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I was off reading another message board today (I really do that occasionally) and ran across a post about Michael Jackson.
Yes, that topic again. This isn't a "Michael Jackson" post though, honest.
Anyway, someone made a post about how he was sick of "celebrities" getting all the attention and Jackson was just one man and he went on to list all the soldiers that had died in Iraq that week and how one stupid celebrity should pale in comparison to those soldiers.
On one level, I guess that's true. Like anyone else, I'm sickened by the pure "celebrities"...you know them, the Paris Hiltons of the world. People with no real purpose other than to appear on TMZ and make us hate them.
But Michael Jackson...I cannot say with a straight face that he was just a "celebrity". I would argue that he was an artist in every sense of the word. Indeed - and don't take this comparison too seriously - a Michaelangelo of our generation. Do we dismiss the Sistine Chapel just because it was done by "one man" when many others died the same day he did?
The point? I guess, to me at least, it's important and beneficial for a society to recognize their great artists as just that. Too often in our society I think we lose that in the flood of celebrity, media foolishness, superficial values and silly manufactured over-stimulation on the TV every day. We forget the real genius of those who truly *create*. (Fuck you, Michael Bay.)
It's rare, you know. There's even science on the topic, regarding how the human brain - by and large - isn't good at truly creating and inventing on an individual level.
I suppose this was more of reflection than anything else. But really, try to sit back and enjoy something wonderful that someone else created today, not just another same-old TV show or celebrity. I'll give it a shot, at least before I go back to rummaging around in the filthy closet that we call the Internet.
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