It’s the second week of the “aftermath” of the death of Michael Jackson. Similar to the Anna Nicole saga, you get more and more disturbed of the details that are uncovered. Of course, part of this is the job of television, to take something, twist it enough to make you say, “Wow, that’s unbelievable! That’s crazy!” In fact, every time we get into one of these around the clock coverage breaking news obsession times, I think of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. He argues that the news does not serve to inform us but to entertain us long enough to pay attention to their sponsors. He says a bit more but that’s the one sentence executive summary (*wink* at Biblical Seminary people).
Some of my friends and I have lamented that since Jackson died, Iran has gone missing. Maybe it has all been resolved or perhaps they were so moved by the King of Pop’s untimely death that their hearts were so broken that they mutually decided to set aside their differences and mourn with the rest of the world and continue discussion at a later time. In a united statement both “president” Ahmadinejad and the protesters said “In light of recent events in the entertainment world, we would like to take the focus off of ourselves and allow all of our attention to be focused on Michael Jackson.”
God only knows what is actually happening there. May He be near.
This leads me to wondering a few things.
What if Michael Jackson was an Iranian? My tongue-in-cheek argument is that regardless of nationality or language, Jackson would have been a super-star regardless where he was born. Just as the moon is universal so is the “moonwalk”. Second, what if an Iranian-born Michael had been killed as part of the Iranian conflict? The world would be in shock! I really wonder what would have happened next. Third, this crisis is prompting me to consider paying more attention to international artists. I know it’s cool to like international music, I’m just not into it. Aside from U2, Radiohead and Coldplay, and the euro-trash bands that emulate them, I never had the motivation. I have enough trouble keeping up with genres that I already like. But here’s my real point, if we are frustrated by our news outlets, perhaps we should consider artists. I know language would be an initial problem but the world is getting flatter, we could probably find out and get whatever we wanted.
If Jackson was Iranian, not only might we as Americans have liked him more, we might also care more about the injustices surrounding him. I wonder what else would be different today.
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