Michael Jackson Hysteria: Has America Lost Its Freakin’ Mind?

I just don’t get it. Really.

Why idolize a pop star turned pedophile? Especially one who died with a bucket full of drugs in his system? I mean, sheesh, we didn’t go this crazy over Elvis, and all he did was beat Priscilla.

Between Al Sharpton wanting to memorialize Jackson on a stamp, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee trying to pass a house resolution for a “national day of mourning”, and a record audience on both television and in theaters to watch the memorial service, you’d have thought that it was some saint incarnate who had passed of a divine stroke.

But no, it was just another in a long series of pop stars dead from an overdose, and one with extraordinarily bad judgement at that. Between the “perfectly normal” behavior of a forty year old man inviting children not his own to sleep in his bed, the presence in his home of sedatives so powerful they are only used in anesthesia, to excesses of cosmetic surgery that stagger the mind, Michael was an enigma wrapped in a riddle and bowtied with a Gordian Knot.

Yet for all his foibles, I am not unsympathetic to Michael the person. Perhaps Brooke Shields said it best when she spoke of their friendship: forced to be adults at such young ages, Michael cherished the moments where he could just be a kid. Perhaps his excesses were simply overcompensation from the pressures of growing up a superstar.

But my point isn’t about Michael, it’s about society: Why go so crazy about his death? People crying in the streets, memorials popping up all over the place, WTF? Get a life, people! Even, better, get worked up when someone VALUABLE dies, instead! How many hometown soldiers’ funerals have you been to in the past 10 years? Ever go to a cemetary on Memorial Day and plant flags? Did you watch President Reagan’s funeral on television?

Nah, I didn’t think so.