Category Archives: Media

Update II: Michael Revivalist Revelry

America, Journalism, Media, Music, Pop-Culture, Sarah Palin, The Zeitgeist

Civilians are dying in Iraq; soldiers in Afghanistan, Putin, his little helper (Dmitry Medvedev), and the patriotic Russian people, are getting the better of Barack; China’s Uyghur minority is going ape on its Han majority, Zelaya is seeking solace from Clinton—Bill, that is; key Irani clerics have dismissed the results of the vote (that’s good news; sensible non-interventionist wanted any findings to issue from Iran)—all the while, America’s cable news channels have been glued for hours-on-end to the formless shape of Rev. Al Sharpton, and other other black entertainers, swaying to the sounds of a pop singer passed. The same specter has occupied the front-pages of major newspapers.

To paraphrase Pat Buchanan, a silly people living in serious times.

Perhaps our Alaskan lass gets it. Having, we hope, seceded from “politics as usual,” Sarah went fishing with her hunk and her adorable kids. I hope she’s winking in the direction of Russia, and having a laugh at the expense of the self-important Obamas.

Update I: Marc Lamont Hill, Ph.D, Bill O’Reilly’s token black intellectual (read: a man who is clearly a product of America’s system of racial promotion, and doesn’t make O’Reilly’s lack-luster intellect too obvious), said: “Michael Jackson is the greatest child prodigy since Mozart.” Good grief. This man teaches at an elite university and he cannot distinguish between a Mozart and a songster, who was able to write a simple, three-chord jingle and dance to it; and who couldn’t even play an instrument proficiently, much less compose a symphony or an opera?

For this music lover—Bach, anytime anywhere—that was the most obscene comment to come out of the “wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage.” Writes Debbie Schlussel, with equal disgust: “the only people I feel for at this funeral circus are those kids. Sad to see his daughter, Paris Michael Jackson, cry. It’s probably the only sincere moment in the entire thing. The rest are just phonies glomming [sic] onto a successful circus act.”

[SNIP]

Bubbling up from this sewer of coverage, so emblematic of American society, was the repeated refrain that MJ managed to transcend race and gender. How stupid. The man was tortured by his race and his looks. The latest reports detail the shocking lily-white color of his frail, emaciated body, and the fresh track marks along his snow white bony arms. This was a man wracked by hate for his original looks. It takes self-loathing to voluntarily transform yourself—through dangerous, disfiguring, bone-crushing surgery—from a black young man into a no-nosed elf whose facial structure—the bones—had been chipped away to render a concave, collapsing mess, both sexless and raceless.

As for MJ’s alleged genderless “achievement”: the claim that Jackson was gay is certainly silly. He was clearly childlike and quite innocent. He didn’t have a history of affairs, male or female, and there was no evidence of child-molestation, although there was ample evidence that MJ assembled around him grafters who did not hesitate to use their kids to blackmail a childish man with means.

Update II: Jackson’s adopted daughter is a lovely little girl, who doesn’t sound remotely like the Valley Girls infesting that state. I dread to think how she’ll fare if one of the sisters takes her in. MJ seems to have imparted some manners to his kids.

“Ever since I was born, daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine.”—PARIS KATHERINE JACKSON, Michael Jackson’s 11-year-old daughter, at the pop icon’s memorial service Tuesday.

Updated: Palin Gives Up Governorship (‘Only Dead Fish Go With The Flow’)

Media, Military, Political Philosophy, Politics, Sarah Palin

I’m glad I waited a few hours pursuant to the announcements on cable that Sarah Palin had resigned, before posting this. For that is how long it has taken to get the truth from the horse’s mouth. To listen to David Shyster of MSNBC, with his version of news, you’d think Palin was leaving politics. This was the crawl caption plastered below Shuster’s facetious face:

Palin Leaving politics for good.

A bit of wishful thinking.

The same odious character was quick to conduct the ubiquitous interviews with Palin’s Alaskan GOP rivals. You see, beamed Shyster, a lot of sensible Republicans believe Palin lacks gravitas (something Barney Frank oozes).

Why my prudent wait? For the first few hours following the announcement, the cable culprits failed to screen Palin’s brief press conference announcing her resignation. When they finally did, the short resignation speech was truncated, and only the incoherent parts excerpted, as Anderson Cooper pulled ugly faces, and his colleague Candy Crowley feigned horror.

Why?

Our faux journalists and their producers are quite capable of screening and re-screening clips they like at a rate that would drive the placid Dalai Lama to a homicidal rage.

Granted, Palin, as I have said before, doesn’t know when to stop rambling. That much is true. But her announcement was, for the better part, perfectly coherent and even inspired in places (hell, anyone who favorably mentions the Tenth Amendment and States’ Rights inspires me, if only fleetingly).

Here it is. Decide for yourselves.

Update (July 4): To those on whom distinctions, made in plain English, are lost, this post, of course, is a critique of the coverage of the Palin resignation, not an endorsement of the woman’s political plank, an impossibility for this classical liberal.

For more on Palin—her empty homilies to our dead-as-a-doornail Constitution, her profoundly feminist, mod approach to her daughter’s foray into siring a (poor) bastard baby, her promises to erect unconstitutional government departments to serve the retarded, her whooping it up for equally unconstitutional, immoral wars, her selling her soul by soaking up McMussolini’s creed; on-and-on—all in the Sarah Palin archive, on your right.

Did she display promise? Of course. You’d have to be an idiot, or an envy-riddled female, or both, not to recognize her Reaganesque charisma (although he served as governor for 9 years, no quitting). But she has shown no learning curve.

Take this bit from her resignation speech:

“…this most recent trip to Kosovo and Landstuhl, to visit our wounded soldiers overseas, those who sacrifice themselves in war for our freedom and security… we can ALL learn from our selfless Troops… they’re bold, they don’t give up, they take a stand and know that life is short so they choose to not waste time. They choose to be productive and to serve something greater than self… and to build up their families, their states, our country. These Troops and their important missions – those are truly the worthy causes in this world and should be the public priority with time and resources and not this local / superficial wasteful political bloodsport.”

[SNIP]

I mean, what on earth are we still doing in Kosovo, and how does that relate to “freedom” here at home, the proper purview of a constitutional government?! This Bush-era neocon nonsense I do not miss. As for the “military” being so much better than the rest of us, to quote, “I confess to growing as sick-and-tired of the odes to the military in militarized America, as I have of the constant fretting over the toll stratospheric state debt will take on ‘our children.’ (What about all us stiffed working stiffs?) About the country’s under-educated, over-indulged, hyper-sexed, super-confident kids I don’t care. (I’m confident the homeschooled among them will survive on this road to serfdom.) The military is certainly no more deserving than the rest of us…”

Updated: Palin Gives Up Governorship ('Only Dead Fish Go With The Flow')

Media, Military, Political Philosophy, Politics, Sarah Palin

I’m glad I waited a few hours pursuant to the announcements on cable that Sarah Palin had resigned, before posting this. For that is how long it has taken to get the truth from the horse’s mouth. To listen to David Shyster of MSNBC, with his version of news, you’d think Palin was leaving politics. This was the crawl caption plastered below Shuster’s facetious face:

Palin Leaving politics for good.

A bit of wishful thinking.

The same odious character was quick to conduct the ubiquitous interviews with Palin’s Alaskan GOP rivals. You see, beamed Shyster, a lot of sensible Republicans believe Palin lacks gravitas (something Barney Frank oozes).

Why my prudent wait? For the first few hours following the announcement, the cable culprits failed to screen Palin’s brief press conference announcing her resignation. When they finally did, the short resignation speech was truncated, and only the incoherent parts excerpted, as Anderson Cooper pulled ugly faces, and his colleague Candy Crowley feigned horror.

Why?

Our faux journalists and their producers are quite capable of screening and re-screening clips they like at a rate that would drive the placid Dalai Lama to a homicidal rage.

Granted, Palin, as I have said before, doesn’t know when to stop rambling. That much is true. But her announcement was, for the better part, perfectly coherent and even inspired in places (hell, anyone who favorably mentions the Tenth Amendment and States’ Rights inspires me, if only fleetingly).

Here it is. Decide for yourselves.

Update (July 4): To those on whom distinctions, made in plain English, are lost, this post, of course, is a critique of the coverage of the Palin resignation, not an endorsement of the woman’s political plank, an impossibility for this classical liberal.

For more on Palin—her empty homilies to our dead-as-a-doornail Constitution, her profoundly feminist, mod approach to her daughter’s foray into siring a (poor) bastard baby, her promises to erect unconstitutional government departments to serve the retarded, her whooping it up for equally unconstitutional, immoral wars, her selling her soul by soaking up McMussolini’s creed; on-and-on—all in the Sarah Palin archive, on your right.

Did she display promise? Of course. You’d have to be an idiot, or an envy-riddled female, or both, not to recognize her Reaganesque charisma (although he served as governor for 9 years, no quitting). But she has shown no learning curve.

Take this bit from her resignation speech:

“…this most recent trip to Kosovo and Landstuhl, to visit our wounded soldiers overseas, those who sacrifice themselves in war for our freedom and security… we can ALL learn from our selfless Troops… they’re bold, they don’t give up, they take a stand and know that life is short so they choose to not waste time. They choose to be productive and to serve something greater than self… and to build up their families, their states, our country. These Troops and their important missions – those are truly the worthy causes in this world and should be the public priority with time and resources and not this local / superficial wasteful political bloodsport.”

[SNIP]

I mean, what on earth are we still doing in Kosovo, and how does that relate to “freedom” here at home, the proper purview of a constitutional government?! This Bush-era neocon nonsense I do not miss. As for the “military” being so much better than the rest of us, to quote, “I confess to growing as sick-and-tired of the odes to the military in militarized America, as I have of the constant fretting over the toll stratospheric state debt will take on ‘our children.’ (What about all us stiffed working stiffs?) About the country’s under-educated, over-indulged, hyper-sexed, super-confident kids I don’t care. (I’m confident the homeschooled among them will survive on this road to serfdom.) The military is certainly no more deserving than the rest of us…”

Update II: The Gall Of The Media Ghouls (Arrested Development?)

Affirmative Action, Celebrity, Criminal Injustice, Healthcare, Intelligence, Justice, Law, Media, Music

Following the death notice are a few apropos excerpts from my “Mad Dog Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson,” one of the few trenchant defenses of Michael Jackson, written at the time of his trial. Michael J. was accused of molesting a big hairy “child,” three times the size of the frail singer.*

“Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.”

Now Keith Olbermann eulogizes Jackson, but back in 2005, “Olbermann, expecting a prosecutorial touchdown, aired a rather cruel segment on his consistently cruel ‘Countdown With Keith O.’ The segment was called ‘Prepping for the Pokey.’ In that bit of “comedy,” the awful Olbermann “pondered how Jackson would fit his prosthetic proboscis in jail.”

“The only man (Jon Stewart disappointed),” other than yours truly, “to have distinguished himself from the pack was Geraldo Rivera. The Fox News reporter conceded Jackson’s conduct was creepy and said as much (as did I). But he understood that creepy is not necessarily criminal.”

* “Mad Dog’ Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson” was rejected for publication by a leading libertarian website. Much to the proprietor’s disgrace, the rejection was based on a dislike for the column’s author.
Speaking of whom, if you appreciate her work, please support it. And do visit WND on Fridays for the weekly column. If not for those courageous evangelicals, the cultists in mainstream media and among my own ideological faction would have seen me banished from larger audiences for good.

Update I: “Thriller” was undoubtedly a musical triumph, Jackson’s only one, perhaps. The Jackson of that era had achieved a good look in his life-long plastic-surgery odyssey. The songs were very tight, accompanied by enormous talent: Eddie Van Halen played guitar on the song “Beat It,” and Steve Lukather, studio musician from Toto, did guitars on the remainder. It was an exciting, polished effort, with a hard-core manly sound, attributable to the guitar greats cited. (Here is another one worth a listen.)

Update II (June 27): ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. At the time a 911 call was placed from the Jackson home, Dr. Conrad Murray, Jackson’s cardiologist, had been performing CPR on the already dead MJ for the better part of an hour. If that doesn’t strike the medical profession (the media is even less inclined to think critically) as odd, perhaps the position chosen to administer the life-saving procedure will: the singer was splayed on a bed.

Now, a CPR recipient has to be lain on a hard surface — “because it is difficult to compress the chest on a soft surface.” How can you deliver an awakening thump to the heart on a surface that gives?

Yet it was the 911 operator that had to tell “the staffer to ‘get him on the floor,'” a message the latter presumably conveyed to the inept doctor.

What is it about these celebrities that makes them seek out such incompetence in their care-givers? If you recall, Anna Nicole Smith too was surrounded by an incompetent team of husband and wife nurses at the time she died.

Kanye West’s mother died under the knife of a trendy plastic surgeon. West was celebrated as a woman of some intelligence, yet she appeared to have chosen a surgeon based on his celebrity. “Dr. Jan Adams, who is being investigated by the state medical board, has been the target of malpractice lawsuits and has paid out nearly $500,000 in civil settlements.”

The fact that Adams happened to also be an Oprah-endorsed Brother might have contributed to his appeal to the late Mrs. West.

Dare I suggest the following? The common thread in the specter of wealthy celebrities choosing manifestly incompetent care givers is their own patently low intelligence.