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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
These delusional people are not grieving for that poor, damaged shell of a man. They are grieving for the more immediate things in their lives that are bringing them pain, they just lack the sense to see it for what it is. It feels good to cry. It's cathartic. Reminds me of the Diana media clusterfuck over a decade ago. Grief porn, simple as that.
Is there anything more disgusting than someone who insists on the supreriority of their grief?
'I'm looking at the man in the bier....."
I have lost so much of what little respect I still had for MSM after this WackoJackoFest completely devoid of balance or gravitas. C'mon. A great entertainer, yes. And at best, a freak who made some very poor choices regarding his personal life, too.
I felt like I felt when Elvis died: there goes a great entertainer who had a few really good years and should have quit long ago, before he became a freak show. May he finally rest in peace.
Afghanistan should have been our priority in 2001 and Bush took us off to Iraq on a boondoggle. What do we do about Afghanistan? Do we simply turn our backs, pack up and go, leaving the country to Al Qaeda? Or should we make a real effort to win? The latter may be impossible. Momentum is gone and Afghanistan has settled into its tribal ways, opium production, and medieval mindset once again. Women are still stifled and modernity for that country may be out of the question.
In any war there are instances where innocents get killed, where soldiers are killed by friendly fire, and atrocities by the invaders take place. I worry that Obama has tied himself to yet another Viet Nam. Whatever, it is a difficult question and if the world shrugs its shoulders at innocents being killed and instead become wrapped up in the death of a celebrity, it is to be expected. After all, Afghanistan is a very uncomfortable situation with no easy answers; whereas, it is very easy to grieve over or to point the finger at Michael Jackson.
...I feel the need to remind him and his readers that it's very likely the vast majority of Michael Jackson fans who are in mourning ALSO mourn for the innocent dead in Bush's Wars. As a matter of fact, if I were an actuary...I'd probably find a correlation or some such.
I mean...cah MAHN. When someone dies, people MOURN. It's only human, mainstream media manipulation/profiteering or not.
talk about creepy, what combination of bombs, fire and shelling will get american attention?
nothing less than the world trade tower makes the 6 o'clock news. that means there will be big surprises coming along soon.
What disgusts me is that Jackson's death mania glosses over his sexual improprieties (whether full-blown rape or not) with children.
I think the first poster hit the nail on the head with the label "grief porn".
Still I expect a bunch of breathless idiots like "Peter Joshua" cropping up here all the same:
"Good god, Is there anything more disgusting than someone who insists on the supreriority of their grief?"
Back here in reality, people killed indiscriminately by the American war machine are substantively more due pity and grief than a recklessly self-destructive entertainer.
I'm not sure the comparison is all that useful, except maybe to put "American" culture in stark relief. Michael Jackson was a child molester, and our entire mainstream media, including NPR and PBS's News Hour, gave him the coverage one would expect for an assassinated president. No comparison with anything alse is needed.
I felt sad when Michael Jackson died, and was surprised at my reaction. I was never a fan of his music, but could at least recognize his great talent. The sad thing was his descent into drug addiction, pederasty, and general weirdness. I suppose his decline is a matter of vague general interest in showing the perils of fame and hyper-talent, but that kind of study is for someone other than me.
The folly of our involvement in Afghanistan is likewise a tragedy that needs no comparison. "Americans" may be to some degree a gaggle of escapist morons, but I suspect the percentage of people mourning Michael Jackson is no more than 25 to 30, maybe even lower. When one imagines the archetypal cattle rancher or longshoreman, getting all blubbery about the King of Pop doesn't quite fit the image. No one where I work mentioned him even once.
We will reap the whirlwind on both "Iraq" and "Afghanistan" whether we mourn Michael Jackson or not. The real focal point of our downfall is in our power structure, a cohort of genuine psychopaths, who would kill their own mothers if it fit into their schemes.
Has got to go. As if Greenwald's post about a Chinese Muslim group (that few, I'd wager, have even heard of prior to a few months ago) wasn't off-putting enough, this author is so arrogant as to pit one man's death against the deaths of people he has decided to take as his "trophy cause".
I'd like to believe that we, as himans, are capable of feeling sorrow for any one person's or group's deaths as close to equally as possible. Mr. Engelhardt's headline was enough to discourage me from reading this article. Why read through something that condemns people for actually acknowledging the life of a legendary artist, using the plight of a people halfway across the globe as a foil?
This crazy mentality among the left--of which I am part of, mind you--is the very reason we're mocked and parodied in various forms of media. If you want to use trophy causes to make yourselves feel superior, have at it. Just don't expect me to hop on the bandwagon for honorless purposes.
I'd like to believe that we, as humans, are capable of feeling sorrow for any one person's or group's deaths as close to equally as possible. Mr. Engelhardt's headline was enough to discourage me from reading this article. Why read through something that condemns people for actually acknowledging the life of a legendary artist, using the plight of a people halfway across the globe as a foil?
Mental note: type more carefully late at night.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
