I don't think anyone involved in communications and the arts can escape the presence of Michael Jackson. And I use "presence" in the present tense because it is one that will be with us despite the death of its author.

I know his music and his videos because I have children. My oldest daughter wanted us to name our son Michael Jackson Newquist. I remember hauling my kids to Chicago for a family event and listening to Michael Jackson on the car stereo during most of the drive.

I also was involved in a popular culture class with professors from all of the fine arts leading an analysis of the music video as an art form, and, of course, Michael Jackson dominated the course. He is an astounding creative force whose influence on culture is inestimable.

But that is not why he is such a presence on my mind. A colleague of mine with expertise in photography and lighting and who specialized in musical events worked on Jackson productions a number of times. While he was in the background and by no means close to Michael Jackson, he often talked about what a creative force he was. He recalled how Michael Jackson collaborated with writers to get song lyrics just so, and he recalled that when Jackson thought something would improve a production, no expense and effort would be spared to make it happen. But he also expressed dismay at some of the people who surrounded Jackson. My colleague brought this up many times because it bothered him that so many people gather around a major talent not to support and enjoy its development, but to exploit it and destroy it. He talked about the toxic environment in which Jackson operated and the horrific nature of some of the people who surrounded him.

My colleague's words have come back in full force as I have heard many others remark on Jackson's death using that same term "toxic" to describe the human atmosphere around him.


Michael Jackson was never given a chance to experience boyhood and to be part of the experiments and testing that are a part of it. In adult life, he tried to capture that experience somehow, and it led to charges of child molestation. Although he was found not guilty in a court trial, many people chose to ignore the verdict. In looking at a number of blogs and their comments, I find among the many comments of people who acknowledge Jackson's talent a considerable number who take pleasure in Jackson's problems and humiliations and, apparently, his death. Their words about Jackson are dismissive and more than a little malicious. A growing malignancy in the American character is apparent in our response to Michael Jackson's death.

A poem of Tennyson's, "The Lady of Shalott," speaks of the gathering of the surly village churls who react to the presence of someone of beauty and graceful qualities with crude, ill-bred, and destructive behavior. Those of us who have dealt with people of large talent refer to such treatment as churlishness: the jealousy, resentment, and malicious intentions expressed toward people who seem to have something that others don't and expressed against those who seem to exist on a higher plane.

As a college professor, I think back on the many talented people I have known, and some of those thoughts are not pleasant. They recall some shining talents, but also some of the darkest human tragedies. Among those talented people are stories of suicide, mental anguish, failed relationships, and the struggles to live in a toxic environment.

Michael Jackson was superbly disciplined when it came to creating and performing music. His talent made him a star at the age of five, and all the accounts of his development as a performer verify the professional excellence he brought to his artistry. In other areas of his life, he never had a chance to develop that kind of discipline. Into his adulthood, he was struggling with childhood and adolescence. Genius needs the balance and moderation of a liberal education to allow it to develop without distorting the personality of the genius. Michael Jackson was never given that discipline. Consequently, he was grossly naieve about some of the people around him and what motiviated them.

The personality issues of MIchael Jackson should not be confused with the egotistical displays of some celebrities or would be celebrities. Those of us who have taught and written about talent come to a quick understanding that many of the individuals with humongous egos have the least reason to indulge in such egotism. For them a pretense to talent substitutes for the real tihing. Such was not the case with Michael Jackson.

What was the case was the people who attached to him in order to appropriate some of his fame and fortune, and it was the people whose only response to real talent is the jealousy, resentment, and destructive hatred it inspires in them. Churlishess.

The press fixes on the churlishness and feeds it because it sells newspapers, attracts listeners and viewers, and gives that certain segment of bloggers their orgasmic thrills of defamation that is an essnetial part of churlishness. Entertainment writers who have gone beyond the tabloid gossip have reported that the press accounts had a debilltating effect on Michael Jackson over the years. The press claims it just gives people what they want. The toxic.

The churls are setting the tone of our political discussions and our appraisals of talent. It is hard to find voices with a little class and informed discernment.

As goes Michael Jackson, so goes our culture and our democracy. It is a foolish hope, perhaps, that real talent can prevail.

The real issue with health care reform is beginning to clarify. The Democrats believe that health care is something that should be available to everybody. The Republicans believe you should get health care only if you can afford it. The Democrats seem to labor under under some Christian foolery about feeding the poor and healing the sick and that it is better to serve than to be served. The Republicans have a much more realistic view that the real satisfactions of life are found in how many people you can screw over. This principle is constantly demonstrated in their marital lives and their politics and their defense of the bankers and corporate executives whose personal screw-overs have caused the worst recession since The Depression.

The case for health care reform is that almost 50 million people are not insured. Of those who have policies, the premiums, deductibles, and co-pays are major financial burdens. The monthly premium for some family plans has reached $2,000. While the Republicans raise their hysterical cries about socialized medicine, government-run medicine, and the horrendous costs of a public option, they totally avoid addressing if something should be done about the 50 million uninsured, the burgeoning costs of health care and their effect on family budgets.

Their major argument against a public-option is that insurances companies cannot compete with it. The costs of current plans is exactly why two-thirds of the voters in America would like to see a public option or a single-payer system. Few people who have current plans are happy with them, and they are looking for a more reasonable option.

A physician who works for Microsoft has stated the case. He says that we need to face the reality that healthcare is not affordable for many people. He makes no comment on what that fact portends for the people who can't afford it or even if they should be a considearation. He makes no suggestion as to what should be their fate, but he doesn't need to. If they can't afford health care, they can damned well get sick and die.

Humankind has faced this question concerning the care of those who can't afford to care for themselves before. Hitler and his Nazi regime found a solution. A final solution. Hitler called the indigent, the halt, and lame "useless eaters." He said they contributed nothing to society and consumed its resources. So, he ran them through gas ovens. This final solution was used on the ailing before it was widely adopted as a final solution for the Jews and other minorities in concentration camps.

Zyklon-B, the gas, has undergone extensive tests on humans, has been found to end all ailments and pathologies, and has the added virtue of killing lice. What goes around comes around, and here it comes again. Although gas ovens have not been proposed as yet, neither has any plan by the opponents of reform for offering health care to those who can't afford it. All the arguments against health care reform are the same arguments used in support of gas ovens as a medical option. So, you poor ladies and gentlemen who find that health care is a luxury you can't afford, this way to the gas ovens. You won't suffer and you sure as hell won't ever vote again. And take your liberalism with you.

Oh.

There are examinations of the problems in health care that might be looked at. Even the Democrats and other liberals might take a look at them. And maybe even the media might take its collective head out that great dark place that is the haunt of proctologists and examine a fact or two. The Columbia Journalism Review is running a series on health care in the hopes that reporters and others might inform and elevate the debate on health care. Even bloggers can go there and read some aspects of health care reform that are not covered.

But the Democrats equivocate and quake and the Republicans deny and obstruct. So, this way to the gas ovens, ladies and gentlemen. Care to buy a brick? With your name on it?

Amid the idiotic partisan cacophony of a desperate GOP trying to make up faults by Obama and then castigating him for things he did not do or say, and the junior senator of South Dakota and his would-be propagandists doing the same thing, it is a relief to reflect on a man who just tried to do his job well. The death of Ed McMahon may mark the passing of a type of personality that seems in danger of extinction.

I never met Ed McMahon, but he figured in a strange episode I was somewhat involved in. It happened at just the time I was preparing to move from Illinois to South Dakota. For some years, the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa were struggling to hold a golf tournament. In 1975, Ed McMahon agreed to become the host of the tournament, which was at first called the Ed McMahon Jaycees Quad Cities Open. He bolstered the attendance by bringing in many of his celebrity friends and by being on hand to socialize with the spectators. He was credited with saving a struggling tournament, which is now called the John Deere Classic.

After the 1979 tournament, Ed McMahon gave up his role as host, citing many conflicting commitments with his television career. However, there is a back channel aspect to that decision. I had been one of the principals in a moonlighting organization of writers, artists, and photographers. We specialized in industrial and technical communications. We were all experienced in the news and public information businesses and we found a way to keep our hands in the business and make some extra money, as most of us were professors or news people and could use it. Two of the organization's associates who were golfing addicts were involved in promoting the tournament. They volunteered to do some of the public relations and publicity work. While I was not directly involved, I and other members helped with some routine tasks because our offices were being used to do some of the production work. We had a running conversation going over how McMahon had been enlisted to lend his name and his skills to this tournament.

His efforts attracted an audience that established the tournament and saved it from cancellation. In a community that was undergoing an economic downturn, he brought hope and interest to the tournament and helped encourage some other enterprises. During the 1979 tournament, a strange thing happened. A meeting of our associates in the moonlighting organization was called to provide some advice on an incident. During the tournament, McMahon operated from a hospitality tent where he chatted with people at the tournament, socialized, and generated good will. While he was talking with some people, a woman came up to him and said she wanted him to meet someone. While he tried to finish the conversation he was having with other people, the woman became belligerently impatient and grabbed him by the hand to pull him away. She broke his hand.

That's what the meeting was about. The question was how in the hell to handle the public relations. McMahon had put tremendous effort into making the tournament a success for a community not known for much, and while doing what he did so well, he was mistreated by this woman. What the tournament officials were concerned about was how the incident reflected on the community and its treatment of celebrities.

They were concerned because of an incident that occured up the river in Dubuque, Iowa, two years earlier. While shooting a movie in Dubuque, Sylvester Stallone had set up an event where he would greet and meet the public. During his time in Dubuque, he was mobbed by fans, mostly teen-age girls. A woman wanted his attention to introduce him to some other people, and when she didn't get it, she punched Stallone in the face. Dubuque took a public relations drubbing from the incident. Despite efforts to point out that the incident involved one person, not the community, Dubuque got the reputation of being a rude, inhospitable, and violent town. The golf tournament officials saw that a similar reaction to the breaking of Ed McMahon's hand could color the community and jeopardize the success of the tournament. The meeting of the publicity people produced no real strategies. The only thing to do was to focus on the golf players and the positive aspects of the tournament and minimize reference to Ed McMahon's broken hand. Ed McMahon himself took himself out of the public spotlight and was mostly concerned about getting treatment for his hand and making it back to work on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. No legal actions were pursued that I ever heard.


For the tournament officials, the first night McMahon was back on The Tonight Show was the low point. There sat Ed McMahon with his hand in a cast, and of course Johnny Carson asked him what happened. In very low key, factual terms McMahon related how his hand was broken.

As plans for the 1980 golf tournament got underway, McMahon withdrew as host. He cited too many conflicts with his work schedule as the reason, but my colleagues who had worked at the tournament thought the broken hand played an essential part in the decision. They said that McMahon appeared to lose his enthusiasm for the tournament and; although amiable and gracious, seemed reserved and withdrawn after the incident.

The tournament survived, however, and has become a successful event as the John Deere Classic under the sponsorship of Deere & Co.

And apparently the public relations managers both in Dubuque and the Quad Cities did their jobs well.. If you search the internet, you cannot find mention of either incident. To find the information, you have to go to the newspaper archives.

But for five years, that hand which was broken had been extended in help and good will to the people of the Quad Cities.

A Jesuit priest and adjunct professor who had the office next to mine said it took only one fart in church to destroy a service for hundreds of people. He said this in the context of discussing the complexities of communication and how hard it is to establish and maintain substantial and productive dialogues among human beings. A fart can characterize an entire church service to the exclusion of whatever else was the service's purpose and content. His point was that a few molecules of odious gas can so poison the atmosphere that people lose the sense of purpose and process in what is being communicated to them. This was during the time that the protests against the war in Vietnam dominated campus activities, and it was difficult, if not impossible at times, to keep words and minds on the work at hand.

Another way of describing the problem uses metaphors from the broadcast industry. There was so much "static" that the real point and substance of communication was lost in the noise.

And so it is in the "new media" and what the Internet has brought to blogs, discussion boards, and other "interactive" sites of information and discussion. While the odious emanations may come from a very small minority of people, the new media amplifies them into a major and often controlling emphasis in the mental atmosphere. And it is manifestly evident that one political party has devoted itself to the production and emission of foul gas that is injurious and sometimes deadly to the sensibility. During the W. Bush administration, conservatives liked to rail about "liberal hate." Any criticism of the Bush administration was labeled as hate speech. People more thorough in their reading of news who were capable of exercising some modicum of independent thought could easily see that the claims of weapons of mass destruction were contrived as a reason to go to war on Iraq. Reports coming from weapons inspectors and the foreign media made these claims suspect. Yet those who opposed the war were said to be unpatriotic and traitors to America.

When Dick Cheney went into closed door session with energy company executives to formulate energy policy, some people protested the secrecy and total absence of public information. They were dismissed as Bush haters. Still today those who opposed torture as a tactic that will come back and bite us in the throat are dismissed as people who would sell out their country to a few paltry scruples. There was a hatred of dishonesty, of incompetence, and of a total self-serving greed that has damaged and threatened the U.S. more than any outside enemy. There was a derision of Bush's intellectual abilities and his belligerence. What was termed "Bush bashing" was the routine response to a regime that went to war as a ploy to martial an uncritical spirit of patriotism and to the realization that the public was being duped. Some of us called Bush and his supporters fascist. That is because what they did, said, and professed fit the definition of fascism as it has been established by history. They believed in pre-emptive war, torture, government by the rich, and the systematic defamation of those who might not buy into rule by intimidation.

The regressives, the champions of ignorance and mindless meanness, have filled the air with shouts of fascism, socialism, communism, and all the other names they can think of. And plain old racism keeps erupting in some of the opposition comments. Many in the regressive sector are in a furor over the fact that an "n" is in the White House, and an uppity one at that.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich notes the circumstances of the hate campaign against Obama:
 

What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it’s not change you can believe in.

We don’t know whether the tiny subset of domestic terrorists in this crowd is egged on by political or media demagogues — though we do tend to assume that foreign jihadists respond like Pavlov’s dogs to the words of their most fanatical leaders and polemicists. But well before the latest murderers struck — well before another “antigovernment” Obama hater went on a cop-killing rampage in Pittsburgh in April — there have been indications that this rage could spiral out of control.

This was evident during the campaign, when hotheads greeted Obama’s name with “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” at G.O.P. rallies. At first the McCain-Palin campaign fed the anger with accusations that Obama was “palling around with terrorists.” But later John McCain thought better of it and defended his opponent’s honor to a town-hall participant who vented her fears of the Democrats’ “Arab” candidate. Although two neo-Nazi skinheads were arrested in an assassination plot against Obama two weeks before Election Day, the fever broke after McCain exercised leadership.

He notes how the hate incitements have created the circumstances in which the wingnutjobs have been moved to committing public murders.

But hyperbole from the usual suspects in the entertainment arena of TV and radio is not the whole story. What’s startling is the spillover of this poison into the conservative political establishment. Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan G.O.P. chairman who ran for the party’s national chairmanship this year, seriously suggested in April that Republicans should stop calling Obama a socialist because “it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.” Anuzis pushed “fascism” instead, because “everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.” He didn’t seem to grasp that “fascism” is nonsensical as a description of the Obama administration or that there might be a risk in slurring a president with a word that most find “bad” because it evokes a mass-murderer like Hitler.

The Anuzis “fascism” solution to the Obama problem has caught fire. The president’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and his speech in Cairo have only exacerbated the ugliness. The venomous personal attacks on Sotomayor have little to do with the 3,000-plus cases she’s adjudicated in nearly 17 years on the bench or her thoughts about the judgment of “a wise Latina woman.” She has been tarred as a member of “the Latino KKK” (by the former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo), as well as a racist and a David Duke (by Limbaugh), and portrayed, in a bizarre two-for-one ethnic caricature, as a slant-eyed Asian on the cover of National Review. Uniting all these insults is an aggrieved note of white victimization only a shade less explicit than that in von Brunn’s white supremacist screeds.

The fact that words are expressions of intentions and have consequences has been lost on large segments within the GOP. The results of words can have effects that go far beyond a malodorous detraction in church. They can be the symptom of a deadly malignancy. The smell of rotting morality pervades the environment.

South Dakota War College has recently demonstrated and formally announced that its author, the aptly designated PP, wants to replace Jon Lauck, now a Thune staff member, as the state's major character assassin in the blogopotty. The piddling duel has become the S. D. Republicans' strategy of choice and the verbal squirt gun is their weapon.

While Sibby quotes the mindless malice of Rush Limbaugh incessantly, PP faithfully repeats and reproduces all the petty and absurd personal attacks generated by the GOP bladder boys. When it comes to actually addressing issues, PP often makes Sibson look like an Einstein. Character assassination is the only tool he seems to grasp.

His latest effort is to malign a Flandreau Santee Sioux lawsuit effort by making personal accusations against the law firm and one of its members, Scott Heidepriem, that represent the tribe. The post is an exercise in libelous innuendo. It calls for a state Supreme Court investigation of Heidepriem and the relationship of his firm and his role as state senate minority leader. While such an investigation would involve dealing with petty and baseless innuendos and be a waste of time, we wish Heidepriem would insist that it be carried forward. However much PP may wish to malign the character of Scott Heidepriem, he hasn't reached the point where he can spell his target's name correctly.

But the real issue that is obscured by the PP being squirted on it concerns equality and fairness under the law. Tim Giago, of the new Native Sun News and the Huffington Post (as well as a columnist for McClatchy and the founder of other Indian country newspapers) puts the lawsuit issue in an accurate perspective:
 

Unable to create growth through economic development because of the restrictions placed upon it by the state, the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe brought a lawsuit against the state to change the law that prevented them from increasing the number of slot machines they could have in their casino. For more than 19 years the FSST has had to operate their casino while restricted to only 250 slot machines. The towns and cities around Flandreau have grown rapidly during this time and, ominously, the state of Iowa is in the process of opening a competing casino just across the border from Sioux Falls, a city that is the main source of revenues for the Flandreau casino. And while growth is happening all around them, the Flandreau tribe has been handcuffed and unable to join that growth.

Giago further explains an important aspect of the lawsuit:

Let's take a closer look at this ridiculous premise. First off, the profits from the casinos operated by corporations or individuals in South Dakota go into the private pockets of those individuals or corporations. The profits from the Indian casinos go to economic development, college scholarships, schools, road and building maintenance and improvement, health care, daycare for children while their parents work, law enforcement and tribal courts.

While the blogospher is filled with much self-adulation in its criticisms of the established media, its notes and commentary about blogs is limited to petty and irrelevant matters of personal animosities and taste, rather than the perfidy and falsifications involved in the character assassinations that some bloggers think is the stuff of political discourse.

As we near the 2010 elections, we promise that dishonesty and stupidity will not go unremarked. Some politicians and their henchmen will be held to account for past transgressions as well.

                                                                    Standing Rock Reservation

A few weeks ago, Ft. Campbell, home of the 101st Airborne Division was put on stand down, meaning that all activities were suspended, so that the post could address the epidemic suicide rate it has experienced. During this year, 14 suicides have been reported there. The commanding general exhorted the troops “Don’t take away your tomorrow."

During the same time period, the Standing Rock Reservation in South and North Dakota has experienced 16 suicides. There is no stand down at Standing Rock. The reservation is in a state of perpetual stand down.

Suicide is a continual problem at Standing Rock. In the past, it has received some open attention in the press. This latest epidemic has been suppressed. I am not supposed to say what I have been told because the authorities fear that an open discussion of the suicides will inspire copy cat incidents. However, as some church-related groups have made public pleas for prayers for the people of Standing Rock and have cited the 16 suicides as the reason, I do not think I am constrained by any confidentiality agreements.

Standing Rock has all the problems that are usually associated with poor inner city neighborhoods. A year ago, Standing Rock was one of the reservations to which the Bureau of Indian affairs sent a task force of police officers to augment the tribal and local police. The town of McLaughlin was besieged by gang and drug related crimes. The suicide epidemic is just one of the many problems that beset a demoralized people.

The suicide rate among Native Americans is double that of the general population. But among the native people, the Aberdeen area of the Indian Health Service, as shown in the accompanying chart, has the highest suicide rate in the lower 48 states. The rate is more than 19 deaths by suicide for every 100,000 people. Among the individual reservations, Standing Rock has the highest rate in the Aberdeen region. Most of the suicides are among teenagers.

Many groups and organizations are trying to work on the problems at Standing Rock. One group has established an entrepreneural center, Sitting Bull College has a number of programs that address the economic and social problems, and some church denominations have programs of varying extent and success. Tribal leaders and groups are also working to deal with the constant problems. The harsh fact is that despair has been a prominent feature of the reservation since its inception. When the Sioux bands were forced onto the reservation, under the leadership of Sitting Bull, they tried to adapt to an agricultural way of life. A series of dry years when crops failed emphasized the realization that the land in West River cannot sustain the white man's kind of agriculture. (The whites are coming to that realilzation now.) When Sitting Bull showed interest in the Ghost Dance religion of the 1890s, he was skeptical but saw that it gave his people a glimmer of hope. When the Indian agent and the Army felt that they might lose control of the people to this religious movement, they ordered the arrest of Sitting Bull, which ended in his murder. The reservation has lived under a regime of schemes that don't work and the subsequent hopelessness since that time. The white way is the way of hopelessness.

Whether on a military reservation or an Indian reservation, an epidemic of suicides is the issue of lives that have oppressive presents that bear no hope for the future. When the commander of Ft. Campbell warned his troops not to take away their tomorrows, he seemed to miss the point. People generally commit suicide when they choose not to put up with tomorrows that offer no hope. By giving up their tomorrows, there is nothing to lose and a chance that they can gain some relief from the hopeless present.

Suicide is hard for the survivors to endure. The suicides reject the world we create. And we wonder why. Rather than wonder, we should examine what suicide epidemics tell us. We won't like it, but we just might start to understand what is so terribly wrong.