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By this point, mentioning that Michael Jackson is dead would be a waste of keystrokes. Everyone in the world knows it. Everyone saw the funeral. Everyone saw his daughter Paris' tearful remarks. His death, much like his musical career, was so completely transcendent that it trumped everything else in the world's collective conscience. Heck, his death even got MTV to start playing music videos again.
So then why, more than a week after the fact, is it still worth mentioning? Well it wouldn't be, if the residents of the city of Los Angeles weren't about to front the bill for his funeral.
That's right, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa offered to pay the $1.4 million used on police, traffic control and other services from the coffers of the city treasury. Villraigosa was quoted as stating that the city provides "fire and police protection, period."
I can understand that Jackson was a public figure whose music was widely loved. And yes, I understand that 17,000 people attended the pop star's memorial service. But he was a celebrity, not the president. And last time I checked, celebrities and their families typically footed their own bill.
It has been amazing to see how quickly Jackson has gone from a reviled shell of a man in life to deified and exalted upon his death. It's as if the public's opinion of the man were the pendulum of a grandfather clock with one end being a monster not to let children near and the other being a infallible god. In either case, people seem to forget that he is human.
And it's not as if Jackson is the only celebrity to get such treatment. All celebrities are treated to a standard that is simply inhuman, especially in remembrance. When Charlton Heston died in 2008, everyone from President George W. Bush on downward lauded him as a man of great talent, principle and big heartedness. No one spoke about how he consciously held an NRA rally in Columbine, Co. only months after the deadly Columbine High School shooting in 1999.
We are so starstruck that mayors aren't even flinching about the prospect of paying for a man's funeral even when their city is $530 million in the hole, just because he is famous. What about the families who spiral into debt because of the loss of a loved one? Or what about the hundreds who die every day because of gang violence? I seriously doubt that the city of L.A. has paid for any of their police escorts.
I'm not trying to cheapen Michael Jackson's musical career. The man was a musical genius and no one will ever be able to replicate his success. But instead of deifying him as the King of Pop or demonizing him as Jack-o the Wack-o, we need to remember him just as he is - a human being, just like you and me. And as a normal human being, he needs to pay for his own funeral, no matter how extravagant.
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