Michael Jackson is dead- his music hit us like thunder, and his dance was like lightning: he burst upon us like an explosive awakening of senses.
Here is a tribute in The Daily Dish, by Andrew Sullivan:
"There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child. By abuse, I do not mean sexual abuse; I mean he was used brutally and callously for money, and clearly imprisoned by a tyrannical father. He had no real childhood and spent much of his later life struggling to get one. He was spiritually and psychologically raped at a very early age - and never recovered. Watching him change his race, his age, and almost his gender, you saw a tortured soul seeking what the rest of us take for granted: a normal life."
Sullivan's closing words are a warning for India, opening up into its own celebrity culture- the media generated mass hysteria:
"I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours' and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out."
I had never heard of Mark Sanford, the discredited Governor of one of the fifty states of America. Seems he has a love-interest in Argentina, and he was outed, and he has resigned. He is reviled, and I thinks lots and lots of people are happy about what happened to him. But worse, the emails he sent his lover have come to public domain.
And, Lee Siegel in The Daily Beast is worried why no one is bothered about the invasion of privacy in this instance:
"The brouhaha over Gov. Mark Sanford’s indiscretion brings several words to mind: outrageous, disgusting, unsettling, terrifying.
Not the fact that he committed adultery (sleep-inducing) or that he took off for Argentina without telling even his most trusted aides (fascinating) or that he spoke intimately and weepily during his interminable mea culpa (poignant). No, what should have us all in some kind of uproar is the fact that Sanford’s private emails are being broadcast all over the world. And incredibly, in this society so ultra-sensitive to individual freedom, not a single voice has been raised in protest."
But why should we bother about that? I know I am treading on sensitive ground here, but I actually went over and read his emails, and they are fantastic, really. Look here at the mails in Bumpshack.:
"I have been specializing in staying focused on decisions and actions of the head for a long time now — and you have my heart. You have oh so many attributes that pulls it in this direction. Do you really comprehend how beautiful your smile is? Have you been told lately how warm your eyes are and how they softly glow with the special nature of your soul. I remember Jenny, or someone close to me, once commenting that while my mom was pleasant and warm it was sad she had never accomplished anything of significance. I replied that they were wrong because she had the ultimate of all gifts — and that was the ability to love unconditionally. The rarest of all commodities in this world is love. It is that thing that we all yearn for at some level — to be simply loved unconditionally for nothing more than who we are — not what we can get, give or become."
This man can write, and how well! In one of the blogs I read, someone had commented that she would be putty in the hands of someone who can write this good.
He has a future in movies.
And finally,
“As I was letting myself into my front door I was assaulted from behind and hit hard,” the financial adviser James Amburn, a 56-year-old German-American, said. “Then they bound me with masking tape until I looked like a mummy. I thought I was a dead man.”
What had happened was that a couple of 'well-to-do pensioners who lost their savings in the credit crunch staged an arthritic revenge attack and held their terrified financial adviser to ransom.'
The man had tried to escape:
"He scaled the wall and ran though the rain in his underpants calling for help.
"The pensioners pursued him in their car, shouting: “Stop that man! He’s a burglar!” Two locals pinned him to the pavement and he was taken back to the cellar, where he claims he received another beating."
You can read more of this at Times Online.
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