Boy, Sharon really hits a home run with this intelligent jeremiad against the cult of public celebrity mourning that has overtaken our country. Think about it: three weeks ago Michael Jackson was a washed-up celebrity weirdo, a plastic-surgery addict, probably a pederast and definitely a creep, who had made some popular music some 20 years ago, but nothing noteworthy since. He was a bad joke. And now, he is the apotheosis of humanity, the focus of all our attention and care.
It's bull**it. But this is not Michael Jackson's fault. It's ours. An excerpt from Sharon:
As the saying goes, there is no "there" there - Michael Jackson is not Michael Jackson the pop star, or Michael Jackson the boy from the silly Jackson Five, or Michael Jackson the child abuser - he's simply an empty space of fame into which we can pour our need for saints and stories of redemption.And of course, we have an endless sack of grief to call upon. We are, of course, not permitted to mourn dramatically for things actually worth grieving over - it is either normal or trivial that we cannot safely fish in the water, that small frogs that I once captured and released no longer exist, that we face a world of declining resources and a great deal of conflict over those resources. We are not permitted to grieve extravagantly or get maudlin over the fact that we pass on less to our children in every generation, or that we have a much less secure future than we once did. Instead, our grief is channelled into spectacles, into the iconic representation of all that is trivial about a generation - as the media prepared to run all Jackson, all the time, the front piece of yesterdays MSM page included the quote "New book says Jackie Kennedy may have had Torrid Affair with RFK." Gee, that's relevant - let's also bring up the trivial losses of a previous generation, into which they could pour all their fantasies.
You watch: In two years or less, Michael Jackson will be as forgotten as Princess Diana is today, and as forgotten as he was three weeks ago, before he inadvertently did the only thing that really could have made people give a rat's rear end about Michael Jackson again.
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An example of anti-monarchism in the Bible: http://www.newadvent.org/bible/1sa008.htm. (Of course, you can also find a more monarchist-friendly line of Biblical thought in David as ideal king.)
I also think that, of all the manifestations of celebrity culture, mourning, even extravagant mourning, of prematurely dead celebrities (even very flawed prematurely dead celebrities) is far from the most deserving of criticism. If anything, the mourning of the famous and prematurely dead is a salutary reminder of our own mortality.
I come out of lurking to point out that there are plenty of people who do mourn these things publicly - and, more than that, who actually work to improve the situation. They're called activists. Plenty of people are focused on those things, and if more people would pay more attention to them and support their work to whatever level they're able to (financially, letter to the editor, participating in demonstrations, etc.), things would be very different.
Re: I think it works better there. Anti-monarchial politics is respectably ancient, common among both the Greeks and Romans. The notion that all of us Americans (except maybe Florence King who claimed to be a monarchist, though it was never clear when the lady was joking) have had our tap roots to Eden cut is a bit over the top.
Oddly enough I've heard similar remarks about the benefits of monarchy from my priest back home (Anglo-Catholic). The theory is that there is an innate need in the human soul for things like veneration, loyalty, obedience, submission, recognition of glory and honor, and other virtues associated with traditional monarchies, and that if we aren't able to experience these things in connexion with monarchs then we will transfer them to less deserving people like charismatic politicians (Napoleon, Fidel Castro, JFK) or to celebrities.
There's something to the argument, no doubt, and I think it's a strong criticism not necessarily of republicanism, but specifically of _liberal_ republicanism. But ultimately monarchy is still a terrible idea, because history has shown that heredity is a p*ss-poor way of selecting your leaders. At least a general, a scientist, a saint or (presumably) an artist got there by merit, instead of by an accident of birth.
Hi Lynn Gazis-Sax, haven't seen you on here before!
Who gives a sh** one way or the other?
Maybe some of this was/is guilt. The guy did a lot of philantrhrophic work and is even in the Guiness Book of World Records for his charitable contributions. He also wrote and sang some pretty spiritual songs. There was little media coverage on that but there was plenty on "allegations" that did not lead to a conviction. At one point, this gentle soul was so famous and adored but since he was a mere mortal he was unable to handle it all. Could anyone? He turned to drugs and found a multitude of enablers. I am angry that his addictions were so deep rooted that he rebuffed all offers of help and that the world was denied his talent, his children no longer have a father and his family/friends have lost him. Most of all, I am mad because this religious man did not find his comfort from God instead of drugs and world opinion.
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