The King is dead...............

PSA : Sarcastic bloviation know as a rant is to follow, you have thusly been warned:

Michael Jackson is dead. I heard this 'news' report the other night. I thought to myself, well that's unfortunate, or misfortunate as the case may be. I took in the information, processed it, filed it according to its importance and moved on. Why have so many of the rest of you failed to do this simple thing? 24 hour news reporting, speculation, Requiems, 'news' specials, docudramas, 60 minute specials and all the rest have flooded the airwaves ever since the man died. Holy cow, whats wrong with you people, what is wrong with the media? If I may be just a little callous for a second, the king is dead, who cares? Okay, now that I got that off my chest, let me break this down a bit more.

The picture above is a photo of a journalist, an anchor man, a man by the name of Walter Cronkite. Take a good look because you haven't seen many journalists or anchormen since this guy went off the air. Since the advent of CNN things have gone way downhill. I remember when you had 3 or 4 networks who broadcast the news. They had news on from noon to 12:30 then from 6:00 to 6:30 and national news came on at 11:00. We learned everything we needed to know in this span of time. Now even the networks start local news at 4:30 and we have several 24 "news" networks to choose from. They must find things to fill in this space. This is one of the causes of painfully repetitive and too much in depth reporting on things like Michael's death. I miss the way it used to be, it was better back then. If Walter Cronkite had been the man in charge the other day, the news would have went like this.

" Michael Jackson was reported dead today, he was famous for his music and he was infamous for a variety of other reasons. He was know as the King of pop. Some will miss him. And now for the Weather."

That would have been it, all, finished, finite, done, over DUN even. He would have told us what happened, avoided inserting his opinion or disrespecting the dead by saying anything negative, he would have told us just the facts and moved on to more news.

More news, you know, things like Neda and the crisis brewing in Iran, The missile laden ship North Korea has on patrol that is irritating China, the human trafficking bust that linked Taiwan and the U.S together in a human slave trade ring. Those real news items that got bumped by over kill coverage of MJ.

A lot of people might think that I just have this opinion because I didn't like Jackson. Oh, no, this is not the case. I think this is dangerous and I think this is a sad statement about our culture. It makes no difference to me who the dead guy is, this sort of media induced idolatry is sad and frightening. For those who believe otherwise let me tell you a few things. Michael Jackson was a man, a human being. Nothing more, nothing less. He deserves our respect and his family deserves to be left alone to grieve in their own PRIVATE manner. We are not his family and do not need to be part of his end. He is nothing more than a man and its awful that we try to make him into something else. If you are a person of faith, any faith, you must accept that it is in Gods hands now. If you are a person without a faith then its just over now, either way, let the story end and move on.

I have , I think, now stated why I think this is a sad commentary on our culture, but why do I believe this is dangerous. In short, the Tank Man. You remember the Tank Man don't you? He was the guy who for a brief moment stopped the heart of the Chinese people. He walked out, alone, in front of a column of approaching tanks. The tanks stopped. He stood there with his little bag of nobody knows what and held up the entire communist movement. The general public, 20 years later, still doesn't know his name. This one act of defiance, brief as it may have been, ended up putting China on a new road. A road that allowed huge reforms to come down to the people quickly. Yes China is still communist, yes China is still repressive, yes China still censors this very act and tries to hide its history from the public, but the government did bend to the will of its people and life has improved 100 fold over the last 20 years. No, China did not break, but it did bend, it bent a lot. So why did such a strong and powerful government and nation bend to the will of one man with a bag who ran up in front of a tank like he had no sense? They bent because some brave reporters got it on film and smuggled it out of the country thus avoiding the censors. Once this happened, the whole world saw what happened. We saw it over and over again. Why do I think this celebrity idolatry is dangerous? What would have happened if some international star suddenly died, like in a car wreck, or something? What if princess Di was killed that day? The media of today would have put her story on 24-7 for weeks and the Tank Man would have faded into history as a footnote and China would have been all the worse off for it. I realise that this is supposition on my part, but this whole Jackson thing is just disturbing.

So, dear media, I want to hear the news, just the news, and nothing but the news. I don't want your opinions, I don't want manufactured nonsense and sensationalism. I want short to the point and move on news, got it?

"Bill Clinton was found dead today in his home with a ho-ho in one hand and a cigar in the other. Hillary Clinton has confessed to his murder but asked for leniency calling it justifiable homicide. Her trial is set for July, now for the sports"

"Former rock star Keith Richards was found dead today of an apparent seizure. Wait, oh, he is alive, never mind, and now for the financial news"

"The Baker family theme park and school of ministry was raided again today. 14 people were arrested and the park is closed until further notice. The Baker ministry is still open for business but it has changed over to a jail ministry for reasons of convenience, and now for the weather"

This is what the news should look like in my opinion. What is going on right now is not news, it is certainly not journalism and I for one find it to be at least as distasteful as a Micheal J. Fox bobble head doll, which is now being made available outside his book signings. Only in America, land of the free and home of the slightly disturbed.