Never mind... it just goes in a circle I guess... lol

That was not the point of my post. It's not about MJ. It's about the silliness given to a celebrity death over the death of someone else.

Where was the TRIBUTE to the doctors who made breakthroughs in medicine when they passed? I am sure what they did was much more important than entertainment.

Or the scientists that helped man reach the moon and other extraordinary discoveries? Isn't that a global occurrence that everyone benefited from?

I am not knocking your feelings for celebrities. Fans are fans; no one should try to take that away from them. I just can't see crying and getting so worked up for someone I never knew. I liked his music, I like Billy Mays even! Ed McMahon made me laugh, and Farrah introduced me to boyhood fantasy. I was a big John Wayne fan, Stevie Rae Vaughn fan, Vincent Price fan, even liked Elvis and John Lennon. But my world did not collapse and stop when they died.

When I heard the news they passed, I paused, reflected a little, said a silent prayer, and went on with my day. I can't see crying, leaving work, taking a day off from work, and just wanting to be left alone because someone who I never met and who was not concerned about me, a celebrity, passed away.

It's not that I don't like celebrities. I appreciate that they worked and sacrificed to get where they are. But without people, they wouldn't be on that pedestal.

People touch our lives everyday with their music, their acting, their literary works, but I feel that without us, they wouldn't be who they are.

Okay, sitting in a comfortable chair waiting to get slammed by rebuttals again....

This is an interesting column by Bob Herbert published July 3rd, 2009 in the New York Times. I think it answers some of our questions about this frenzy.

Herbert wrote:

"In many ways we descended as a society into a fantasyland, trying to leave the limits and consequences and obligations of the real world behind. Politicians stopped talking about the poor. We built up staggering amounts of debt and called it an economic boom. We shipped jobs overseas by the millions without ever thinking seriously about how to replace them. We let New Orleans drown.

Jackson was the perfect star for the era, the embodiment of fantasy gone wild. He tried to carve himself up into another person, but, of course, there was the same Michael Jackson underneath — talented but psychologically disabled to the point where he was a danger to himself and others.
Reality is unforgiving. There is no escape. Behind the Jackson facade was the horror of child abuse. Court records and reams of well-documented media accounts contain a stream of serious allegations of child sex abuse and other inappropriate behavior with very young boys. Jackson, a multimillionaire megastar, was excused as an eccentric. Small children were delivered into his company, to spend the night in his bed, often by their parents.

One case of alleged pedophilia against Jackson, the details of which would make your hair stand on end, was settled for a reported $25 million. He beat another case in court.

The Michael-mania that has erupted since Jackson’s death — not just an appreciation of his music, but a giddy celebration of his life — is yet another spasm of the culture opting for fantasy over reality. We don’t want to look under the rock that was Jackson’s real life.

As with so many other things, we don’t want to know."