Palin and Jackson — bookends in American psychology

We have our “newsworthy” events in the United States.  Those stories we track with intensity and interest.  We search for every sentence, every sound bite and anything we can find about our “important” U.S. stories.  Two such “newsworthy” stories are resonating in the U.S. culture.  The life story of Sarah Palin and the death story of Michael Jackson.

Sarah Palin is in the news.  Why anyone cares what Sarah Palin does or thinks is beyond me.  If she were a close friend or my Mom I might care.  But otherwise, I’m really not interested.  When Palin was first identified as the candidate for Vice President I took a look at her.  I found what I could about her on the Internet.  I even made a video saying I sort of liked this woman.

I then spent some time listening to her and then adjusted my opinion based on her performance in the presidential race.  Here’s my follow on video

Now, Sarah Palin to me is a person that I would not mind sitting in a bar with and having a beer with and talking about all sorts of subjects.  I like people.  So I would not mind having a beer with Sarah.  However, I don’t want her as my President.  I see her now as a person who got in the spotlight of politics and really, really likes it.  I personally think she likes it too much.  And I’m not sure what she thinks she’s doing now.  And frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn.  I really don’t care what Sarah Palin does.  If anyone thinks she’s a viable candidate for the President in 2012 then perhaps they are not looking as closely as they should to what Sarah has done since being named as a vice presidential candidate.

I don’t like that the news “demonizes” her when she does something.  I wish they would just ignore it.  It’s really NOT news.  But I also don’t like the way she cries “foul” when people point and say “the emperor has no clothes”.

So, she resigns.  So what?  She’s like $500,000 in debt.  She’s not going to make that being a Governor.  She’s got things she needs to do personally for herself and her family.  And I really don’t think it’s all that important in the grand scheme of things.  I wish the news would leave her alone, I believe Sarah would fade in to the woodwork.

Michael Jackson was an entertainer.  A very good one.  He had talent.  He had some great breaks and he was able to capitalize on his talent and our desire to have “pop heroes” to worship.  We worship people in the entertainment industry like no others in the world.  We lay our money, our lives, our adoration and everything at their feet.  We worship our pop heroes more devoutly then we ever worship our God.  Michael, in my opinion, was a talented boy who never really grew up and became a talented and tortured man-boy.  This is another aspect of our hero worship in the pop industry.  The more tragic, the more outrageous or the more controversial our pop heroes are the better.  Michael fit the bill very well.

In death we go over the top with our worship of our pop heroes.  It’s tragic really how we pour out our heart and soul for someone when they are dead.  Ummm, I hate to tell you this but when they are dead, it really doesn’t matter to them.  If you wanted them to know, you should have showed them in life.  If you honestly analyze the feelings of some you’ll see they really didn’t like him THAT much in life.  It’s only now that he’s dead that he’s an idol to be worshiped.

We seem to like our “folk” heroes and our “pop” heroes.  We love the unlikely candidates and the strange and wonderful weird entertainers to idolize.

The truly common denominator in our adoration is our ability to go completely and totally “over the top”.  Once we love someone, once we attach ourselves to them, once we have decided they are our “hero” ; we will do ANYTHING to express our adoration and worship.  We will defend them to the death if someone dares speak a discouraging word about our idol.  We no longer see them as real, breathing people.  They have lost their “common” status and taken on the status of GOD or at the very least some minor deity.

I like some of Michaels songs.  I like that Sarah Palin drives snow mobiles and apparently doesn’t mind having chickens chopped up in the background while she’s doing a video.  There are elements, facets, parts and pieces of these people that I like and may even admire.  There are elements of both that I don’t like and actually find a bit disturbing and creepy.  But the totality of the individuals somehow becomes bigger then who they are in real life.  We blow them up like huge Macey parade balloons and hoist them high in the sky and ooohhhh and awwwww as we watch them float by.

Sarah, let’s have a beer but I’m not really all THAT interested in your public life.  Michael, I mourn your death as I would any other human but in particular I mourn for your death because of the tragedy of your life.  Where you ever happy Michael?  Are you, or have you been, truly happy Sarah? And honestly Sarah, if you wanted to gain any respect from me, you would have finished your term in Alaska, stuck it out and made it work.  We all get ourselves in situations that don’t work for us but it’s never a good idea to quit.  Sometimes you have to walk away from a self-destructive situation or a situation that has been thrust upon you that is not good for you.  But you got yourself elected Sarah.  In fact, I don’t have a clue what you are doing.  And also, quite frankly, I don’t care.

To be honest with you, the real tragedy in the Michael Jackson story is that Michael never really found happiness in life and the real true tragedy of his life is the legacy of his children.  The children of Michael Jackson.  Will they ever be truly happy?  Today they are cute and sad.  Will they one day become the huge blown up Macey parade dolls to which we point, ohhhh and awwww, cluck our tongue when they misbehave or scream when they are successful?  In fact, are we not today already pouring air in to their balloon personae?

Some people should be admired for doing things, achieving things or going places with their lives that you and I don’t go.  That’s something to celebrate.  But we tend to get carried away with our desire to put people on a pedestal.  That’s the problem with creating huge balloon caricatures of people — we often find out they are just full of air or have much less substance then we originally thought.   It’s not totally their fault. They need to own the fact that they allow us to blow them up (or in some cases encourage the ballooning) and it’s our fault for doing the ballooning and making them much larger then life.  And I’m not quite sure what that says about us.

Posted in Entertainment, Politics