Posted by
EWRoss on Friday, June 26, 2009 8:00:00 AM
Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t understand how people can get so worked up at the death of Michael Jackson. Like many Americans, I liked Jackson’s music, or at least I did until I learned of the allegations that he sexually abused children. I don’t know how true they were, but as I watched Jackson morph into something rather weird over the years, the child molestation acquisitions were just too much. After that I sopped listening to his music.
I was a huge Elvis fan. I grew up loving and singing Elvis’ songs. His death saddened me, but not enough to make me want to make a pilgrimage to Graceland. His drug use disappointed me, but like most Elvis fans I chose to focus on his service in the Army, love of his family, and legendary generosity. To the best of my knowledge he never maliciously hurt anyone except himself.
Farrah Fawcett also died today. She too was an icon, but certainly not as big as Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley. Her death was duly noted in the media; mostly it talked about her brave struggle with cancer and how she died with dignity.
As a retired US Army officer living in the Washington, DC, area, I’ve attended dozens of funerals in Arlington National cemetery for people killed in battle or who died long after their service to America. In every case, no matter how well I knew that person, tears filled my eyes as I listened to bugler play taps. Two hundred years from now, I don’t know what people will know about Jackson. Presley or Fawcett, but some tourist from smallm-town America will walk through Arlington reading the names on the tombstones of the men and women buried there. All he’ll know about them is they the served their country. And that’s all he'll need to know.