Friday, June 26, 2009

Two More Tales of Power Gone Sad

Of course, the news this morning is split between the sad story of Governor Sanford's ejection from his seats of Republican admiration and potential and the death of Michael Jackson. The first story will wane under the non-stop accolades, video clips, snippets of the global memorials to a singer/ rock star. Both stories, as tiresome as they are already, are sad for the identical reason.
Sanford's slip has made many liberals gleeful if one can be gleeful in the face of the pain of governor's family. I am sure some conservatives will scratch their heads (unseating scads of toupees) and wonder what possessed a man, seemingly destined for greater venues than lowly South Carolina. The governor was possessed for sure. A man who touted family values to such a degree that he and his ilk suggested that somehow if you were not on the conservative, fundamental Christian, Republican side that somehow you had to be immoral, unethical, a failure as a citizen. Yet, here he was leaving the job, AWOL, lying to his staff, not hiking the Appalachian Trail but crying in Argentina. I am willing to be bet that between fits of tears he was also playing hide the hot dog with his South American mistress. Hard to like a guy who sets himself up as such a monolith of righteousness, but, hey, another Clinton, Edwards, Spitzer, just to mention a bipartisan few who got caught.
It is a great time for me, the perpetual cynic, William Jefferson cold cashing, Marion Barry coking, good ol' Newt Gingrich newting and returning, and Tom Delay laundering and returning. Hell, these guys make Wilbur Mills a simple, skirt chasing piker. And this is what we get for our tax dollars and donations, yet we continue to draw lines and call each other jackass, dumbass, moron, illiterate, socialist, fascist, and communist because we fall on one side or another of some sort of dividing line over how the country should not be run. All these folks came in corrupted or were corrupted in quest for power that they could not handle. Very few have a handle on morality; a hell of a bunch pretend they do. What a sorry lot: politicians.
With Michael Jackson, the story is very similar, a star as a child, then a mega-star, then a creep. And today, if I turn on a TV or radio, I will hear continual slices of "Billie Jean," "Thriller," see clips from MTV that Jackson's power arguably pushed into the forefront of entertainment. I am bound to see all sorts of folks wearing a white glove on one hand and moon-walking in Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, Argentina, South Carolina, and DC. Instantly, the pundits are claiming the consideration of Jackson's life as some sort of racial test which is too bad. OK, he was a great entertainer, so what? Roger Clemens, I really believe, lied to Congress; I have no use for him. Barry Bonds, an athlete born to privilege, doped up and broke records; I have no use for him. So now, if I have no use for Michael Jackson and his nefarious activities with boys, his walking to court under an umbrella, his jumping on a car and waving to adoring fans on the day of his indictment, and his hanging his baby off the balcony of his apartment, I am a racist. If the American negro is so blind to the absolutely vile life style of Michael Jackson and refuses to recognize him for what he was, then we are in trouble of being diverted away from the real message: Jackson, like the previously mentioned politicians, was possessed by his acquisition of power and thus ruined. Power used to exploit a constituency is no different than the power used to exploit children.
Somehow, in my petite brain, sits a prejudice that if you are a no good bum-loser, you lose the right to be the world's best anything, politician, athlete, or rocker; I don't care if you claim a governorship or platinum records. Winning an election and conservatives' hearts or making a hit record and wining fans' hearts heightens, not lessens, the depraved creepiness of these two.
So, media, please quit the Sanford "crying time again," just give it up; he is proved a jerk. And just stop all the "Thriller" crap and accolades and memorials, Jackson was what he was. We got enough to worry with other than the loathsome individuals who sadly chose power for nice.