As an activist, I’ve often felt frustrated about getting issues that are important to me onto the table. The fact that celebrity drivel became news irritated me beyond belief.
Of late, I’ve recognized that US culture is in it’s death throws and that explains to me the profound, genuine and pervasive mourning for Michael Jackson. I feel it myself. As I understand it, Michael Jackson is a metaphor for the USA. Both are proponents of a youth culture; both immersed in vast material wealth and vast debt; both on high doses of pain-killers and anti-depressant drugs (at least so the press says about Michael Jackson. Consider the tons of psychoactive prescription and street drugs consumed in the US every day); both fanatical about living in a hazy dream world–Michael Jackson called it Neverland, the USA calls it ‘The American Dream’; both world famous for similar traits such as conspicuous consumption, cosmetic surgery etc…the parallels continue if one wants to contemplate it seriously.
I wish the US press would take Michael Jackson’s passing seriously as an opportunity for public self-reflection–to look at the “man in the mirror”. If the public, especially activists, take the reportage seriously, it offers a vivid chance to honestly gauge the interests, heart and soul of the masses who read it. Too bad we’re not on some imagined higher ground, but we’re not. People are even snooping into Michael Jackson’s will etc. On the other side of the equation, people are joining together in the thousands and moonwalking in public spaces. There’s a lot of symbolism and a lot of information about ourselves being offered in this memorializing.
I don’t give a hoot about pop culture and yet I find myself mourning the loss of someone, a stranger to me, who appears to have been a very dear soul who gave a huge amount of love to the world. And mourning the loss of a bygone era of US dreams and failures. Having come from generations of US-Americans and having been born and partially raised there, this is a wonderful chance for me to put all that to rest and allow myself the possibility of rising from those ashes.

I find it unfortunate that Jill Nelson can’t be honest because she can’t disassociate herself from the fact that she is a fan of Michael Jackson. He WAS culturally irrelevant the second that Quincy Jones stopped producing his music. To claim that everything that was said about Michael Jackson is based in racial terms is idiotic and near racist in itself. She needs to reread those quotes that juror Eleanor Cook gave after the court case. Why did MJ have that secret room in his bedroom at Neverland COVERED in pictures of children (not his own) ???