The good thing about the Michael Jackson trial is that it’s currently the top headline news. Better this than another 9/11, a school shooting or thousands of soldiers killed in Iraq at one time.
The bad thing about the Michael Jackson trial is that it’s a sideshow. It’s certainly a valid function of government to investigate and prosecute child sexual abuse. Certainly no celebrity, however celebrated he might be, can ever be above the law. But what about parental negligence? By the 1990’s, it was well-established knowledge that Michael Jackson’s behavior towards minors was, at best, highly questionable. Now we witness the spectacle of parents who had enough information to know better claiming that they and their children were victims of something they couldn’t know–even though the rest of us did.
The worst thing about the Michael Jackson trial is not that it’s merely an excuse for California attorneys to advance their careers on the back of a patently ridiculous trial which will likely prove nothing. The worst thing about the Michael Jackson trial is not that it distracts the nation from legitimate concerns such as the impending bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare; the continuing growth of government power along with the federal deficit; the downturn in the economy due to higher oil prices caused by environmentalists who won’t let civilization progress; or the question of what to do with our soldiers in Iraq and the continuing, still unresolved problem of how to prevent the next Islamic terrorist attack.
The worst thing about the Michael Jackson trial is that it allows mediocre or even bad parents a chance to feel that they’re pretty good parents. Who, after all, could be a worse parent than one who lets his child stay overnight with Michael Jackson for the thrill of a celebrity connection? And then be granted excuses later on for such poor judgment by a media, a legal system and a society of people willing to make such excuses for the sake of a distracting sideshow?
