I often talk to my NYU students about the “I” they create in their essays. Your “writerly I,” I tell them, has to be your very best I. She‘s the one with the clean home, with fresh roses on the counter, with the husband who kisses her “right there” (and here she points to that pale tender spot behind the ear) every morning before he leaves for work. Your “writerly I,” I say, has to be infinitely more interesting than you could ever be. At the very basic level, she shouldn’t go to Weight Watchers, and if she does, she shouldn’t talk about “points” (12 in a King-Sized Snickers!!!).
There are other things she should also keep under wraps–say, letting a baby “cry” while she finishes a sentence; or her habit of sucking on bird feathers and long strands of hair when she was a child; or, uhm, her terrible, crazed love for “The Bachelorette” (Can you BELIEVE Jillian let Jake go?). But sometimes our I’s get the better of us, and we end up writing the whole sentence, or with a mouthful of feathers, or worse, watching the entire episode of “The Bachelorette,” even as the train comes to a halt and lets poor Robby-the-Bartender out in the middle of the Canadian wilderness.
But this isn’t about “The Bachelorette,” it’s about the news, and everywhere this week, there’s news. We’ve got Jon & Kate & their 8, and even though I have no idea who they are, I find myself clicking on the link when it says “Jon ‘hurt’ by Kate’s remarks about ‘activities.’” If that isn’t bad enough, there’s South Carolina governor Mark Sanford who told his staff he was “going to hike the Appalachian trail,” but ended up flying to Argentina to see his mistress. (Perhaps a good move for a “writerly I” but a very bad move for a married governor.)
Everywhere we look: train wrecks. And as badly as we might want to look away, we’re still staring. The week began with the commuter rail crash in Washington D.C., and then it kept crashing and crashing, and suddenly, not only were Jon & Kate calling it quits, but Ed McMahon was dead (and right after that horrible TV commercial about the gold!), and then Farrah–who, as a girl, I dreamed I may someday become–was dead too.
Now this: Michael Jackson, King of Pop, dead. Legend, train wreck, legendary train wreck. This is the man who turned his “I” into just about the freakiest (though oddly sweet) “I” the world has ever seen–he’s PYT; he’s DOA; he’s gone.
So…it’s one of those weeks when I’m not quite sure what to make of the world, not quite sure how to avert my eyes. Perhaps, my husband will come home–with fistfuls of roses–and kiss me, just there, where my rubberneck meets my ear. Until then, it’s all just Human Nature, and I‘m just a Tabloid Junkie.
It was nice to see the old poster of Farrah. She was pretty and harmless, but she just could not choose a good man to live her life with, which ultimately culminated in one useless son. Michael Jackson, on the other hand, was not so harmless as several young boys can attest. He was the poster boy for the saddest group of humans on the planet: the entertainment industry. His lifestyle and depravity far overshadow any “genius”, as the media is quick to throw out, people may have thought he had. He certainly was never the King, but then again The King was no great shakes either in his departure from the world. Tabloids or main stream media; how can you tell them apart?
I’ve never understood why anyone even remotely gives a damn about these people’s lives.
Farrah’s and Michael’s role in our lives was to entertain us and I could understand some sorrow if we had, perhaps, thought that we’d now be missing out on something; moments to laugh, or dance, or be moved by some dramatic moments on the silver screen. But they were both way, way, way past their primes. We already had the best they had to offer. Are we *really* going to miss them?
Another thing I don’t understand: the shock over Jackson’s death. “But he was only 50! Can you believe it!” Color me unsurprised that a mentally unstable drug-addled freakshow passed at the tender age of 50. If he was your neighbor you’d say to yourself “I can’t believe that guy’s still alive!” every time you saw him.
And with that, Happy Friday!
Mike,
Well written and right on point!!!!!!!!!
I can’t help feeling that we’ve let MJ down. Yes, I mean you DrSooner and you Mike, and yes, I mean me. That’s right, I take full responsibility for MJ’s freakness. After all, isn’t that we want? Oh, how we love to hate freaks, how we love to hate celebs past their “prime,” just like we love tid bits in the news of freakish diseases and three-nippled women and people who dress up as clowns and stuffed animals and horsies to get off. Just like we love to hate poor people and fat people and anyone who says or does anything in public that we might do, on a bad day, but thank god we didn’t because then it would be us there, loved and stoned and stoned and loved again after we’re gone. How can someone who grows up under our fickle attention not be messed up? I’m sorry MJ, that I laughed at your plastic face. I’m sorry Farrah, that I felt better than you, for just a moment, because I haven’t yet “aged” as you had to. I’m sorry, infomercial guy, that I thought you irrelevant, even as I wrote down the number of almost everything you tried to sell me. I’d like to say I won’t do it again, but I’m only human.