I am the worst, making a 'sun tea' joke in a blog post about Michael Jackson's tragic death. But that episode of '30 Rock' was pretty funny.

Reflecting on Dr. Conrad Murray’s involuntary manslaughter charge on Monday afternoon, I argued that it was pretty clear that the bad doctor was nothing more than a fall guy in the death of the king of pop. And now Joe Jackson and his daughter LaToya are saying the same thing:

“To me, he’s just a fall guy” Jackson said. “There’s other people, I think, involved with this whole thing. But I think that he’s interrogated — he would come clean and tell everything he knows.”

[...]

La Toya Jackson later issued a statement through a publicist.

“Michael was murdered and although he died at the hands of Dr. Conrad Murray, I believe Dr. Murray was a part of a much larger plan,” her statement said. “There are other individuals involved and I will not rest and I will continue to fight until all of the proper individuals are brought forth and justice is served.”

via Joe Jackson: Dr. Murray ‘a fall guy’ in Michael’s death – CNN.com.

Man….when you’re starting to sound like the craziest living members of the Jackson family, maybe it’s time to take a break. Of course, I won’t go as far as to suggest that there was a ‘plan’ to kill MJ or that Dr. Murray is in need of ‘interrogation.’ But I have to admit that I’m feeling a little too close to Joe Jackson for comfort.

Still, the more you read, the more you see how much drugs like propofol and oxygen tanks had become normal things in Jacko’s life. The King of Pop had a lot of problems and a lot of people happy to tell him that his troubled life was normal. continue »

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

In the spring of 2007, I got to spend a chunk of a Washington, DC morning in a press question and answer session with Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who passed away today at the age of 77. I always liked the Congressman and members of his staff, and he gave an impressive performance that day, cogently switching back and forth between the details of the fight over funding for the Iraq War and the mind-numbing boredom of various defense appropriations issues. The assembled DC press corps that morning had its attentions split between the hardware of war machinery and the human tolls of war itself.

That was kind of Murtha in a nutshell – a man who could talk defense appropriations as clearly as he could talk about the personal cost of the national defense.

For the appropriations part of it, you can say what you want about all the pork he sent back home, and the ethical cloud it left hanging over him. But in a Congress with representatives who serve districts that elect and reward with re-election men and women who make their homes better places, it’s hard to argue with the results that the Congressman achieved – look at the number of things in the Johnstown area with the Murtha name attached to them. However right-leaning his district was (they voted McCain in 2008!), they kept sending him back to Congress, by comfortable margins.

And this whole point about the right-leaning tendencies of his district is an important one when you consider what really stands as the legacy of his final years on the national stage. Murtha probably single-handedly changed the discussion about the Iraq War in 2005.

It felt like Murtha was the one who really put some iron in the spine of the anti-Iraq War movement among Democrats in Congress. As an honored Marine, Rep. Murtha was able to speak proudly and fairly about why the American mission in Iraq had to change, and without charges that he was a coward (although there were some who tried). Until he helped galvanize the anti-war feelings that had bubbled up from the left into something that a broader swath of Americans could get behind, the Bush administration was showing every sign of letting inertia run its course, all while tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians were being slaughtered by a worsening civil war among the country’s endless assortment of factions.

The good guys rarely win in America, certainly in any outright fashion. We are not yet out of Iraq. American men and women still die there, and the political situation remains fractious. But Murtha made it possible to change the discussion from “we have to beat the terrorists at all costs” to “a moment is coming when America must leave.” And I hope that more than airports and other pork, Murtha will be remembered for that accomplishment in the annals of America’s congressional history.

Image via Wikipedia

The AP reports that Conrad Murray has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the June 2009 death of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. Faster than you can say ‘propofol,’ the drug that the Houston cardiologist used on Jackson to help him sleep, and which killed him, he has pleaded not guilty.

I can’t blame Dr. Murray for not wanting to take a deal and plead out. After all, it’s 4 years at most if he is convicted of the crime that brands him with neither malice, nor intent to kill Jackson; perhaps it will  be less than that. And if he’s found not guilty, it will be none at all.

Murray in a sense seems to me like a fall guy. Jackson clearly lived a very difficult life, with a range of unhealthy activities and behaviors reinforced by his sycophantic entourage. No one would see Jackson’s scary jack-o-lantern pumpkin nose without knowing that this was a superstar who had burned a bit too brightly. Murray was brought onto the scene in a sense to protect Jackson and his many medical problems from scrutiny. And let’s face it: the farther outside established medical systems and procedures you go, the more likely it is that your medical provider will push the envelope and do things that aren’t wise to care for you, driven by a sense that he has to perform to expectations not only driven by his patient, but also by whoever is handling the affairs of his patient.

To me, this makes Murray seem a bit like The Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear. He appears at the side of this great man at a strange moment when his greatness is undermined beyond his knowledge by all the other characters playing in the background of his life. The Fool in some ways gave King Lear crappy advice and a false sense of security; but Lear was a crappy king, surrounded by crappier children and schemers eager to undo all he had built. Murray may have made some poor medical decisions, but how poor were Jackson’s life decisions, and how much worse was the counsel and decision-making Jackson was getting from the people who surrounded him?

Ultimately, it’s more difficult to charge Jackson’s enablers than it is to charge Dr. Murray for the very real role he played in Jacko’s end. And that’s why prosecutors have focused on the doctor to achieve justice, Hollywood-style.

If Murray spends four or less years in jail, he’s going to be OK. Sure, he may never practice medicine again, but the man will lead a very comfortable life subsequently, given the number of people who will be eager to hear, and pay for, the story of the man who was with the King of Pop in his final moments. The question now is what fingers he’ll point at trial in his defense. There are likely to be a lot of them.

More useful details from the LA Times.

WHO DAT!

Happy Super Bowl-mas to all and sundry!

My roasted habanero-pineapple salsa is chilling in the fridge and I’ve got a six-pack of Wolaver’s coffee porter alongside it. Shortly we will venture off to the subway to head to a friend’s place in my old neighborhood to watch the Super Bowl!

I am rooting for the New Orleans Saints. If the ‘Aints can win the Super Bowl, the Chicago Cubs can win a World Series some day!

And as a Chicago Bears fan, I am statutorily required to root against Peyton Manning and his Indianapolis Colts, especially after they whacked our monsters of the midway in the ‘06 Super Bowl.

As proof that I’m not rooting for the obvious loser, here is Kotaku reporting that with the Electronic Arts Madden NFL video game test, the Saints beat the Colts 35-31. I like those odds! Who needs Vegas!?

But the real treat is Rocketboom’s Molly, who in explaining her “I’m not from around here” view of the Super Bowl, shows more about how the current generation of web-obsessed kids think and exist in this world than anything else I’ve seen in a long time.

Happy Super Bowl viewing everybody!

'All the news that's fit to share...'

Rumors are spreading that Facebook has some grand designs on e-mail and instant messaging in the hopes of knocking Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft off their blocks (see Techcrunch). But I was more interested in Derek Thompson’s blog post at The Atlantic about how Facebook is becoming the real news portal for the world these days. He noted that 3.52% of media site traffic is coming from Facebook, a doubling in the past six months. He then argued that it’s not a surprise:

But the emergence of Facebook as a real driver of news stories tells us something important about how news works. Getting our news from our friends is nothing new. It’s as old as the concept of neighborhood gossip. But if Hitwise analytics are capturing a true trend in media, and the share of Facebook outbound links really doubled in the last six months, it paints the picture of an increasingly nichefied world of news readers. Friends are reading what their friends are reading, who are reading what their friends are reading, and so on. It presages the deterioration of top-down news, and the rise of news-reading groups whose news sources and opinions become a centripetal, self-perpetuated cycle of information — or disinformation.

via Is Facebook, Not Google, the Real Global Newspaper? – The Atlantic Business Channel.

Here’s the thing: while I’m interested in what my friends read on Facebook, I’m not only interested in what my friends read. A lot of them share really cool links, but I know that they can’t account for everything cool that’s going on in the world of the tubes. continue »