Let’s Have a TV Strike Today

I’m leading the way. It’s a pretty sad commentary on western society when the biggest news story of the week is the death of a celebrity. UI’m talking about the Michael Jackson coverage, of course. Tom Engelhardt had more to say about this and said it more eloquently in his latest Tom Dispatch.

One thing that is really sad in all this is that several other, more worthy (IMHO) celebrities died in the same time period and those deaths were totally swamped by the Jackson tsunami. Therefore, here is a brief list of some that I noticed:

• Farrah Fawcet
• Karl Maldin
• Billy Mays
• The manager of the Beatles and The Rolling Stones. I don’t know his name. CNN didn’t even bother to put it on the ticker item at the bottom of the screen.

Probably the death of Billy Mays will have the greatest actual effect on our realities, because he was always in our faces pitching some miracle product. And yes, Hercules hooks do work just as well as Billy promised. We saw Billy every day and I’m certainly going to miss him more than Jacko.

Jackson may have been a great musician and certainly had a large effect on the entertainment industry in his day. That day was a long time ago, though. His main occupations for the last ten years have been spending money and going to court. I think its really amusing that the same news services that flayed him during his court cases are now lionizing him as though he were the second coming.

Personally, I’m just glad I have lots of episodes of Dog Whisperer and a bunch movies saved on my PVR to satisfy my entertainment jones. Strike, I say. Strike now.

Posted by: swampy | 07-08-2009 | 02:07 AM
Posted in: Daily Rant | Comments