Separate talent from celebrity

It's worth rereading as we overindulge in the recent deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. Ed McMahon's death the same week received somewhat less coverage because he was neither beautiful, nor weird, though he qualified as a celebrity. At least McMahon served in two wars as a Marine, which was a real accomplishment.

What is it about celebrity that so fascinates us? And it is celebrity, not fame. As the now defunct New Times magazine editorialized 30 years ago, ''There are almost no famous people anymore; only celebrities.'' That's because, the editorial writer said, fame is too suggestive of steady achievement. Almost anyone can be a celebrity.

Listening to the Michael Jackson tributes would make one think he had created something of lasting value. Some said his music will ''live forever.'' No it won't. No one today hums Stephen Foster songs or ditties from World War I, or the Great Depression, which were better songs and understandable. Can anyone quote the lyrics from Gus Kahn's greatest hits? Somehow 'Butterflies all flutter up and kiss each little buttercup at dawnin' '' doesn't seem to have the ring it had in 1922.

Tony Bennett is a singer. His songs have a better chance of longevity than Jackson's because they are about love and relationships, which are common to every generation. Bennett and his contemporaries, including Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme and Ella Fitzgerald, are in a league far above the ''pop'' culture headed at one time by Jackson, whose biggest hit Thriller came before the younger generation was born.

Our culture celebrates and promotes beauty, which fades. Farrah Fawcett attempted to remind people she was still around after her initial splash in the '70s by having plastic surgery, among other things, and appearing nude in Playboy.

Michael Jackson, who had numerous plastic surgeries and other ''treatments'' to his skin and body, was rehearsing for a ''comeback'' when he died of an apparent prescription drug overdose. Jackson, the self-proclaimed ''king of pop,'' got more coverage in newspapers and on the networks, especially cable TV, than Elvis Presley, the ''king of rock and roll,'' received when he died of a drug overdose in 1977. Diana, Princess of Wales, trumped Mother Teresa in TV coverage of their deaths, but who made the greater contribution?

A culture that fixates on the likes of the Osbournes, and those dreadful reality TV celebrities Kate and Jon, is a culture that is cannibalizing itself. Embracing the base while rejecting the noble will produce more of one and less of the other.

Keats asked a good question. So did the writers Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green when they wrote Make Someone Happy (reprised by the late Jimmy Durante in the film Sleepless in Seattle): Fame, if you win it, comes and goes in a minute. Where's the real stuff in life to cling to?

The list of celebrities whose lives turned into a train wreck is long and lengthening. Why would so many want to follow these people and their broken and lousy relationships, drug use, and plastic surgeries, especially when we see where it leads for so many of them?

Last Thursday night, more people watched a Farrah Fawcett special on ABC than a Michael Jackson special on CBS, suggesting that beauty beats weirdness. Far fewer watched ABC's healthcare special with President Obama. By almost anyone's standards, healthcare is far more important than dead celebrities. That ratings disparity is a commentary on our shallowness and the refusal of so many to cling to the ''real stuff'' in life.

Listening to the Michael Jackson tributes would make one think he had created something of lasting value.

Was Freudian psychoanalytic theory of sexual stages in psychological development more accurate than accredited?

The Michael Jackson Complex is fixation on mutilation of and deviance with human anatomy in the media. It is a social psychosis catering to the lowest common denominator and generated with Pavlovian behavioral conditioning in popular culture.

Should we really be canonizing special societal privileges in the law based on idolatrous fetishes?

Disability, welfare, Social Security, etc., etc., ad nausea...

The social psychosis generated by behavioral conditioning (Pavlov's salivating dogs) in the popular culture and the conditioned response to accept the false premises of mental illness or birth defect will be used as a political tool to systematically rob the public purse.

Then, we could have other self-inflicted mental illness and disease (aside from those we already do) subsidized by the government, consolidating an ever increasing portion of the economy in the hands of the cultural Marxists.

Michael Jackson with the undying support of his "fans" (or fanatics) in the face of his more than questionable activities concerning the abuse of children, will still hold him up as an idol.

Look at the macabre pagan elements of Jackson's video, Thriller.

Michael Jackson living in Bahrain... coincidence?

Michael Jackson had Nation of Islam thugs as bodyguards escorting him after court appearances through the throngs of frenzied supporters. WAS Jackson their new pharaoh?

Nation of Islam is a militant racist cult. Their leaders, Louis Farrakhan (the numerologist) and Kahlid Abdul Mohammed, are known Jew haters. They also support many illogical and socially subversive Leftist political activities intent on tearing down the structures of Modern Western Civilization and capitalism.

Is it coincidence that many domestic social issues are being driven by cultic Leftist advocacy of unnatural, phantasmagoric perversity?

Slapping the donkey...

Red, black, green and gold - - the colors from the Rastafarian religion, the woolen hats in the four Ethiopian colors, the shrines in those colors found in their yards and pictures of Haile Selassie... (A move by the Left to marginalize Ethiopian Jews?)

What you will not hear from these perpetual pro-marijuana masturbaters is that this “ganga” thing is related to the anti-caucasian and racist Rasafarian religion in Jamaica.

Their ideology is that white men are devils. Marcus Garvey in the early 1900's said an African King would become the black messiah. Ras Tafari was crowned King Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and proclaimed to be their messiah in 1930.

According to the Rastafarian pagans, Ras Tafari did not die in 1975, but went to another dimension. He is called “Jah” and considered to be a god. A pagan perversion of Christian theology.

Of course all of this lunacy is centered around smoking the ganga weed.

That is partly why these feminized males will defend pot smoking, drug abuse and deviant use of their anatomy and are not safe to have around children...

A great post...

To: Sir Francis Dashwood
Without touching on their use of MJ, the rastaferians ALSO pointed Haile being the last "Lion of Judah". It is noteworthy that there's a Biblical prophecy that when the last LOJ goes down, Ethiopia turns into a desert.
And, when Haile went down, the Northern core of the country was turned into a desert by its new Communist masters.
131 posted on 11/28/2005 6:04:36 PM PST by muawiyah (u)

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