K.O.P.

I scanned across the BET awards last night, wondering what sorts of impromptu and hurried tributes to Michael Jackson were going to surface. There were plenty.

For someone who was [likely] bankrupt, addicted, [likely] guilty at least one acquitted charge, who hadn't done anything with any remark in, say, the last two decades...Michael Jackson was revered last night as a God by nearly every living black entertainer.

Isn't this tragic narrative wholly similar to everything else in our America? A bankrupt nation, addicted to cheap foreign labor, cheap foreign oil, and even cheaper foreign made products, guilty of falsely promoting democracy through the waging of wars for freedom, and a nation that really, really, hasn't done anything worth a shit in the past two decades unless you call building out more freeways, strip malls and suburban wastelands worth a shit. And this nation, as it's dying, is still revered by the inhabitants of all other nations.

I would suspect that for a lot people living in America, their lives mirror that of Mr. Jackson's -- financially and morally bankrupt, unemployed, living in a Neverland dreamworld, desperately pinning their hopes on a supposed economic recovery just around the corner.