Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Garish Newspaper Headlines

The title is a play on a Propaghandi record called Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes. As a statement, it's so vivid that it makes me want to get it tattooed on me somewhere despite finding the band that penned the disc almost hopelessly sanctimonious.




I'm not excited by the media frenzy around the death of Michael Jackson. The biggest dent he made in my life was New Found Glory saying Thriller was their favorite song. For some people, his death is huge, the end of an era in American music. It's the end of an era, for some newspapers and people. The response to his death from my politically minded friends (well, one in particular) was "Why are you talking about Michael Jackson's death, there's tons of other death and violence out there that's less fashionable and newsworthy that deserves your attention."

She's right, but ultimately, what does a Twitter update or Facebook update regarding Michael Jackson mean? Twitter and Facebook updates are not the places for screeds and getting across huge ideas, so I'm willing to let people have their venue, but more than that...Michael Jackson's life deserves a careful examination, since I believe there's an example of American existence in his life.

At a young age, he was forced, with his siblings to go on the road for America's entertainment, became a breakout star, became famous on his own due to that monstrous work ethic that was pounded into him by his father and then something snapped. By the time something snapped, he released some of his best music and had made his stamp on the pop landscape, so that his eccentricities were just cute foibles until they got creepier and creepier.

Neverland Ranch is a pretty obvious statement, for a guy that had his youth stolen to dance in front of other people, this is a man that wanted to be a kid, which isn't so strange and then something finally snapped. It's important to remember that when we're talking about him. Something snapped and he went nuts.

And by the end of his life, he owed lots of money, living in a space that cost him $100,000 a month and died after promising a huge amount of work in the future. Sound like any mation you know, living beyond its means with a negative bank balance?

I don't want to obscure the bad things he did, but this is a person with a tragic arc, who'se life I was only around for the obviously self-destructive parts of. He achieved a level of fame unthinkable today and a fanbase that despite the last 20 years, endures. That fact alone is so complex, I can't begin to unpack it.

And now he's dead.

So, if that death helps you understand or personalize the end of an era, or get a little bit closer to the idea nothing lasts forever, then I view the Twitters, Facebook status updates and MySpace blogs as legitimate and just as worthy as chirps about Tehran. That doesn't mean one ought to pay less attention to the recently cracked down protests in Iran, (it seems the guys behind the guns have won, but at a cost) but that it takes time to process the death of someone who'se importance in pop music is nearly impossible to overlook and a knee-jerk reaction to it is perfectly sensible.

Nicholas Kristof, journalist and small time saint, said in a youtube Op-Ed that Americans don't really care about numbers, but personalize a story and they'll care and that, I think is a useful lens to view the inane Tehran OR Michael Jackson debate (that I must admit I fell into) through. We can have both and more importantly, we ought to have room for both events. We can leave open a space for the riots and murder of kids our age in the streets halfway across the world, but that space doesn't preclude another space for confusion and distress over the death of an artist who'se music was a touchstone for literally millions of people.

I can't visualise a million of anything. Except maybe, maybe grains of sand on a beach. I know that we're all so tiny in the grand scheme of things and we influence different people we are around just by observing it, but hell, it's okay to express sadness and confusion over someone who'se life has affected you. I guess that's the takeaway message from this, that it's okay to feel strongly for someone who doesn't know you.