I didn’t like his music, his dance, his flashing gloves, his jock strap over his pants, nor his pedophile lifestyle.

I didn’t care for Michael Jackson as a person or an entertainer.  I didn’t find him to be a ‘genius’ as many have claimed, but I am truly sad for the death of any person and the profound loss that occurs for the family.   But enough of this outrageous media hype for this individual, who was a cute kid, and part of the Jackson Five who turned into a white disfigured face of ongoing child-like behavior, who blacks uttered through racist comments, that they shared this star of their own with whites, while he was trying to be something other than black.

I tried not to watch him on TV as much as he was thrust upon me, and I would never pay to see him.  He didn’t fit my style of music or my lifestyle of what a person should be.

Yet he made an impact upon the world the likes of which might be equated to Elvis Presley.  I didn’t care much more for him either at the time, for many of the same reasons, although his music is much more palatable.

They both have seemed to go down the same path, a lifestyle of drugs fame and excess, dying at a young age.

We in America seem to idolize the celebrity, especially those that gain fame quickly, die young and as Elton John put it  – ‘Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.’

It is celebrity that grabs Americans and then when the celebrity dies at an early age, emotion sets in and and idols are created, the likes of which we have seen in James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King.

Unfortunately we are a country that celebrates celebrities.

I visited Expo 70 in Canada on  a business meeting and couldn’t have been more impressed with the contrast of the Russian Pavilion compared to the United States Pavilion.  We featured Hollywood and Elvis Presley and they featured their Military might.

Interestingly enough the Check Pavilion, which was outstanding, featured culture.

Well where do we all net out on this, I’ve had enough of the media hype on Jackson – but we are a nation of celebrity worship.

My fear is that we have a President that portrays himself as a celebrity, recognizing the Hollywood game; appears on TV as though he was still campaigning, delivers rhetoric for his policies that people are buying, and that we the people, are not putting the value where it should be – on Democracy, smaller government, capitalism as we once knew it,  and  fighting off socialism and facism.

Celebrity does not have a place in the White House with canned rhetoric, prepared by a speech writer and read off a teleprompter by a charasmatic President – we need substance, leadership and not pandering public relations.