Michael Jackson RIP...Finally...(We can but hope.)

We watched the CNN internet feed intermittently at work today. (You know, the place where real families go to arrange real funerals for their loved ones.) As memorial services go I guess I would sum it up thusly: it wasn't as horribly inappropriate as I thought it was going to be. I mean the guy was once the biggest star on the planet, a lot of people admired him for whatever reason (talent, weirdness or both), so something on this scale was bound to be inevitable. The only real sour note was, no surprise, the "Reverend" Al Sharpton who tried his darndest to make his racialist shtick appropriate to the occasion. Note to Al: Save it for your next appearance at Freddy's Fashion Mart.

Maybe there's something wrong with me but I've never understood the passionate grieving for celebrities that you don't know personally. I didn't get the Princess Di thing, and I don't get this. Look. I loved The Beatles. I love rock music. When John Lennon was shot dead I went into a momentary "what the fuck?" kind of shock then moved on. What I didn't do was get on a plane, fly to New York and hang around Central Park with a candle in my hand. I saw on the news a couple of Brits who crossed the pond with little or no money just to be at Staples Center. Unbelievable. (What the hell is wrong with British people, by the way? They went from stiff upper lip, to quivering, sobbing gobs of goo in a little over a generation. Over celebrities! God help us. )

The media through the last week and a half did not disappoint. They were stupid, fawning, repetitive, over the top, maudlin and self important. The low bar for bread and circus dumbness just got set a little lower for the next celebrity drug casualty. Not too worry though, by tomorrow I'm sure they'll be back to not covering the disaster of Obama's foreign policy, the not so stimulative stimulus, and how the congress and the administration are spending us into a bottomless pit. But if you're one of those folks who are too bored to pay attention to that kind of news, I'm sure Greta Van Susteren and Nancy Grace will keep picking over the bones of Michael's decaying corpse for a few more weeks until some other celeb croaks or a hot looking blonde coed goes missing.