Michael Jackson

While the nation mourns the loss of Michael Jackson with such fervor as to minimize the world around us, the tragedy that his family faces parallels that which the nation faces.

For well over a decade, Jackson withdrew from music and into the occult of bizarre, be it inviting young boys over for slumber parties or keeping a chimp named "Bubbles" as a confidant.

Perhaps, death cleanses the memory of the negative and channels the brain to think of only the positive. As Dean Acheson noted on Senator Joseph McCarthy's death, "Of the dead, nothing but good."

Like the immediate memories following the death of Senator McCarthy, Jackson's ills have been erased from public discussion, almost as if one were reading a history textbook from Stalin's Soviet Union, where those purged are airbrushed out of the photograph.

The media will descend on Los Angeles, hundreds of thousands of mourners will line the streets, and scalpers will get $10,00 on eBay for a ticket to the Memorial Service. Meanwhile, the deaths of seven Marines in Afghanistan will be relegated to the back pages of the paper, next to the Victoria's Secret ads.

For what it's worth, Michael Jackson didn't create this pandemonium. This nation did by misplacing its priorities. Instead of appealing to the better angels of our nature, as John Kennedy did by establishing the Peace Corps, we're lost in the search of riches, only to find fool's gold at the end of the rainbow.

This writer can only hope that Michael Jackson may rest in peace, while, simultaneously keeping his fingers crossed that this country will come to its senses and realize what a real hero is.