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The Man in the Mirror
By James Howard Kunstler
on June 29, 2009 6:01 AM

      As America entered the horse latitudes of summer, befogged in a
muffling stillness on deceptively calm seas, we were distracted for a
while by visions of a pale death angel moonwalking across the deck of
collective consciousness.  Eerie parallels resound between the sordid
demise of pop singer Michael Jackson and the fate of the nation.
    Like the United States, Michael Jackson was spectacularly
bankrupt, reportedly in the range of $800-million, which is rather a
lot for an individual. Had he lived on a few more years, he might have
qualified for his own TARP program -- another piece of expensive
dead-weight down in the economy's bilges -- since it is our
established policy now to throw immense sums of so-called "money" at
gigantic failing enterprises (while millions of ordinary citizens wash
overboard, without so much as a life-preserver).  Anyway, Michael
Jackson was on the receiving end of one huge bank loan after another
long after his pattern of profligacy was set and obvious. They threw
money at him for the same reason that the federal government throws
money at entities like CitiBank: the desperate hope that some miracle
will allow debt servicing to resume.  Michael could burn through
$50-million in half a year. It didn't seem to affect his credibility
as a borrower.  When his heart stopped last week, he was living in a
Hollywood mansion that rented for several hundred thousand dollars a
month. You wonder how the landlord cashed those checks.
    Like the USA, Michael Jackson was a has-been. He hadn't recorded
a song worth listening to in over two decades. He had done almost
nothing but spin his wheels, hop around the globe from one place to
another at enormous expense, and make himself available for award
ceremonies to stoke his ego (and give advertisers a reason to promote
some televised award show). He existed strictly on image, an anorectic
figure nourished by moonbeams of attention, famous for saying that he
loved his worshippers when the truth was he merely sucked the life out
of them.  In his last years, he even looked a bit like Nosferatu, the
personification of the un-dead, and his fascination with ghouls was
the basis for his biggest hit way back in the last century.  A zombie
nation deserves a zombie mascot.
     He was a poseur, vamping in weird military outfits as though he
were a five-star general in the Honduran army, or a character from a
melodrama by the reprobate Jean Genet. He once materialized during
halftime at the Superbowl in a shower of sparks, thrilling the
multitudes while grabbing and stroking his sex organs, as though that
was a heroic activity -- and indeed the nation seemed to emulate him
as its culture became dedicated more and more to acting out
masturbation fantasies.  America was a fat man jerking off on the sofa
watching a vampire of no particular sex vogue deliriously on the boob
tube.
      More than once the authorities tried to pin charges of child
molestation on him for suspicious activities at his boy-trap,
Neverland Ranch, with its carnival rides, private zoo, video game
galleries, and inexhaustible supplies of sugary treats. The first time
he settled with the alleged victim's family for $22-million.  They
just walked away with the loot and happily shut up.  The second time,
he moonwalked out of a court-of-law while weeks later jurors
mysteriously went on TV to say, well, they did kind of think
after-the-fact that he really did those things he was accused of, but,
you know.... The defendant himself behaved as though his trial were a
TV celebrity challenge show on another planet, arriving on one
occasion twenty minutes late in pajamas with some lame excuse about a
backache.  He spent the last years of his life wandering a few steps
ahead of his creditors, gulling concert promoters into "comeback"
schemes (with walking-around money up front), and with three
bought-and-paid-for children, obviously not his own, for consolation.
     When he dropped dead last week, the nation's morbidly maudlin
response suggested a cover story for the relief of being rid of him
and all the embarrassment he provoked. One CNN reporter called him a
genius the equal of Mozart.  That's a little like calling Rachel
Maddow the reincarnation of Eleanor Roosevelt.  A nation addicted to
lying to itself tells itself fairy tales instead of facing a pathology
report. Yet, like Michael Jackson, the undertone of horror story still
pulses darkly in the background.  The little boy who grew up to be the
simulation of a girl was really a werewolf.  The nation that defeated
manifest evil in World War Two woke up one day years later to find
itself stripped of its manhood, mentally enslaved to cheap
entertainments, and hostage to its own grandiosity. Maybe in grieving
so exorbitantly over this freak America is grieving for itself. All
the loose talk about "love" from the media and the fans gives off the
odor of self-love.  America is "the man in the mirror," the gigantic,
floundering Narcissus, sailing into the stormy seas of history.