A Wee Bit O' Perspective

Let me just start out by saying that I would climb over my grandmother to watch Michael Jackson dance. And that I've been known to bust a move to "Thriller" while wielding a dust cloth in the privacy of my own home. And I do believe Michael Jackson's title "King of Pop" is well deserved.
But for the love of all that is right and logical in this world can we pleeeeese stop the madness now??!!!?
Is his death unfortunate? Yes.
Was it unexpected? Yes.
Did he have more great music to share with the world? Yes.
But Michael Jackson was not Gandhi or the Pope. He was not Tom Dooley or John Kennedy or Jonas Salk. He wasn't even John Lennon.
Michael Jackson was a deeply troubled (some would even say disturbed) young man whose private life contained stories as dark as the sequins on his glove were bright.
There was the obsessive surgeries which outwardly displayed his inner turmoil and personal demons.
There were the persistent allegations of child molestation.
There was the occasionally bizarre behavior, like dangling his baby over a balcony railing.
Michael Jackson absolutely changed the world of pop music, but he was also deeply flawed. In other words, he was human.
Human.
Not a god.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have lost our minds. Every TV and radio station blares endless Michael Jackson stories as though there's not another thing going on in the world that's worthy of attention. No children starving in the Sudan or Pakistan or Appalachia. No soldiers dying in Afghanistan or Iraq. No Taliban plotting new ways to defeat us in the Middle East. No 20 year old veterans struggling to heal in overcrowded, underfunded stateside VA hospitals. No Kim Jong Il threatening to lauch missiles toward Hawaii on the Fourth of July. No inner city children home for the summer who will go hungry because the school lunch was their only meal of the day. No families struggling under the pressure of a collapsing economy, trying to keep a roof over their heads and shoes on their kids. No college graduates eager to take whatever jobs they can find because they have to start paying off their exorbitant student loans. No senior citizens trying to balance prescription costs against shrinking fixed incomes who will have to do without Meals on Wheels.
Apparently, all the homeless have been housed, all the ailing have been healed and all the abused, forgotten, suffering souls in American have been saved because last week, the US House of Representatives found Michael Jackson's death to be so earth shattering that they held a moment of silence.
A moment of silence.
Not for all the soldiers who die heroically by doing things like throwing themselves on IEDs to save their platoons. Not for all the selfless firemen or policemen who died in the line of duty. Not even for the generous humanitarians who spend their lives trying to better the lives of others.
Sigh.
Move over, Elvis. I have a feeling we ain't seen nothing yet.