Ours is a society obsessed with celebrity. And nothing could have made that more clear than the wall-to-wall coverage accorded the death of pop star Michael Jackson.
All the major networks felt compelled to provide live coverage of Tuesday's funeral at Los Angeles' Staples Center. Now Americans wait breathlessly to learn the exact cause of Jackson's death; who, if anyone, will be held responsible; and the fate of Jackson's children and estate.
That's just the way things are in this TMZ age. (This just in from the popular Web site: "A helicopter landed at Neverland Ranch just a short while ago — and another just hovered — but Michael Jackson's body wasn't in either of them.")
Jackson was a figure of undeniable talent who had a huge impact on popular culture both here and abroad. Nevertheless, it's important to keep his death in perspective.
Since Jackson's death on June 25, more than a dozen U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.
Army Lt. Brian Bradshaw, 24, died the same day as Jackson, of injuries received when an improvised explosive device went off close to his vehicle.
"Where was the coverage of my nephew or the other soldiers who died that week?" Bradshaw's aunt, Martha Gillis, wondered in a recent letter to The Washington Post.
According to the Virginia-based Media Research Center, the deaths of seven U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan on Monday received a mere fraction of the coverage accorded Jackson that day.
The disparity was inevitable given Jackson's worldwide celebrity. Still, there's much food for thought in Gillis' lament regarding her nephew: "He was a search-and-rescue volunteer, an altar boy, a camp counselor," she wrote. "What more than that did Michael Jackson do or represent that earned him memorial 'shrines,' while this soldier's death goes unheralded?"
Bradshaw, son of a retired National Guard helicopter pilot and Army nurse, was buried Monday following a quiet funeral at St. John Bosco Church in Lakewood, Wash.
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