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Michael Jackson - Source: Reuters -
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Crank it up again, my dears!
Michael Jackson's autopsy results, a kind of test of toxicology, may well be out on Saturday, or failing that early next week. It's a test so thorough, the LA coroner even removed portions of Jackson's brain; it's the test you really want to fail, but increasingly one that the Peter Pan of Pop looks to have passed with - ahem - flying colours.
Staunch ally sister LaToya has said, possibly having viewed the results of the family-funded second autopsy , that the information therein will come as a "bombshell" to some Jackson fans.
Count me in to tell you about the blast, but there will be collateral damage.
I'm not talking about reputations torn asunder, or fans disappointed, I'm talking about other news.
After all, the globally-televised Michael Jackson obsequies obscured (perhaps devoured is the more accurate term) almost all other stories to emerge from the US during that near two-week period that myself, and the rabid gang of headline-hungered jackals that I like to call "my colleagues", recounted details of Jackson's death, and when it was sufficiently salacious, his life.
I'll leave it to media commentators to decide whether this was a genuine story, or a mere spurious distraction, though even as I write in Spanish Harlem, I can hear the filing of nails in Grey Lynn.
In my defence I offer a quotation from American poet, Frederick Seidel , whose wonderful Kill Poem, from the collection Ooga Booga contains the line: "Too much is never enough."
Add the perspective of the following, courtesy of my doughty MCR guy.
Typically there are 20 satellite trucks in and around Los Angeles.
A satellite truck is an expensive multi-wheeled thing with a dish on the roof, and two or three smelly guys in the bowels; it sends telly signals to the outside world. Most commonly seen during hurricanes, mass killings and other mega events.
For example, during the Oscars there are 70 satellite trucks working in and around LA.
On the day of the Jackson memorial at the Staples Center , there were 110 satellite trucks in LA.
"They must've come from as far away as Texas," opined my guy wistfully, conjuring a satellite truck army in his imaginings.
Call it the Fog of News, but his daydream offers a nice segue. One of those stories the Jacko-juggernaut didn't crush was the exit of Robert McNamara , a man once called the "Architect of the Vietnam War". An ex-CEO of the Ford Motor Company, one of the longest serving Secretaries of Defense, ditto the World Bank (generally viewed as a penance for sins committed in Vietnam), McNamara was someone whose passing the history books will ascribe as more the end of a particular time than even poor old Michael Jackson turning his toes up.
Put it this way. Jacko signified the end of one generation's youth; McNamara's decisions killed numerous youths from an earlier generation.
As the head of Ford he built the corporate structures we see bewilderingly arrayed around us today. As the Secretary of Defense, he understood counter-insurgency -as is attested by my friend Ann Marlowe in her excellent World Affairs article - but in a crucial failing of judgment didn't apply it correctly in Vietnam.
Yet some believe that McNamara's flawed technocratic approach lives in the White House today. New York Times writer Frank Rich has already made the comparison of the young team John F Kennedy assembled, full of brains and hubris, and the Obama lineup. There is much elaborate thinking, but little hard decision-making. Unemployment in the US is at 10% and likely to increase. The value of the US dollar surely must fall, so many of them are being printed. Obama just got back from Africa where, as he so often does, he offered golden words, but few practical measures.
An era ends, and begins anew.
Having said that, I don't think Lil' Wayne, for example, is the new MJ.
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