LOS ANGELES — Enough!
You got two for the price of one if you attended Michael Jackson’s spectacular dog-and-pony show yesterday — a memorial as dignified as a Vegas lounge-lizard act combined with the entertainment value of a carnival freak show.
How soon one forgets, given the opportunity to participate in this mass hysteria. From the accolades, prayers and cries of grief, you’d think you were witnessing the death of a saint, not an accused serial pedophile who hated the skin in which he lived.
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Much of the Western world’s music industry turned out at LA’s Staples Center — hallowed ground on the Dead Celebrities Tour — to bow and scrape at the flower-draped casket of the felled pop ruin.
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They disgraced themselves in the name of a man who died intentionally disfigured, traveled the world with his personal anesthesiologist, owed money to everyone from Bel Air to Bahrain, abandoned a pet chimpanzee when the beast reached puberty, and hadn’t had a hit record in more than 20 years.
Michael Jackson died with enough drugs in his system to fell a small village — indulging a habit that, like everything else about his twisted, wasted life, was overlooked by toadies, enablers and those who profited from access to this amoral walking skeleton.
And I haven’t mentioned the small boys he routinely shared his bed with, young enough to be his children.
Enough!
Mariah Carey got the music rolling, completely blowing the high notes — which is all of them — in Jackson’s early hit, “I’ll Be There.”
She was followed by a non-singing Queen Latifah, who declared Jackson “the biggest star on earth.”
“He let me know that as an African-American, you can travel the world.” Unfortunately, if Jacko burned one more creditor, he would not be welcome in a sewer.
The scrumptious Jennifer Hudson found it necessary to sing “Will You Be There” from the unfortunately titled movie “Free Willy.” Somewhere, Simon Cowell is patting his own back.
Al Sharpton, who’s using Jackson’s death to stage a self-aggrandizing media tour, had the audacity to bring up Jackson’s three children, whose origins remain a mystery.
“What was strange about your daddy?” he roared. “It was strange what he had to deal with!” he answered, suggesting that Jackson’s criminal trial for pedophilia was some sort of plot and Jackson was the victim.
I worry about Brooke Shields. The fair actress drew a memory more than 35 years old, telling how she and the former child star used to play together. Blubbering uncontrollably and apparently unmedicated, she compared him to everything from a “genius” to “The Little Prince.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) revealed a House resolution that she said was to be debated today, declaring Michael Jackson “a musical icon and human legend.” Long Island Rep. Peter King should be enthusiastic.
At the end, Michael’s daughter, Paris Michael Katherine, cried, unveiled, “I just wanted to say I love him so much!” It was too terrible for words. The freak show has casualties.
I’ve had enough of Michael Jackson worship.
Death has not cleansed him.
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