Bureaucrats and the King of Pop

What’s remarkable about Michael Jackson is every time we think, “This story could not get any weirder.” Then it does. Then there’s a new twist – one even more bizarre than the last twist.

Take his 2005 trial for molesting a boy: he treated it like a joke. And well, Jay Leno was testifying. It kind of was.

Right after Jackson’s death many could surmise his funeral – however they did it – was going to be a circus. It was going to be crazy. That was how Michael Jackson lived and how his life will be remembered: as a spectacle. Right? It turns out his funeral, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, was, by no intentional planning, right in the middle of an actual circus. The Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus was scheduled to be at the arena that week. The morning of the unavoidable mass-tele-web-cast of the Michael Jackson Funeral was supposed to be a normal elephant-in-the-room parade. Instead it was the Jackson family men clad in uniform sequined gloves carrying a gold-plated casket worth more than a low-end MINI Cooper.

But the twists continue…

The LA Coroner released the toxicology report for the pop icon Monday. Michael Jackson died of a physician administered overdose of Propofol.

Michael Jackson rolled as if he was a billionaire.  He was no stranger to medical procedures or to doctors. He employed private doctors. Several. Financially he was way beyond having to wrestle with insurance companies to cover procedures.

But he died, it was released to the press this week, from what for all intents and purposes was a – wait for it – “death panel.” Yes, a group of people whose financial motives trumped caring for the health of the patient is what killed the King of Pop.

So right in the middle of this high-pitched banshee on Red Bull “discussion” about whether the government wants to keep Sarah Palin alive but kill her Down Syndrome baby and your granny by means of a conspiracy to save money, the most famous man in the world, with resources beyond most of our comprehension, healthy and middle-aged was killed by doctor care. Private doctor care.

Of course, just to be clear, Newt Gingrich doesn’t want a government bureaucrat to be between you and Dr. Conrad Murray.

So here’s yet another twist in this whirlwind of weird: a government bureaucrat being between Michael Jackson and his doctor could have saved his life.