Michael Jackson Tributes: I understand the fortnight of all-Jackson-all-the-time. As a society, we are celebrity obsessed — but Jackson was a pop music phenomenon. Then I hearken back to an old “Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update segment of the late 1970s. “This just in: ‘Francisco Franco Still Dead.’” Not to be irreverent, but enough.
But some people ought to know better. Respected Tampa television columnist Walt Belcher wrote that Jackson’s death will be one of those “I remember where I was when I heard the news” moments. Not unlike, for example, “John F. Kennedy.”
Please. That’s not remotely fair to the traumatic, seminal American event of the 20th century — or to the 50-year-old entertainer, for that matter. For what it’s worth, I was on line at the time. I read about Jackson’s “cardiac arrest” in the context of: “Where in the world was Mark Sanford?” “Will the Iranian government pull a Tiananmen Square?” And “Why can’t Sandra Bullock find better movies to star in?”
And not that we should actually expect better, but the Rev. Al Sharpton was, even for him, hyperbolically over the top when he exclaimed that Michael Jackson “had paved the way for” – among others – “Barack Obama.”
Try Ralph Bunche, Medgar Evers, Shirley Chisholm and Colin Powell. Or if you want a consummate cross-over entertainer, Nat King Cole. Enough.