the singer was acquitted, admitted lying in the trial, and a year later was charged with welfare fraud. She’s not exactly Miss Integrity.
The overkill during Mr. Jackson’s memorial service, and the wall-to-wall coverage by cable news networks, was over the top. I stayed away as much as possible; my gesture to the memory of Michael Jackson was putting on a Motown CD and listening to “Never Can Say Goodbye” while I prepared dinner.
Out of curiosity, I turned on Headline News for a minute just to see how they were handling it. Something Laura Ingraham mentioned on her radio program was right there on the screen: Not 2, 3, or 4 boxes of talking heads being interviewed from different locations, but no less than SIX! Laura said it reminded her of the squares on “The Brady Bunch.” Couldn’t agree more.
Maybe the excess is right in tune with the way Michael Jackson lived his life. But as others have noted, there are thousands of brave American soldiers who gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, or who have been maimed for life. They will never get the adulation and recognition of The King of Pop. It’s a shame things are so out of whack.
The celebrification of our culture, despite all of the serious threats to our way of life — home foreclosures, rising unemployment, nuclear threats, the breakdown of the family structure, failing schools, a government on the brink of insolvency, a broken political system, and a possible bird flu epidemic, to name a few — does not speak well for our country.
The Roman poet who observed people only need bread and circuses to keep them happy was way ahead of his time. Indeed, sometimes I think Americans could survive longer without the bread than the circuses.
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