Pop Music Idolatry

Chuck Todd is normally one of my favorite pundits, but in this segment as guest host of Hardball he kind of gets my scuzzball of the week award. After another endless discussion of the favorite media topic of the week, the guy on the bottom, who goes by the single name of Tour tries to rhapsodize about Michael Jackson as a musical idol, passing over the “curious end of life, curious last act” issues of his life by admitting that “you have to mention that, but…” Gloria Allred breaks in to assert that charges of child molestation is more than curiosities, and Chuck Todd tries to stop her, saying words to the effect that “now is not the time” to talk about that.

His previous segment was about the sexual adventures of the Governor of South Carolina, in which he discussed at length what those adventures were and what they portended for his future and the future of the Republican Party. So when an adult male has sex with a consenting adult female we must discuss at length just how damaging it is to everyone concerned. It is, of course, an act that, whatever its moral considerations in light of marriage, is wholly natural and is fully condoned by nature and by social laws as to the act itself.

But the reasonable conclusion that Michael Jackson was, for the last fifteen years of his life, in the fairly regular habit of having sex with small children must be swept under the rug because we prefer to remember him as a musical icon. We don’t want to think about the probability that he was for many years performing an act that was perverted, disgusting, and against the laws of nature and the laws of society.

He escaped the consequences of the latter with a $20 million bribe in one instance and in another by means of his celebrity status, his enormous wealth and an army of high-priced lawyers. We want to ignore the monstrous issue of his pedophilia because his status as a pop music icon is so important to us.

"Innocent until proven guilty?" Not in the American system of justice where wealth, power and a star-struck jury can, and all too often does, purchase a "not guilty" verdict.

At his best Michael Jackson was a musical genius and a self-idolizing, self-indulgent freak. At his worst he was incapable of keeping his dick in his pants in the company of small children. Why are we referring to him as an “American icon,” running endless television specials, and prating non-stop on television news shows about how “special” he was?