Requiem In Pacem: Ted Kennedy

I will not watch the news right now. I do not need to hear about how Ted Kennedy was the greatest man who ever lived.

I lived for seventeen years in a very conservative household so I heard absolutely nothing good about Kennedy until a couple of days ago, particularly from his Wikipedia entry and a couple other bits throughout the web and on the news. It seems like he was a great guy to have as your senator and as a public official representing you, but the mainstream media needs to realize that outside of Massachusetts, and maybe the District, no one cares that much about him. Some coverage of his funeral is fine, and maybe even proper, but for the most part they shouldn't be anywhere near it. (Historically, funerals are private matters.)

I have this sneaking suspicion that there is real news out there just waiting to be found, but they would rather take the easy path and hug a corpse.

Of course Ted knew this would happen. His party is planning on using his death to pass their healthcare bill, just like they wheeled him out other the last several months just to prevent the conservatives from doing anything, so we won't stop hearing about him for at least another couple of months.

But, if he they will let him - Rest in Peace
-X

Requiem In Pacem: Michael Jackson

Image via Wikipedia

So I've read some of the post-Michael Jackson... crap for lack of a better term.

I look at it as a good thing. Mr. Jackson was clearly insane. My points of reference include a handsome man constant having his face cut up, having no friends that weren't either being paid or hadn't hit puberty, and being accused of having sexual intercourse with several of those prepubescent friends.

Note I am not assuming guilt of that last point, my powers of doubt know no limits, if I think about it enough. My point in this is that perhaps this is for the best.

Clearly a lot of people care about him, as noted by 30% of tweets being about his death, and there is nothing worst then a person you care about being sick and being unable to do anything about it. Under normal circumstances the family would be able to get them help, but Mr. Jackson, like most celebrities, had enough money and power to prevent that until he spent most of it defending himself from the court cases.

After the cases his popularity dropped dramatically, because public opinion and the verdict don’t necessarily match, he started running out of money (or he sold his house for fun), and there had been reports about his health failing.

One person on Fark.com was debating when how long it would be until people forgot the bad part and only remember his music. The problem I have with that is I don’t think I’ll ever think of Michael Jackson and think “music”. Currently, it goes “child molester”, “unnecessary plastic surgery”, “Thriller”. Also while I keep seeing things saying how he did all of these great things for music, no one will say specifically what he did, which songs, what videos, etc. It just seems like people want to say good things about him and don’t know how to articulate it.

That said, Rest in Peace

-X