Signs and portents of Michael

The media has been in a frenzy for the past few weeks covering all spects of the death of Michael Jackson. I will confess that I was never a big fan of his. I might listen to one of his songs if it came on the radio, but he just wasn't my cup of tea.

With that disclosure, I cannot comprehend the public response to his death - People spending thousands of dollars to fly to LA; hundreds of thousands trying to get a ticket to the Memorial Service in the Staples Center; people queing up for hours to sign a card. His death was a tragedy, but in the way that anyone's sudden and unexpected death is a tragedy. As John Donne wrote, the death of anyone diminishes me.

Thus, I was floored by last night's newscast in SLC. A couple in Stockton California has discovered an epiphany of Michael Jackson in the stump of a cut tree branch. The camera zoomed in on the light and dark image of the stump, and, like every one of these miraculous sightings, it was the very image of Michael Jackson if you believed it was.

There were two things about the story that made it even worse for me. The first was that people in the neighborhood were already making pilgrimages to see the blessed image. Second, one woman was quoted as saying something like, "Michael Jackson meant a lot to the people of Stockton, maybe more even than Jesus did for some of them."

This, I think, is proof positive that the cult of celebrity in America has gone too far. What do you think?