A rchive Date
[ 12-06-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
|
[http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Calgary/Ian_Robinson/2005/06/12/1083192.html
Michael's a poster boy for sick culture
By Ian Robinson - Calgary Sun
Sun, June 12, 2005
I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm thinking that, whether guilty or innocent of the terrible charges levied against him, there is something seriously wrong with Michael Jackson.
I mean, here we have a man who speaks in an affected little baby voice, owns a face that looks like a drunk did surgery on it with a McCulloch chainsaw, hired women to bear his children and then pensioned them off, dresses like a Third World general, and apparently bleached his skin so that between that and the plastic surgery he looks like the unacknowledged love child of Diana Ross and Johnny Winter.
Socially, he prefers the company of 10-year-old boys and likes to cuddle up with them at night and says it's a beautiful thing.
This alone proves the man is insane.
I'm a father, so many is the time I've had small children climb into my bed after they suffered nightmares and required comfort. Trust me, it is not a beautiful thing.
Small boys and girls toss, turn and squirm around at night so much that it's like sleeping with a burlap bag full of angry rats.
After such a night, the children awake refreshed and happy.
The adult who slept with them has to drag himself into consciousness the same way you do after staying up all night swilling mid-priced Kentucky whiskey and throwing toonies at strippers.
Yes, comforting a small, frightened child is a good thing. But if you don't regard it as personal sacrifice, there's something seriously wrong with you.
Add to that the fact that Michael built a retreat called Neverland that's 50% amusement park and 50% Freudian freakshow, and I'd think that the vast majority of human beings in North America would stand back and go: Ick!
But we didn't, did we?
And least not at first, and even today it is hardly a unanimous view.
There are hundreds of people gathered outside the courthouse where Jackson's being tried, waving signs demanding that we leave their poor little Michael alone. For every supporter outside the courthouse, you can bet there are 100,000 more across the world.
There are literally millions who own every song title he recorded. And even today there are parents willing to let their kids hang around with him.
I'm thinking that what Michael Jackson became is not entirely his fault.
We helped create him, because we thought it was wrong to express our natural revulsion for him.
We were tolerant. So tolerant that what should have, at the very least, been uneasiness, turned into approval.
Michael Jackson is poster boy for the culture of permissiveness that is the unfortunate legacy of social liberalism.
Nobody says no anymore, not to celebrity millionaire musicians and not to the creepy guy who works in your company's website development program who took two weeks off so he could be eighth in line for the Revenge of the Sith premiere.
The most important - and noble - thing about human beings is not that we're individuals, lovely little unique snowflakes with hopes and dreams and desires.
The most important thing about human beings is we suppress those impulses that aren't useful.
We are social animals. It's the only way we survived and prospered back in the day, shortly after we hairless monkeys dropped out of the trees and started trying to make a living on the African savannah.
We weren't the fastest animal out there. We lacked claws and carnivore teeth. But we were bright enough to hang out in groups, co-operate and, after a while, the fact that we are social animals elevated us to the top of the food chain, where we preside to this day.
The lions on the savannah didn't stand a chance.
One of the things that makes social groups function well - one of the things a social group absolutely requires to function - is a sense of intolerance.
Deviant behaviour couldn't be tolerated in small groups on the edge of extinction because tolerance could lead to extinction by putting our children in danger.
We understand what freakish behaviour is.
We understand it on a level more profound than intellect. We know it in our bones. Our DNA sings it out to us.
The fact that Michael Jackson - even if innocent - has lived and prospered among us for so long, is testament to the fact that we have quit listening to the things that we know, utterly, to be true.
Guilty or innocent ... he's one of the guys we should turn our backs on.
Letters to the editor should be sent to: callet@calgarysun.com Home Page
Copyright © 2005, Sun Media Corporation / Netgraphe inc. All rights reserved
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|