Posted on 07/07/2009 3:54:30 PM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
My son was moving around the tv channels while munching lunch and he noted all the cameras, all the microphones being shoved in people’s faces, all the hucksters selling tee-shirts, buttons.
Jackson’s funeral will be on the Jumbotron at Times Square, and at three other public venues in New York City.
Performing for the ever-present cameras, people smile and say, “I’m all broken up; Jackson will always be in my heart.”
Everyone sounds like a politician, these days. Americans have learned the art of the superficial, meaningless soundbite. Jackson will always be in their hearts, even if he hasn’t been a blip in their musical consciousness for, oh…20 years.
--snip--
We don’t hear grim daily reports about the tragic deaths of our armed-forces members, anymore. Apparently, the press only finds such war-time deaths worth covering when they can be used as a handy stick to browbeat a president they hate.
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
Best one-line analysis I've seen.
I guess somebody has to do it. I tried turning on the television for a weather report and it was all Jacko on all channels. I practically retched at all the hollywood types in their overacting grief. Yeeeech.
Flipped off the set, and headed for the shower.
It’s cloudy and rain for Tokyo, btw.
not to mention pedophile.
Is that where you are?
Did the Japanese have the same reaction to MJ’s death as the masses did here?
reminds me of the meltdown that the masses went through over Diana.. same excessive overwrought tears for someone they did not know..
very strange.
I never watch CNN, except for today in a hospital waiting room. The Michael Jackson canonization was in full swing. It’s disgusting.
I wonder when he will first be sighted in a donut shop in Wichita?
Curiously missing has been any sight of or statement from Chris Tucker. Unless I’ve missed it.
agree.
and the majority of these voted for obama.
It was the Michael Jackson Memorial FuneRama and Monster Truck Rally.
Everyone sounds like a politician, these days. Americans have learned the art of the superficial, meaningless soundbite.
These days?
Most people have trouble figuring out what to say when someone dies, whether it's someone we know or someone we don't.
Almost anything that comes out is bound to sound weak or shallow, "superficial or meaningless."
It didn't start with Jackson or with television and the Internet: it's always been that way.
Performing for the ever-present cameras, people smile and say, “I’m all broken up; Jackson will always be in my heart.”
...
Jackson will always be in their hearts, even if he hasn’t been a blip in their musical consciousness for, oh…20 years.
Isn't that the way people are, though? You don't think about people you've known in the past every day. But you do want to indicate that you haven't entirely forgotten them.
I went and played World of Warcraft. School is out after all.
Jackson was a great entertainer, and apparently a good father. I know he will be missed. But this is a little out of hand.
This disturbs me because there is no such reaction when a government does things that will negatively affect all those people “celebrating” Jackson’s life, and the roof is fallin in on them. Its amazing. Bread and circuses....
Do you work for the federal government? LOL!
Some did. For the most part though, it was a bit more subdued. The Japanese do love a show, though...
Nearly all the tributes I heard here in Japan were devoid of his arrest, perversion, child molestation, child pornography found at his home, all of those things. It was pretty idolotrous. Money and hidden interests might be a big part of this, stifling independent thinking. This American commentator Dave Spector regularly on Japanese TV I think had the right, politically-correct, uncontroversial tone for the Japanese mentality over Michael Jackson. Unquestioning support and worship by many Japanese paying top prices to see him, even when he was a has-been. David kept that intact and helped continue the fairy tail illusion. There is often a lack of moral clarity and overabundance of escapism in Japan when it comes to these things. To raise in a Tokyo conversation something suddenly like "ちょっと待ってよ。なんだ。本人は孤児虐待者じゃない？なんで、崇拝しないと？ 意義あり！" ("Hey wait a second. The guy was a child molester. Why fall in line and have to worship him. I object!") would be like a 800 pound elephant taking a nice big dump on the carpet in the middle of an elite cocktail mixer in upscale Nishi-Azabu. It would be indescribably shocking and unwelcome in Japan. But it would be the truth. Sometimes comfort and truth are at odds.
Very true.
I had some nasty experiences back when Jenkins was being released a few years back because I would get right into the face of every one of my Japanese friends and tell them point blank that Jenkins was (IS!!) a traitor and if I had my way he would be shot.
I am sure you can imagine the reactions I got
In difference to his wife and daughters and the suffering his wife endured by being abducted, I reluctantly signed off on the idea of pro-forma court martial, guilty verdict, etc. But I STILL think he should have been forced to renounce his American citizenship.
That’s all a derail, though.
Your point is well taken. Nobody ignores an inconvenient or unpleasant fact better than a Japanese person.
Frank, open discussion, dealing with smelly things (as in “unconditional surrender”) in Tokyo in 1945 in August, and not covering up stark, uncomfortable realities, might well have saved them their beautiful Nagasaki, if they could come to the realization after Hiroshima and signal a surrender to the Allies before 6 August and 9 August somehow. As it was, nobody wanted to deal with reality until reality was really burnished into their psyche through the second dropping and facts were unavoidable.
I talked much the same way about (defector to North Korea, now Japanese citizen) Pvt. Jenkins, US Army, to various Japanese I iknow, and they felt very uncomfortable getting this American perspective, too! It stepped on a lot of cultural rice bowls. Perhaps to them it seemed rather cruel and unhumanitarian. At all cost to them, the happiness of Mrs. Soga (his wife) and the girls, were paramount. Nothing else mattered.
There are countless other examples. How many times have you watched a business hamburger in or a family situation spin totally out of control because nobody in the management chain wants to disrupt the established company way of doing things, or nobody in the family can take the needed step and get help before an alcoholic father drinks the family into bankruptcy or a psycho kid decides to make his video game fantasies a reality?
Note that the second example is easier said than done. I recall the poor girl down in the southern part of Japan who was killed even after repeatedly complaining to the police that she was being stalked by her crazy ex-bf.
I am sure you have run into and recall many similar cases.
Oh well, ya gotta have “wa” — even if it kills ya.
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