There are so many topics I’d like to harp on briefly for this entry that I’m just going straight into list format. Roll with me, Dear Reader, roll with me.
-The whole Michael Jackson thing. My goodness, we are nice to people who die, aren’t we? Last time I checked, we were all inching slowly away from MJ on the proverbial sofa, and now everybody is his best friend. Bring up the whole “he was out of his mind” thing, and people give you that “oh come on” look. Come on what? I’d like someone to look me dead in the face and say, “You know, we all dangle infants out of a window once in a while.” In all fairness, I’m a staunch believer that being permanently labeled for a crime you were not convicted of is unjust, and Jackson was never successfully prosecuted for anything. He was brought to trial twice (unless I’m forgetting something), and that certainly does not look good, but for our legal system to mean anything, an accusation cannot equal conviction, even on a social level. It is at least plausible that Mike never sexually abused anyone. But his relationship to children was still just messed up, and he was obviously a deeply sick person. I read one psychologist who diagnosed him as a regressive 10-year old, a person who had lapsed into a childhood state to try and compensate for never getting a healthy adolescence. Makes sense, I suppose, but I’ll never know for sure .
None of this is my point, though. My point is: what good does it do to be so nice to him now? Western culture had all but thrown this guy to the wolves, and there’s something sickening about getting all warm-and-fuzzy about it now. If we wanted to be nice to him, why couldn’t we do it while he was alive? He sure as heck can’t appreciate it now, the only people who profit from all this memorializing is us. People keep telling me they “just want to remember the stuff that was good.” But why is this person’s death suddenly about you? Equally creepy are the people who continue to tell Michael Jackson jokes as if nothing happened at all. I am also a believer in some form of respect for the dead (not that what I think we’re doing now is respect).
Here’s my theory: guilt.
Michael Jackson is dead, and now that no one can change that we all feel like proverbial Pharisees caught holding stones. Suddenly we’re all overcompensating. It happens in waves: first we think, “oh well I don’t feel like socially crucifying him anymore, since he just died.” Then, a fraction of a second later, we remember that we never thought of ourselves as the kinds of people who would crucify anyone in the first place. So we drop the hammer and nails and run for it, shouting, “A legend! A musical legend!” It’s disgusting.
For me personally, I had always assumed Michael Jackson was a child molester. His death led me to go re-read the available information on the cases, as well as some psychological profiles, and now I’m not as sure. It’s still possible, I’m not saying it isn’t, but neither of the rulings were unsound, and at least one of the accusers was suspicious. My final image of the man is that he was deeply troubled, the victim of what appears to be a horrible upbringing and a walking demonstration of the simple fact that money cannot buy anything that really matters. He had all the money and success any of us could dream for, he was one of the most successful musicians ever born, but look at what it cost him. Look at what it did to him, or what he did to himself, I don’t even know. Jackson is also a horrifying reflection of me, of the things that our media saturated culture turn me into, and the viciousness that I am capable of towards a complete stranger. God’s truth may mark him guilty, and that is another matter, but our legal system did not, and in my opinion I showed little if any respect for that.
Like most things in life, the truth exists in between the easy extremes. I’m not going to participate in this hypocritical enshrining, it’s dirty and we all know it, but I will take his passing as a moment to reflect on a simple truth that I have refused to learn, no matter how obvious Christ has made it: I do not know everything.
PS: Also like most things, “South Park” noticed it before I did. The episode about Michael Jackson (called “The Jeffersons”) is intensely satirical and not to be taken too seriously, but nonetheless it makes most of the points I just made here about five years before me.
-Grout.
My wife is engaged in a war. With grout. About every other weekend, she suits up into the rattiest clothing she owns, grabs scrubbers fashioned from steel and mysterious bleach products that would kill a pack mule, and then she commits war crimes against this stuff. “One of us is going down,” she barks through gritted teeth. The problem, of course, is that I get caught in the middle, a mercenary conscripted with promises of being allowed to play video games later, unprepared to carry the fight to its maniacal conclusion. Corelyn goes Old Testament on this stuff, she intends to kill grout’s women, children and farm animals. There is no mercy. When my first pass on the bathroom floor was not enough, she went through and rubbed bleach in between the tiles with her finger. There are literally hundreds of those tiles.
Then she did the same thing to the kitchen. It is getting personal, people.
We kind of inherited a lot of this grout, most of it was already there when we moved in. It attempted to intimidate us at first, to make it clear that it was a resident just the same as we were. Corelyn responded with nothing short of shock and awe. We’ve waged two major offensives so far, and each time the grout grows a little more terrified. The grout is having town meetings right now, children huddled fearfully in their parents’ embrace. The mayor of Grout-ville is addressing a hushed crowd, “These people are serious. I mean, there’s just so many of us, and we’re so deep in there, the other opponents just threw in the towel. But these new residents are coming for us. Especially the woman.” Grout soldiers go to the shooting range to fire dirt bullets at pictures of my wife. They are afraid.
And they should be.
-I watched “The Dark Knight” again today. And yes, it’s still that good.
-Iran. I’m not an expert or anything, but it sure looks like it was dodgy, doesn’t it? I mean the United States’ official statement on the matter the last time I checked was, “Uh…wait and see.” They might as well have said “it’s not NOT a rigged election!” A friend of mine was telling me the other day that the internet has destroyed the traditional media input cycle, because it makes everyone a producer as well as consumer. No longer can governments like China regulate what their citizens know or are able to tell us, and I can’t help but wonder if despotic regimes are about to receive the first in a long series of crushing death blows. Could you really have orchestrated the Holocaust with Twitter around? I think quite possibly not.
0 Responses to “Many Things”