George W. Bush Loves Michael Jackson (via Dawn)
This will be the one and only time I have anything to say about Michael Jackson. Release him into the general prison population and be done with it already.
A number of explosions tore through the British consulate in Turkey today, killing scores of people. George W. Bush is in England, surrounded on all sides by enraged British citizens whose massive protests have required nearly every police officer in London to be put on the line of defense.
This is happening in a nation that has been, both in government and among the populace, one of the strongest allies America has ever known. There are a couple of wars happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which are going very well. A great many soldiers and civilians have died in the last year. Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, and after nearly 750 days, the American people have still been given no explanation for why September 11 happened.
It is 3:16 p.m. on Thursday afternoon as I write this. CNN has been covering, with total exclusivity, a parking lot outside a police station for the last hour. They covered an airplane landing. They covered the same airplane sitting still on the tarmac. They covered the airplane slowly moving into a hangar. All the while, talking head after talking head explored every conceivable facet of the parking lot, the plane, the tarmac, and the hangar, as well as a variety of parallel issues. No stone of data was left unturned.
Why? Michael Jackson is about to surrender to police.
In the last two years, CNN has not devoted this much energy and coverage to any story in the manner that is unfolding right now. Enron, the stock market, the reasons for September 11, the nomination of Henry Kissinger to chair the investigation into that event, the disinformation that was pushed by the Bush administration before the attack on Iraq, the civilian casualties during the attack on Iraq, the American troop casualties during and after the attack on Iraq, the missing weapons of mass destruction, the missing Osama bin Laden, the war in Afghanistan that is far from over, the outing of a CIA agent by the Bush administration in an act of political revenge, and about two hundred other explosive stories did not get the attention that Michael Jackson is getting now.
One talking head just said, "I'm waiting for a white Bronco to pull up."
The other talking heads laughed and kept on going. A detailed discussion progressed about the tail numbers on Michael Jackson's plane, along with questions about how all this will affect Jackson's fans. We're approaching the two-hour mark in the coverage.
What does it say about the state of our society when we turn on our televisions for news (and CNN was hardly the only network guilty of this overkill) and we are then subjected to talking heads dissecting the minutiae surrounding Jackson's surrender to police?
Yes, I know that at one time, he was one of the most talented pop stars on the planet. Now, though, he has morphed into a bleached and reshaped parody of himself. Who f*****g cares anymore? Apparently way too many people who clearly do not have enough of any import happening in their own miserable lives.
Can we PLEASE move on to some real news now??
