“Those who belittle anybody’s death with jokes, or describing what was wrong with that person in life, are all the evidence he needs to know how far society has irrevocably fallen. Quite a shame, how far we’ve dipped as a people.”
— Brian Hickey
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When celebrities die, people seem to think it’s OK (appropriate, even) to make fun. I’m already seeing it with Michael Jackson, where seemingly every third Twitter and Facebook comment is about his nose or his skin color or his pet monkey.
On this, I cry serious bulls^%t.
Yes, Michael Jackson was an odd character. OK—very odd. But it strikes me as even more odd that, when someone famous dies, people often forget that he/she was an actual (gasp!) human who is (gasp!) actually dead. Their lives are completely over. Ended. Terminated. They no longer exist, and never will again exist. It’s terribly, terribly, terribly sad, and while we can comfort ourselves by saying, “Michael lives on through his music,” it’s not actually true. Michael Jackson does not live on. He is deceased. His heart no longer beats, his blood no longer flows, his mind no longer works.
I don’t find that even remotely funny.
