This has been quite a news week, which is a good thing because it's been quite a work week. I leave the radio on all day, to distract me from the misery, and I don't know what I'd do without it. But at 2:26 yesterday afternoon the news cycle veered off the highway and down a long dark tunnel with no exits. It will be Michael Jackson all day, all weekend. Ooof.

When the Michael Jackson child molestation trials were going on I remember thinking, good Lord, when will this be over? There was so much real news this week, and now whatever really happens in the world for the next few days, we won't hear about it. One middle-eastern country could outright invade another, Pyongyang could send Seoul back to the Stone Age, and George Lucas could announce the pre-production of the third Star War trilogy, but it won't matter. Farrah Fawcett could bolt upright in bed, miraculously revived, and we wouldn't hear about it. You'll probably wake up and hear about it on Wednesday. Maybe Thursday.

The democrats in congress will sneak past the biggest tax hike in American history some time today, while no one is looking. The mullahs in Iran will torture and kill more freedom-loving civilians this weekend, and few will notice. And North Korea will load more nuclear and long-range missile technology onto ships headed for Syria or Somalia or Al Qaedastan, or wherever, and we will all be sitting here glued to the tv waiting for the Michael Jackson autopsy report.

Died while in the company of his "personal physician," don't you know? Does anyone find this odd? It might be odd, except that it's Michael Jackson, whose face is in the dictionary under the entry for "odd". I believe the term "personal physician" is applied to any wealthy person's drug supplier, (so he can get into all the exclusive clubs.) I mean, who goes into sudden cardiac arrest while in the presence of their personal physician? For the record, the guy also happens to be a cardiologist. Watch for an indictment.

Sorry for the cynicism -he was the superstar of our times- but it's hard not to. Mrs. Ditchman, who is currently re-reading that great John Eldredge book, Wild at Heart, pointed out that Michael Jackson is the perfect case study for the antithesis of nearly everything discussed in the book. This man, Jackson, with serious father issues, found himself at the end of his life stripped of all things masculine, and all things mature. He was more Lost Boy than Peter Pan. He was such a talent that it's sad, but he was celebrated for his weirdness, which is pathetic.

On tv last night we saw the King of Pop's body on a gurney being rolled across the helipad. They couldn't get him out the front door of the hospital to go to the coroner, because of all the grieving fans, so they had to take him by helicopter. It was a humorless, ignoble sight, and Mrs. Ditchman commented on all that royal celebrity laying there under that sheet, and that we're all, more or less, headed to the same place.

Reality flatters none but those who bear it out with integrity.

Have a "ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma-ma coo sa, ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma-ma coo sa" weekend!



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