|
|
As America
entered the horse latitudes of summer, befogged in a muffling stillness on
deceptively calm seas, we were distracted for a while by visions of a pale
death angel moonwalking across the deck of
collective consciousness. Eerie parallels resound between the sordid
demise of pop singer Michael Jackson and the fate of the nation.
Like the United States,
Michael Jackson was spectacularly bankrupt, reportedly in the range of
$800-million, which is rather a lot for an individual. Had he lived on a few
more years, he might have qualified for his own TARP program –
- another piece of expensive dead-weight down in the
economy's bilges -- since it is our established policy now to throw immense
sums of so-called "money" at gigantic failing enterprises (while
millions of ordinary citizens wash overboard, without so much as a
life-preserver). Anyway, Michael Jackson was on the receiving end of
one huge bank loan after another long after his pattern of profligacy was set
and obvious. They threw money at him for the same reason that the federal
government throws money at entities like CitiBank:
the desperate hope that some miracle will allow debt servicing to
resume. Michael could burn through $50-million in half a year. It
didn't seem to affect his credibility as a borrower. When his heart
stopped last week, he was living in a Hollywood
mansion that rented for several hundred thousand dollars a month. You wonder
how the landlord cashed those checks.
Like the USA, Michael Jackson was a
has-been. He hadn't recorded a song worth listening to in over two decades. He
had done almost nothing but spin his wheels, hop
around the globe from one place to another at enormous expense, and make
himself available for award ceremonies to stoke his ego (and give advertisers
a reason to promote some televised award show). He existed strictly on image,
an anorectic figure nourished by moonbeams of attention, famous for saying
that he loved his worshippers when the truth was he merely sucked the life
out of them. In his last years, he even looked a bit like Nosferatu, the personification of the un-dead, and his
fascination with ghouls was the basis for his biggest hit way back in the
last century. A zombie nation deserves a zombie mascot.
He was a poseur, vamping
in weird military outfits as though he were a five-star general in the
Honduran army, or a character from a melodrama by the reprobate Jean Genet. He
once materialized during halftime at the Superbowl
in a shower of sparks, thrilling the multitudes while grabbing and stroking
his sex organs, as though that was a heroic activity -- and indeed the nation
seemed to emulate him as its culture became dedicated more and more to acting
out masturbation fantasies. America was a fat man jerking off
on the sofa watching a vampire of no particular sex vogue deliriously on the
boob tube.
More than once the
authorities tried to pin charges of child molestation on him for suspicious
activities at his boy-trap, Neverland Ranch, with
its carnival rides, private zoo, video game galleries, and inexhaustible
supplies of sugary treats. The first time he settled with the alleged
victim's family for $22-million. They just walked away with the loot
and happily shut up. The second time, he moonwalked
out of a court-of-law while weeks later jurors mysteriously went on TV to
say, well, they did kind of think after-the-fact that he really did those
things he was accused of, but, you know.... The defendant himself behaved as
though his trial were a TV celebrity challenge show on another planet,
arriving on one occasion twenty minutes late in pajamas
with some lame excuse about a backache. He spent the last years of his
life wandering a few steps ahead of his creditors, gulling concert promoters
into "comeback" schemes (with walking-around money up front), and
with three bought-and-paid-for children, obviously not his own, for
consolation.
When he dropped dead last week, the nation's
morbidly maudlin response suggested a cover story for the relief of being rid
of him and all the embarrassment he provoked. One CNN reporter called him a
genius the equal of Mozart. That's a little like calling Rachel Maddow the reincarnation of Eleanor Roosevelt. A
nation addicted to lying to itself tells itself
fairy tales instead of facing a pathology report. Yet, like Michael Jackson,
the undertone of horror story still pulses darkly in the background. The
little boy who grew up to be the simulation of a girl was really a
werewolf. The nation that defeated manifest evil in World War Two woke
up one day years later to find itself stripped of its manhood, mentally
enslaved to cheap entertainments, and hostage to its own grandiosity. Maybe
in grieving so exorbitantly over this freak America is grieving for itself. All
the loose talk about "love" from the media and the fans gives off
the odor of self-love. America is
"the man in the mirror," the gigantic, floundering Narcissus,
sailing into the stormy seas of history.
James Howard Kunstler
www.kunstler.com/
All articles by James Howard Kunstler
My
new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is
available at all booksellers.
James
Kunstler has worked as a reporter and feature writer
for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone
Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out to write books on a full-time basis.
His
latest nonfiction book, "The Long Emergency," describes the changes
that American society faces in the 21st century. Discerning an imminent
future of protracted socioeconomic crisis, Kunstler
foresees the progressive dilapidation of subdivisions and strip malls, the
depopulation of the American Southwest, and, amid a world at war over oil,
military invasions of the West Coast; when the convulsion subsides, Americans
will live in smaller places and eat locally grown food.
You
can purchase your own copy here : The Long
Emergency . You can get more
from James Howard Kunstler - including his artwork,
information about his other novels, and his blog - at his Web site : http://www.kunstler.com/
|
|