Well hell. I guess I’m not as bothered about Jacko getting off. So to speak. Given that this is Los Angeles, and he is (kind of) black, and that this is 2005, the verdict itself wasn’t too surprising. I can’t say for sure if this is a case of justice rebalancing itself after all the years of racism in the US, or if its something just plain stupid.
Actually. I can say. It is stupid.
One has to wonder if the verdict wasn’t somehow slanted by the fears of a riot if a white jury convicted a black celebrity. I know it’s not likely because, well, Michael Jackson ain’t no OJ. Jackson is an obvious freak. Everyone can see that, regardless of their color.
Now, don’t get me wrong, racism and prejudice is just plain wrong and always will be. What I don’t get is that African-Americans feel they have some moral high ground over every other American. Consider that slavery ended almost 150 years ago. It was only 60 years ago, though, that a certain man in Germany was trying (and succeeding) to eradicate an entire race. Not enslave them. Kill them. Dead. It was only a decade or so ago that Saddam Hussein was gassing an ethnic segment of Iraq’s population.
So why do African-American advocacy groups feel they are somehow more oppressed than a Jewish, Kurdish, Cambodian, or any other refugee in the last 50 or so years? And why does this spill over into absolutely idiotic drivel like the Michael Jackson trial?
Everyone, that is, except for the cavalcade of morons who held vigil at the trial. They showed some woman releasing doves to mark Jackson’s acquittal. The manic devotion to this … uh … guy is hard to fathom. He hasn’t even produced any decent music in years, and the stuff he did in the 90’s doesn’t seem to get all that much air time anyway.
So what’s the fixation on Michael Jackson? His face is held to together with spit and duct tape … literally. His complexion is a cross between Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dick Cheney. His sexual orientation and preferences would make Charles Darwin re-examine his theories on evolution.
My opinion is that the people who were hanging out at the trial wanted to be on TV. They wanted their 15 seconds of fame on E! or whatever network was desperate enough to fill time to talk to them. The lust for personal fame seems a more logical reason to hang out at a court house than the notion that anyone actually things he was not guilty.
