Show bizz is killing serious news and politics

I’m a news and political junkie and as such I make this observation after reading about how Sarah Palin is trying to use her brief moment in the national political spotlight to cash in, even without gaining higher or holding lower political office. And then I read how her would-have-been son in-law Levi Johnston is saying critical things about her  nd is hoping to maybe get into acting or get a book deal – Palin herself has a book planned.

And now Johnston is quoting his would be mother in-law as saying she might rather cash in on all of the commercial offers she has received and forget the political office part of it. But of course he could be saying this because he has his own agenda, being attached to this Palin saga and hoping to cash in himself.

(As far as books, the two would certainly need help — from what I’ve heard of them, one is barely if at all able to utter a thought, and the other rambles on but seldom utters a complete thought.)

So I make this observation, being a news and political junkie:

Show biz has ruined news and politics.

Organizations that pass themselves off as dedicated to news operate like they are putting on a constantly-running variety show. People running or claiming to run for public office have found that there can be more money in promoting one’s self than actually seeking an office or fulfilling the duties of that office. And even the news people spend a lot of time interviewing each other and plugging their own books.

I wish all these people would leave news and politics and try their hands in the show biz world directly and that in some other universe there would be real news and real political discussion.

With all the problems the nation faces, from the disastrous economy to being threatened by North Korea and terrorists from the Middle East, and nuclear proliferation, it is galling that these phony pundits grab so much attention.

And the cable and internet news outlets discredited their credentials as serious news entities by spending and continuing to spend so much time on Michael Jackson – he’s dead already!. He was an entertainer, an artist, and a troubled person, and he apparently had one heck of a lot of fans. But that’s entertainment. What about the real news that affects everyone’s life and the future of the world?

I do this blog in a kind of fantasy world as if anyone really cared. But it seems to me there must be a lot of others living in some parallel universe who cannot or do not want to come to grips with real public issues but can obsess on Michael Jackson or Sarah Palin (although I think the latter is losing her allure, while the former, although dead, continues to bring in money).

Newspapers are dying, in part because many were serious. Meanwhile, TV news, cable and network, have completely sold out to commercialism, and the internet is full of gossip passing itself off as news, and is not really a separate entity for real news in that it still for the most part depends upon the traditional news sources, you know, the ones that are going out of business because they may be too serious.

Michael Jackson had the talent, but it was a mixed blessing…

Unfortunately the only thing that really sticks in my mind about the now what I understand is the “late” Michael Jackson, reportedly dead at age 50 as the result of cardiac arrest, is him holding his crotch while he performed and maybe that weird thing in Germany some years back when he was photographed holding his little baby over the railing of a balcony.

I remember him performing with the Jackson Five and being the little brother in the group who stood out – a kind of show off, much like the young Donnie Osmond who used to perform with his family on the old Andy Williams Show and mug the cameras.

For a time, as I recall, there was a kind of rivalry between the white Donnie Osmond and the black Michael Jackson. Obviously Jackson won out, having sold more records than any other star ever with his all-time number one album “Thriller”.

I was never a Jackson fan nor was I a Jackson detractor. I just thought he was weird. He was noted for among other things turning whiter in skin color. He claimed to have some type of skin disease. And through a strange metamorphosis via apparent plastic surgeries his appearance became bizarre. In fact, that’s what he was: bizarre.

There was that sensational trial in Santa Maria, Ca. A few years ago in which he faced child molestation charges. He was acquitted, but many are now saying he really never got over the trauma of all that. The price of fame is high, indeed. Coincidentally I was in Santa Maria at the time. I was a truck driver picking up strawberries and other produce. I think I passed by the crowds at the courthouse.

While I thought some of his dance routines for which he was so famous were vulgar, I also have to say he was phenomenal in his dancing ability.

I recall a guy a few years younger than I in the Army who could do a good imitation of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk dance, and that was not so long after the first moonwalk. Jackson was a little after my time in teenage music memories, but probably for that soldier and certainly for so many millions, he was the number-one icon of music.He was considered the “King of Pop” music.

So maybe the word of Jackson’s death had the effect on his fans as the death of Elvis Presley had on me. Actually I was not devastated by Presley’s death, but it had some profound meaning to me because I connect Presley with some of my earliest memories of Rock N Roll and recalled that he even had some hits when I was in High School, a decade after he first came on the scene in the mid 50s. I was a fan of the earlier Elvis Presley. I thought the jumpsuit version, the fat version, was pathetic.

I liked the younger Michael Jackson well enough, although I was no real fan. I even somewhat enjoyed a few performances of the older more streamlined (or weird is still the better word) Jackson – but he just got too weird for my taste.

I’ve heard as everyone else he had a rough childhood, being under pressure by his family to perform, and because of his talent he never had a chance to grow up like a regular kid.

The talent of an entertainer is so often a mixed blessing.

P.s.

Actress and poster girl Farrah Fawcett also died today, as well as perennial pitchman and famous Johnny Carson sidekick Ed McMahon earlier this week. But with the coverage the Jackson death is getting you’d think a great world leader had died. Well, he did coin his own description, the “King of Pop”. In death, Jackson is larger than life. And for now he continues to draw an audience worldwide — still a commercial commodity.