We Don't Need Michael Jackson!

It's a pleasure for me to stand up and say: We don't need Michael Jackson. (Hat tip to Congressman Peter King, another of those rare Republicans left that seem to share at least some common ground with Reason and Liberty Central.)





We seem to disagree on emphasis, though. Readers of these pages will know that I don't look kindly upon decreeing some arbitrary cutoff age, like eighteen, and treating as a felon everybody who sleeps with (or just makes out with) someone younger. Anyway, the boys Jackson slept with "nonsexually" (yeah, sure) were a bit on the young side.

Would I let my child or grandchild be in the same room with Michael Jackson? Of course I would. He's dead and can't harm anyone anymore.

But cutting out the kingly non sequitur: Would I have let my child or grandchild be in the same room with Michael Jackson while he was alive? No fucking way.

That, however, is not the point. The point is that King is giving Jackson too much credit.

Jackson had no talent. He was not a singer, let alone a good one — he was a screamer at best. He was not a dancer, but a clown.

The chief problem is not that the morons are glorifying a pedophile. The chief problem is that the morons are glorifying a hyped-up sixth-rate clown.

The people King would like to be given more credit are of course a mixed bag themselves: teachers (in my experience, mostly worthless), police officers (ditto), firefighters (most would seem to be OK, maybe even on the heroish side), and veterans (ditto). What about heroes who are not on the Republicans' list of the usual suspects — of public servants and authority figures? What about businessmen, engineers, architects, and scientists?

Maybe Jackson is just a matter of taste. Maybe, in the inscrutable convolutions of their unfathomable brains, there are some good reasons why Jackson meant something to his fans.

Anyway, no entertainer, good or bad, can possibly be worth so much hype and money. If people want to survive, they need to get their priorities straight.

If people want to waste their money on questionable pop music, fine, it's theirs. But they ought to take a moment and think whether it's a good idea to waste only one more dollar on Michael Jackson memorabilia, or for that matter, on any ticket for a mindless pop concert, while scientists are lacking the funds to find cures for cancer and aging.

Now you might say that there ought to be a law, that the government ought to levy a tax on overpaid entertainers and invest the proceeds in medical research. But democracy and socialism are not the solution. Given entertainers' popularity, politicians would never dare to target them, but only raise taxes on those unpopular businessmen.

People have to learn that science is more important than circuses. Knowledge is king, mon. So we love the scientists here on K-RLC!