THE NO SIN ZONE

Celebrity deaths are spectator sports. And Michael Jackson’s is the Super Bowl of televised grief. America’s patron saint of wholesome exploitation, Mary Hart, can hardly keep her giddiness in check (”Think of the ratings! But why did they have to die on the same day? Damn you Jesus!”), while other celebrities, from the authentic (Paul McCartney) to the risible (Heidi Pratt), all jump on the exciting news as an opportunity to wring some attention for themselves out of the still warm corpse. And, of course, a mindless seeker of perpetual attention like Ashton Kutcher can be counted upon to Twitter his thumbs into a frenzy as he tries, once again, to insinuate-by-texting himself into any situation that holds the public’s fleeting attention he jealously craves, like a junkie hours from his last fix.

People tried yesterday to work themselves into an emotion that approximated grief when Farrah Fawcett died, but she was a minor star and her death was about as predicable as that of the villain in a bad movie. And before everyone could really begin keening her lost in earnest, she was upstaged, in true Hollywood fashion, by a bigger star with a flashier exit. And so the emotional masturbation begins! Ready yourself for the televised tears and the blogged bathos. Emotions are no longer authentic if they aren’t witnessed. Grief is suspect if it isn’t grand enough to register on digital video. So make way for people to appear in public and parade their inconsolable grief over a stranger, someone they never knew outside the removed lens of celebrity — and its close cousin infamy.

Somewhere in Hell, America’s most famous child molester is smiling. He got out of doing those onerous London concerts he was going to cancel anyway. And he can now sit back and watch the one thing he seemed to prize more than melody: flattery. Michael spent so many years giving himself relentless praise; how happy he must be to have finally done something again that provoked others to join in on the adulation. And his death, unlike the now-scrapped London concerts, will be a hard act to follow.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Ashton Kutcher, Heidi Pratt, Paul McCartney, celebrity deaths, Michael Jackson, vicious gossip out of Christian concern, celebrities, children left behind. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.