Ed McMahon died. Farrah Faucett died. Michael Jackson died. All within the past week.
Ed McMahon – to be expected, given his age, and the fact that he had bone cancer.
Farrah Faucett – to be expected, given the fact that she had cancer.
Michael Jackson – to be expected, if indeed it is given the fact, as a news report I am listening to as I write is saying, that he was taking a mixture of prescription (possibly diet and/or painkillers plus who knows what else) and possibly non-prescription drugs.
And who is getting the most press? You gotta know if you’ve been looking and listening for the past few days. Yep, Michael Jackson.
Why, news media, why?
Because he made more headlines in life, and because there is the potential for scandal, and scandal sells newspapers, as the old saying goes.
Yep, if it can be proved that he was taking dangerous drugs that could have caused his cardiac arrest (and they can do it, anyone in EMS has seen this first hand), there’s who knows how many more days of stories that the general public will snap right up.
Never mind the fact that if the others were getting the same press, with the same attention focused on what caused their deaths, it might encourage people to donate to cancer research or to hospices, or encourage more work towards cancer relief.
Never mind that they may have led lives without the questions that Jackson’s raised (the whole pedophile thing, for example, plus the questions about his lightening his skin, altering his nose and so on) and therefore might be more worthy of our attention and adulation.
Never mind that the others were equal talents in their own right.
Michael Jackson is getting the headlines – today’s are that they are moving his body to a mortuary. Well, duh, what else do they do with bodies?
And the world can’t keep turning unless we keep hearing all about it. Yesterday I heard yet another of the ongoing news reports, where the announcer said “….changed the world……”. To which I said “WHAT!? Really!?” and stared at the radio longer than I should have, given I was driving at the time. Michael Jackson changed the world? Puh-leeze, folks – grabbing headlines by questionable behavior doesn’t make you a world-changer, it makes you a headline-grabber. Please save that designation for those who really do something worthwhile to make a difference.
Sigh.
Please remember the others who died this week, and maybe make a donation to the Cancer Society or a local hospice group – they need your help more than Michael Jackson needs more headlines.
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5 comments:
this was not even good enough for me to grace it with a witty remark, sorry.
just fyi
I would have to agree! His choice of little boys was a slap in the face to those who truly enjoyed his mark on the entertainment world. I grew up on Michael Jackson, and was introduced to the Jackson 5 by my parents. Once his exploits (whether the court has ruled his to be true or not by a "guilty" verdict) were brought out into the open everything he had done for the entertainment business was overshadowed.
To all those that are jumping on MJ's death just as they probably do when any other overexposed celebrity dies: Are you going to cry those tears for the kids that this man traumatized?
Thank you for this post. It's nice to read others that share the disgust in MJ getting more press than those that actually made a postive difference in life.
And to Bonnie, stop acting like an attention-seeking child. No one will ever treat you like an adult if you keep acting like this. It all comes down to what you should have learned as a child... If you respect others, they will give you respect.
whatshername- i have enough attention, i commented this as a joke because he wanted to comment it in a negative way, but, unfortunately, this was crappy post so i had nothing to work with.
Bonnie - just fyi, any post that expresses the writer's thoughts is not crappy - it is their expression, not for you to judge another's thinking on any given subject just because it doesn't agree with yours. I am curious as to what is crappy about it, are you a Michael Jackson fan who thinks he could do no wrong, do you not agree that there were questionable circumstances about his death - or perhaps you can't make a witty remark (although there should be something in any post about any subject to do that about if one has the intellectual means to find it) because there is truth in it that you can't disagree with so you just generically put down the whole post - a defense mechanism of those who can't reasonably explain their own comments.
And, if you really read it, the post was not so much a comment on Michael Jackson himself, but on the attention the press is paying him at the expense of others who equally deserve it.
Read and understand before you criticize. Doing otherwise is - well - crappy.
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