singles – Page 6 – Hopeful Romantics

Obesity and Healthcare Reform

While everyone rants and raves on one side or the other about healthcare reform, little is said about one major contributing factor to the outrageous cost of healthcare. Fat people. I know it is a term that makes everyone flinch as it is no longer politically correct. There are other terms to use instead, full figure being one of my favorites, but at the end of the day there are only two real terms that apply. The first is obesity. The second is fat.

That’s right–fat. We are a fat country. We are a nation that eats like pigs. We have more all you can eat buffets in this country than anywhere else in the world. Maybe we have more all you can eat buffets than there are in the rest of the entire world combined. We stuff food into ourselves as if we were loading up to hibernate in the winter. We got to the big buffets and just pile food on top of food until our oversized plate looks absolutely grotesque with its oddball combination of food, laid out this way and that. We put the smoked salmon with the pork chops, the pizza with the chocolate souffle. We would put our ice cream on our T-Bone steak if most buffets didn’t extend the hospitality of a dessert plate. We eat cabbage and crustaceans with equal glee. We don’t care. As long as it is food. Dump it on and stuff it down.

And while food is relatively cheap in this country our binge overeating formula and guide to what we call happiness does not come without a price tag. In fact, our eating habits are quite expensive. Two thirds of our country is overweight and 25 to 30% are seriously obese. Fat. A walking health danger.

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Additionally, it has been reported on WEBMD.Com that obesity can lead to brain loss. The brain may actually atrophy because someone is too damn fat. And then there is, for the bonus plan, an increased risk of dementia.

It would seem that this damning evidence combating obesity should not merely be a suggestion. Obese people should be penalized and forced to pay more for their indulgence. Better, still, if they lost weight, but that would mean self-denial and increased discipline, and we are hardly a nation for that, anymore.

So before we start worrying about pulling the plug on grandma and some other arcane, if not insane ideas, that have popped their little pus heads on the public scene during the past couple of months, maybe we should concern ourselves with the reality of our own condition and get to work on that. Eat better. Eat less. And move around some. Who knows, you may even get to like it.

Will Democrats Screw Up Healthcare Reform?

There is a darkly humorous scene in the film, The History of Violence, where the main gangster, played by William Hurt, arranges for the murder of his brother, played by Viggo Mortensen. One of Hurt’s henchman is to sneak up behind Mortensen, wind the garrote around his neck and strangle him. But the tables are turned, and Mortensen escapes.

“How can you f**k that up?” exclaims and exasperated William Hurt. He then shoots the henchman to punctuate his case.

This is how I feel about the Democratic Party and its attempt to reform healthcare. I am aware you can argue intelligently for healthcare reform and variations on that healthcare reform, or you could against it. There are credible opinions, for sure. There are options that may be worth considering. But that is not what I am talking about here. That on one hand is too simple and argument and too mired in knee jerk doctrine to warrant my adding my two cents on the matter.

First off, healthcare is not what I consider a philosophical issue. Abortion. Same sex marriage. These can be philosophical issues. Not healthcare. People get sick. People need healthcare. Many people don’t have healthcare. Even more can barely afford the healthcare they have. I pay a fortune every year in healthcare. I pay more for healthcare than a fair amount of people make as take home pay, annually. And every January my premiums go up. Last January it went up 40-something percent. That’s a big increase. I have no idea what will be extorted from me this January. And I am lucky. Why? Because I am in a group, so I am not confronted with the big, bad bugaboo, preexisting conditions.

As for our “choice.” That’s almost funny. Our choice is to face rejection for different procedures or fight like hell for months on end with the health insurance people. Luckily, we have good doctors with whom we have established long term relationships. I can only imagine how it would go down if our doctors just got here last Wednesday and had no personal investment in our general well being. And that is what most people are facing.

So we need healthcare. And we need healthcare reform. What gets me is the Democrats and the remarkable way, to paraphrase William Hurt, they managed to f**k this up. How when you have any number of options to clarify your healthcare initiative do you choose to lead with your chin? In fact this desultory attempt at convincing America that healthcare reform is necessary and is being implemented with the best intentions is so lame, so lacking in clear information, that the Democrats risk having any meaningful healthcare reform being kicked down their throat. They could lose their advantage in both houses of Congress in the forthcoming elections. They could face disaster and render what should have been a shoo-in eight year Presidential term into a four-year Jimmy Carter extravaganza.

Amazing. It is so amazing that one friend of mine believes the inept way the Democrats, in general, and the White House, specifically handled this healthcare initiative, they must have a secret plan. They must be sandbagging the opposition. They must know something that we don’t, but like any secret weapon they are only waiting for the right moment to unleash it on their opponents. I can understand why he would think that way. Hoping against hope that they are not that incompetent. Unh uh. Not happening.

We have done nothing during the past couple of decades or so if not turn every smart strategic act, politically, socially, and otherwise into some slick term that is used to identify its application. We are homogenized that way, very precise with all of our modeling, studies, surveys, statistics, pigeonholing. There is little allowance for random and unpredictable action. There is little allowance for gullibility that can border on insanity. But things do fall randomly, and even the most cogent proposition can lead to chaos. And, indeed, the road to hell has often been paved by good intentions.

Among the first things you learn in media management is to conceive of your message. Keep it concise, make it clear, and be damn sure the language is such that the average Joe Public out there can grasp what you are getting at. Introduce your message way ahead of time. Test market that message. Take it for a spin. Kick the tires, looking under the hood. If it’s a clunker, modify it in a hurry.

Repeat the message as if it was a Sunday prayer. Make sure all your primaries, secondaries, and surrogates understand that message. Make sure they can translate it, repeat it to large crowds and as a talking head on news shows. Like any good sales pitch, preach all the good stuff in easy language. Don’t allow for confusion. If you have too many facts, realize you are not in a fact finding nation. Reduce those facts to the three or four things that will resonate with the crowds. And if all that fails, hire a brilliant guy like Frank Luntz to make sure you can stay on point and deliver your message.

In the case of the Democrats, they believed people were hurting in a bad economy and would be open to change in their healthcare system. They probably would. The Democrats believe that there is a matter of moral consciousness, that there are far too many people without healthcare. Very true. The Democrats believe that economically speaking we are in big trouble with our present healthcare system, and in the very near future with costs soaring more and more people will not have a viable healthcare plan. No argument there.

But so much for beliefs when they translate to message that is supposed to lead to action. Democrats have approached this vital initiative, believing because it may be so you won’t have your ass handed to you by the financial interests concerned with preserving the private healthcare system just the way it is? We’re talking big bucks adversaries who have no interest in reform, really, not when they are raking in the money. And some of that profit goes to a fair share of legislators, local, national and statewide, in the lovely guise of campaign contributions. Maybe so. But certainly these campaign contributions, which total in the tens and maybe hundreds of millions, are not crossing palms to encourage reform that would detract from the bottom line. These campaign contributions, all right, you can call them bribes, are being paid out to keep things just the way they are, or close enough.

The pills are trusted and popular among people to cure male dysfunction. get free viagra If the second relation is not satisfactory, one of the best reasons might be the unsuccessful coupling life of one. cost of sildenafil Yes, both point out and federal government organizations established guidelines for Texas graduated driver license program will fulfil similar necessities as a local cop, playing TV news anchor in a studio and or acting as a firefighter. viagra pharmacy prices If you take an overdose of kamagra may discount tadalafil http://pharma-bi.com/category/analytics/management/ lead to painful erection or permanent erection problems in men. Rather than see this coming and creating a significant information campaign that would clarify the healthcare reform, they stumble about. With President Barack Obama reputedly one of our nation’s greatest orators, the Democrats did not elect to put him out on point No. That would be too smart. They relied on surrogates. Surrogates who can’t deliver the message because the message was never clearly delivered to them. Surrogates who lack that little thing called engaging personalities. Surrogates who don’t know how to fight.

So now President Obama is the one delivering the healthcare message. Sort of. Finally. This tactical decision only comes after the Republican leadership and the private healthcare industry takes the Democrat’s discombobulated message and turns it on its fanny. But the damage has been done. People love to buy into groundless information, it would seem. Thanks to the Democratic stumble step, a fair percentage of this country believes the Democrats are planning to kill grandma and the government is climbing into your underwear.

No matter that in the Bush administration, civil rights were abrogated, voluntarily surrendered, and intruded upon without so much as a peep from this crowd. No matter that we are still taking off our shoes in the airport and being forced to carry a gnat’s worth of shampoo on a seven day business trip. Forget you have nineteen different agencies listening on your phone, monitoring the books you read and checking out your toilet paper for secret code. It’s the healthcare reform that will ruin our country. In fact, in some circles the message has been so distorted that some ardently believe it is a copy of Nazi policy.

Amazing. Again, let me repeat. There are intelligent ways to debate healthcare reform. There are civil and cogent perspectives that should be heard. There are people out there, on both sides, who are actually trying to be heard. But they cannot be heard above this ridiculous din of lunacy and ragged incompetency that has predicated this mess.

I watch not with shock, but a whole lot of dismay as the princes and peasants with pens and pitchforks descend on these alleged town hall meetings, to rant and rave, show their guns, and try to shout down what are far too many excuses for legislators who are tongue tied and brain twisted by the level of adversity and near-violence. With the notable exception of Barney Frank who offered the appropriate response to one programmed lunatic who termed the healthcare plan a play taken out of Hitler’s National Socialists, most other Senators and Congress Persons seem grossly incapable of dealing with adversity.

Yes, adversity. It does still happen in a world where we believe everyone should be safe. In a world where our more naive believe American citizens will not be subjected to any abuse, in spite of the more obvious atrocities in the world around them. These are the people who believe reason prevails. Well, like anything else, miracles included, sometimes it happens that way, and most often it doesn’t. Sometimes, if you want to reason with someone, you have to hit them with a two by four in order to get them to listen.

I am not suggesting actual violence. I can see already what would come of it, what with the nut jobs out there who are carrying their guns to Presidential rallies. I believe in gun ownership. Really. But I also believe that anyone carrying a gun within the proximity of a president or elected official is not confronting a rights issue. That person is confronting a security issue. It is dangerous in theory and even more dangerous in practices. It is incredible to me that this should be allowed to occur. It is amazing that any doofus carrying a gun to a political rally isn’t hauled off to the rubber room for a quick stay with the shrink of his choice. C ‘mon, people, haven’t we all seen “Taxi Driver?”

But I digress. The fact remains that the Democrats have muffed the healthcare initiative. They have screwed up. Now they are playing defense. A smart defense is a good offense. A good offense is one that works. If you want to get it passed perhaps it is best to forget bipartisan efforts, group hugs, and marshmallow roasts. Tear a page from the old Democratic Playbook when such pols as Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn were not afraid to twist arms in their own party. Even Bill Clinton did that.

Tell your supposed Blue Dog Democrats, cute name, that if they don’t climb on the train here, they can forget about any National Party support in 2010. Tell him there were be no funding, no marquee value personalities showing up in support. There will be no support of any kind. Nothing. Hell, if this healthcare initiative fails, as the Democrats must realize, and the Republicans certainly do, they will be losing congressional seats anyway. They might as well lose the seats that didn’t do them any real good.

In other words, cowboy up and show some boldness. Do like the Republicans do. When they get in power, they have an agenda, and they follow it in lock step to see that agenda is realized. They don’t mess around, getting caught up in the facts or apple bobbing in their own confusion. The Republicans don’t apologize. They don’t hem and haw. They have a message, and they stick to it. They don’t want to hug. Whether their policies are right or wrong, they are there to do their job, and that is exactly what they do. Give them credit where it is due.

But not the Democrats. They mistake confusion and mixed messages as freedom of choice and personal expression. They believe like every obnoxious television series that everything will right itself in the end. It doesn’t. It often gets worse.

So, Democrats, if you are really concerned with healthcare reform, then act the part. Get tough. Be direct. Get your message straight. Get rid of a thousand page document. Tell the public the public option is Medicare, but only if you are younger than 65, then you have to pay for it. That’s it. If you like Medicare, then this is your chance to buy it. Simple. To the point. No confusion.

Am I making myself clear?

What the Porn and Newspaper Industries Have in Common

At first blush the pornography industry and the newspaper industry wouldn’t appear to have much in common. But they do. The business model has eroded in both industries. Both are falling victim to Internet sites that deliver the same information without charge. Newspapers are going belly up and their staffs of reporters and media people are getting laid off by the droves. The same is true for the pornography industry, with the exception being that the actresses who work in these productions are getting laid less and laid off with greater frequency.

It is a pity, I suppose, that we have to lament the loss of two of our most pervasive institutions. One gave us news, and one gave us distractions. But these are changing times. Perhaps all times are changing times, but these times seem to change more frequently and more dramatically than those in the past. Political and economic tsunamis are now worldwide, commensurate with the global economy. Even regional industries are affected by the global economy. It holds true for news and sex. Although it is ironic that it is “news” that is the four letter word.

Both the news and porn industry are not only succumbing to the free Internet outlets, but have been damaged by amateurs who are only too willing to perform the same duties of professionals in the obscure hope of lasting recognition. Here were two institutions that most thought would never die. They were the purveyors of public interest and as such thought their need would never end. But appears those need have been supplanted, and their industrial business models have been eclipsed by advancing technology.

The pool of applicants for what few jobs remain has increased substantially, while revenue has declined precipitously. Porn stars who regularly made a good six figures a year are now struggling to make less than half of that. Journalists who ascended with the status of the industry are watching their salaries reduced, dramatically. That is if they still have a job and aren’t either exiled to the blog world or faced with only part time work wherever they can find it.

Perhaps not so ironically, both industries had similar, modest starts. Both were started on the streets, where papers were hawked and sold to the teaming masses on the old city streets. The reporters and most of the staff were blue collar workers, men and women who barely finished high school yet alone college. But they knew their business and learned their trade. They could write well and some with original style and flair. They built followings and over time their grasp of the world around them evolved with the world itself.

That changed with the advent of a different sort in the newspaper. Newspapers may have taken the high road as the “Fourth Estate” and such, but the business itself was grounded in gutter fighting for distribution territory as well as the odd relationships between the “Fourth Estate” crew and the municipal lords on whose deeds they reported. The local news world was punctuated by the occasional threats to the reporter’s well being and some mutual back scratching, along with bonafide investigative tactics. There was also the human interest story, the local cat caught up in the local tree kind of thing.

The blue collar guys were supplanted for the white collar guys. Where you once hung loosely from the lower rungs of the ladder of success, news people now gained new status and with it greater salaries. You were no longer reporting for the love of it, the proverbial printer’s ink that became indelibly embedded in your system, but also because you could make a buck. Hell, you could even get famous.
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Pornography, too, had its beginning from the streets. In fact, vendors on the QT would peddle what were labeled as “French Films,” to willing customers who would pay cash,. Perhaps there is irony that the early smokers were often peddled under the counter at newsstands. The films themselves were scratchy and grainy. But in an emotionally suppressed nation they provided nervous relief for a good many stalwart Americans. take them home and run these 8 millimeter wonders for their friends and colleagues.

These sessions were called “smokers,” and they hinted of the dark but playful corners of small town and suburban America where the Rotarian, Elks and other clubs held their smoker sessions as not so secret, special events. Male bonding at its bondiest. It was a fun time. A few beers, some scratchy black and white silent sex extravaganzas, punctuated by corny subtitles, and there you were.

With the sixties and seventies there was sexual liberation, and pornography migrated to movie theaters. First came the poor excuses for sex films, supposedly educational vehicles that showed enough actual sex to stimulate public taste. Then came the seminal “Deep Throat,” and “The Devil and Miss Jones,” and soon it was not only acceptable but hip to go see a porn film. People took dates to these theaters, which were often converted from mainstream venues that had fallen on hard times. Still, because some were the older theaters with big screens and many seats, couples could see their sex in near-Cinema Scope. Giant sex organs projected from the screens like angry lizard space aliens.

Then came the video tape revolution and the sex industry came home. Couples watched porn in the comfort of their bedrooms, sipped on wine, ate some cheese, and tried out sex acts they saw on their color TV. Thousands rushed into the industry as the demand grew for these erotic wonders. Here, the San Fernando Valley became the capitol of the porn industry. I remember vacant homes on the blocks being rented out for sex sessions. Production trucks pulled up front and the film crew remained as discrete as possible as they shot sex for a consumer market that was shopping in the local mall, a few blocks away.

Then came the Internet. Sex exploded on the Internet. It lead the way in resolving key issues about selling goods and services on the Internet. The sex industry practically developed E-Commerce. The sex industry resolved algorithms and search engine puzzles long before mainstream industry. It was pornography, after all, that issued so many offerings to so many sexual predilections. Each one had to be cataloged, keyworded and put up for sale. And sell they did. entrepreneurs became billionaires. If not everyone made a fortune then a good many made a decent living from having sex on the Internet.

But now the party is suddenly over. Not completely over. No. But the party has diminished. If the lights aren’t out, they have been dimmed, for sure. Like the newspaper industry, the porn industry is going through the tough economic times from which it may never recover. Sure, some of the icons will still stand, and some of the elements of both institutions will remain. In some form.

As for those who worked in these industries, finding work is tough in this economy. There may be some opportunities for those who can make the transition. As for most, it may be time to wipe the slate clean and start again. Meanwhile, while searching for work, the news people are going on the Internet, and the porn stars are going to college. What strange times are these.

The Women’s Movement, Advance Back to the 1950’s

There are many ways to move backwards. One of the more popular ways is to embrace what we perceive as tradition. We view a seemingly idealistic pattern of behavior that has been rejected perhaps by previous generations and see it with fresh eyes and renewed vigor. We see the upside, forgetting or ignoring that a downside ever existed.

It is perhaps even natural to want to return to the past. The present is unsettling, and the future is obscure and insecure. In the past it seems like values and virtues were firmly set. People were honest artisans who farmed organically and used beasts of burden and not dreadful gasoline guzzling, sheet metal monsters to travel about. Men were genteel and women were kind and gracious, capable of walking on air. People has a special sense, a sixth sense, if you will, to perceive things that escape us today.

Of course, no one wishes to dwell on the realities. The health issues, the dangerous horse doody and the piles of garbage in the streets. We forget the levels of ignorance, illiteracy, and genetic maladies that left us with goiters, wall eyed, hairlipped, or with an extra leg hanging out of our chests. We ignore the millions who starved because organic farming wasn’t quite getting it done. We admire the honest craftsman but ignore the fact that until here was mass production most went without most things. Many went without even shoes. Most people had two outfits. Every day and Sunday. There were no color choices or the need for shoe racks or designer hangers.

And then we have the Women’s Movement. First off, there is no denying that there are great many skilled, highly intelligent and competent women practicing in any number of professions. These are great women who have changed the course of history and made tremendous contributions to their industries and disciplines, and to society as a whole.

More women than men are graduating from medical school and law school. Women, overall, earn more money than they ever did. On the less grand scale, there are more working women, showing up at the office or working diligently from remote locations, mainly because they have to contribute to the household income. They work because they have to, they want to, to the point perhaps where they never give it a thought.

But then there are increasingly more younger women who lack the desires of the women who pioneered the Women’s Movement. Maybe it is a generational thing. Perhaps it is even rebelliousness or a backlash of sorts. Or maybe some have arrived at the harsh reality that sitting at home is a lot better than showing up at an office where you are forced to deal with politics, harassment, and the duties inherent with your profession or job.

Some may argue that this is not the case. And some may argue that these women have the freedom to do whatever they choose. It’s about choice. Yes. Certainly it is. But when you are taking up space in an elite law or medical school so you can be a better marriage prospect, rather than a contribution to that community, something may be wrong with this picture.

As Marilyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, was quoted in an article in the New York Times, “It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?”

In the same article Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, ” What does concern me is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn’t constructed along traditional gender roles.”

Simply put, a lot of precious space is allocated in schools that produce influential inhabitants in their disciplines, people who move forward to assume places at the highest levels of their professions. People who become inventors and innovators, judges, developers of vaccines, leaders in their communities and their nation. This is not necessarily the place where someone takes up one of the few seats to practice for a couple of years and then move on to stay-at-home motherhood.

And with this type of behavior, we are referring to the achievers. We are referring to the elite. Beneath the elite we have those who quite simply just want to marry the richest guy with the most stuff on the best career track who can let them stay at home. Where professional challenges were once the major concern for young women in college, it seems now the big ticket it merely to find the guy. Find the guy. Marry well. Marry rich. As for love…maybe?

That way you can stay home, have lunch with your girlfriends and wax for hours on the celebrity hit list and other people they don’t know. This new attitude, as noted before, may be an act of rebellion. It may be a reflection of the economy. It is tough economic times and life is tough out there. Find someone who will take care of you. Not someone you can be with and share the joys and misery. Someone who will take care of you.

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There is no blame, really. And this is hardly a rant. It’s an examination of the overall policies, social and financial, that have left this nation, hurting, wanting, and very insecure. As a market driven society where consumerism made up two thirds of the economy, going cold turkey on the shopping impulse is like being a junkie at a revival meeting. You don’t know what to do with yourself or when the pain will start to fade.

In a society where air brushing as created the perfect form of beauty that no living being could ever recreate, it is bound to drive women crazy. To think that our celebrities and movies stars, who appear to us after sixteen hours having designers, makeup artists, etc., preening, fussing, and dressing them, can be copied in real life is bizarre. Truly bizarre. Yet that belief is the standard. It is an accepted reality, in spite of the facts. In spite of the facts that the celebrities and models can’t duplicate in real life the perfect image of themselves.

Yet here we are with women believing that with a few good beauty tips and some high priced cosmetics they can actually look as good as their aspirations. So women, smart women, exchange beauty and dressing tips, talk about their favorite celebrities and seem never wonder how they allowed themselves, no voluntarily, jumped into this box in the first place.

Men don’t escape responsibility. When it comes to romance and related social issues. Most men are idiots. Inarticulate idiots, at that. “Dude. Dude?” The idolize the marketing version of the sex symbol that is both unwieldy and unachievable. It makes them feel awkward to think they have settled for less than the stay at home beauty queen.

It is understandable. Most men really don’t have much to work with. They have their jobs and the things they buy and they things they believe they possess. Like their women. Most men have been programmed that anything remotely resembling taste, outside of cars and lawn care, is effeminate or gay. They are taught to believe their wives know better about everything except the job and the industry they compete in nearly every day of their lives.

More importantly, many men are threatened by thinking and successful women. They want their women to stay at home. They don’t want them competing. It is tough to have a bigger penis contest with someone who has you out outmaneuvered because they aren’t wearing one. It is tough to go up against the traditional social pressures that have evolved since Mom and Pop partnered as equals in the Mom and Pop shops.

After all, your mother and father probably set up the family that way. Others around you have condemned you as less of a man if you can’t carry the weight of a stay at home wife and three kids in the self-indulgence program on the weight of your designer shoulders. This is your job. Nay. This is your duty. Sit there and be mute, forgetting the lessons of the past.

What past? When the little woman sat home and allowed her brain to atrophy on nonsense and more nonsense. When the high point of the day was doing battled with that dreaded ring around the collar. When the woman was viewed as chattel, because as such they had no real ownership other than what was allowed by law. When soap operas and smores took priority over the Cuban Missile Crisis and the advent of social change.

Part of that change was Women’s Liberation. More succinctly, Women’s Rights. I remember when a good job for a woman was being a teacher. “You could always teach,” or so it went. “Or teach for a couple, few years until your husband gets his career off the ground. And then you can stay home and go out of your mind with the children.”

Okay, it’s different now. With the advent of illegal immigration and cheap labor, many women have a helper. They have a nanny and a housekeeper. They don’t clean, they don’t have to clean, cook, or do the laundry themselves. The maid does it. If you explain it correctly in broken Spanish, then she may even hang the delicate fabricates and not cram them into the dryer.

It is different. Women’s careers. Been there done that. Women are free to go to the top schools in the country and then be the stay at home mother. They can nosh with friends on salad and sushi. They can discuss the merits of Young Einstein. Rather than try to be one themselves.

As for the women that still march on, working to achieve at the highest levels of profession and society. Bless you for keeping the bar at some civilized level of progress. I realize it is tough sledding in the face of those who criticize you and wonder if you have a screw loose for not seeking out the perfect fellow and settling down. At home. But you are the ones who the next generation may use as role models. You may yet inspire the next generation of women, not to stay at home but to take advantage of their talents, their brains and, yes, their sexuality. Take advantage so that society can benefit from your unique and special skills.

The Amazing Michael Jackson Death Tour

The other day I made the mistake of cracking wise about the Michael Jackson memorial service that was held at the Los Angeles Staples Center. I cracked that while Jackson is there at the home of the NBA Champions he maybe should try out for the Lakers. The person was scandalized, like I besmirched the Pope or called Mother Theresa a strumpet.

To say the least, the Michael Jackson death watch has gotten way, way out of control. Or, rather, it is very much in control. In fact, it is a money machine, generating multiple millions in primary and ancillary markets. Those in control of the Jackson’s estate are milking this for all it is worth. For the entire last year, there were approximately, a million and a half music downloads of Jackson tunes. In the last week or so since his death, the music downloads alone have totaled over two million.

Then of course there are the tee-shirts, coffee mugs, assorted memorabilia, and all the money made before an after the Staples funeral service where thousands of adoring fans splurged in a bad economy is well in the millions. To make it sweeter, all this money is being raked in without Michael Jackson partaking in his legendary spending. Huge debt loads are now being worked back to substantial profits, and the troubled estate is troubled no more.

Now there are plans for a second memorial service. An annual memorial service review couldn’t be far behind. Then could come the memorial service roadshow where singers and performers hurting in income thanks to a bad economy, can do the music theater version of the Michael Jackson memorial service. This should generate some revenue from the adoring fans.

I am not the only one who finds this Michael Jackson Funeral Death Tour anywhere from in bad taste to absurd and grotesque. Far from it. Still, we are in the minority. We are among the seemingly few who wonder how the American memory, not the best in most times, can conveniently forget about his past transgressions. Okay, so he was never convicted of child molestation, but the lack of belief that it is possible, is, well, unbelievable.

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I am sorry if I don’t find Michael Jackson quite ready for deification. I cannot put him up there with Albert Schweitzer and, yes, Mother Theresa. I think he was a notable talent, but I find it arguable whether he was the king of all pop. I loved the Motown sound but, frankly, I was never all that much of a Jackson Five fan. Forgive me for preferring the Temptations, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, etc., over one talented child and several less talented siblings.

In fairness, I loved Thriller. I think it was a seminal record as it was the first to really combine the visual effects with the music on such a major scale. It was a truly wonderful work that neither Jackson or anyone else ever duplicated. Michael Jackson’s reputation as a music great could stand alone on Thriller.

But back to reality. The reality being this–are we so starved and so hollow that the death of a pop singer could generate so much emotion? Is his death more a comment on the cynical marketing activity to make a buck on anything than it is his actual passing? Years ago, while still in the music business, I remember clearly a discussion among friends where one commented that Jackson, who was undergoing some controversy at the time, was fated for a tragic and early death.

But nevertheless, we are being saturated by the news media and every other source that can distract us and pull money out of our pockets. Forget the North Koreans and their misguided missiles. Forget the recent Ahmadinejad power grab in Iran. Forget this economic disaster, the job layoffs, our casual slide into our status as a second tier nation. What’s all that when compared to an eccentric celebrity who insisted on welshing on loans to support his personal amusement park and zoo. For the children, of course.

Maybe some day, if we haven’t dumbed down any further than we already have, generations will look back at this and shake their heads in wonder. They may have no idea why we behaved like idiots and gave our emotions over to a cyncial marketing and money machine. They may not have a clue. They will, however, still have Thriller.