Michael Jackson

By Max J. Castro

The sad, sad life of Michael Jackson is over. Money did not buy him happiness or even peace. But, upon his death, his story monopolized the media for more than a week. In death, he received more positive coverage than he had for the last decade. Not even the sex and politics scandal of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford could hold a candle. The Iran elections disappeared from the air. The vulture culture of the mass media surpassed even the spectacle after the death of Princess Diana.

For now the rule of not speaking ill of the dead has basically held. But expect lurid versions, in books and magazines, in a few months. The Michael Jackson story will involve legal battles over money and children.

This is voyeurism on a mass scale. The merger of news and entertainment, the confusion of celebrity and significance, reaches its apotheosis in these kinds of media mega events. The complement of this focus is the lack of attention to so much news that really counts. The celebrity story sucks all the air out of the media.

The battle over the booty left behind by Michael Jackson will be unseemly, even sordid. But while the attention of the media world is focused on Jackson there are millions of untold stories of men, women, and children dying of hunger, violence, and curable diseases: the invisible legions of the never mourned.

There is, as almost always in America, a racial dimension to this issue of media coverage. The polls show that most whites think coverage of Jackson’s death has been excessive while blacks do not. This suggests an element of racial pride, perhaps somewhat misplaced, in the figure of Jackson as The King of Pop and transgressor against the color line in entertainment. It has even been suggested by Al Sharpton that he was a precursor to Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Barack Obama. And perhaps he was.

Rest in peace, Michael Jackson.