SOLO-International Press Release: O'Ranting O'Reilly and Michael-Mania

July 8, 2009

I've earlier observed that Michael Jackson's brand of pop, though I'm not a particular fan of it, is more benign than the various types of "metal" to which I generically refer as "headbanging caterwauling"and which are actually not benign at all. I allowed that Mr. Jackson had great charisma, talent and energy, and that much of the animus towards him is born of envy.

But Mr. Jackson's cause is not well served by the ludicrous hyperbole some of his fans have uttered about him since his untimely death. One of the speakers at today's memorial service called him the greatest entertainer ever. However one defines 'entertainer,' and whatever one's criteria for greatness, such a judgment is bizarre on its face, and Mr. Jackson's fans would better serve their idol's memory by not destroying their credibility repeating it.

Worse than the hyperbole has been the hijacking of the mourning and celebrations by black racists claiming Michael as one of their own, notwithstanding his strenuous and grotesque efforts to make himself white and his undeniable appeal to folk across all racial divides. The prominence at today's service of such grandstanding charlatans as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton trying to portray Mr. Jackson as a Martin Luther King was risible. Their wholly insincere platitudes, uttered on the same platform from which Michael's daughter spoke so genuinely and heartbreakingly, were a jarring note, a dissonant chord, a gargoylery.

Still, the award for the most vile utterance of the day belongs not to the hyperbolists or the racists among Mr. Jackson's fans and friends, but an avowed enemy, Fox's Bill O'Reilly. In his Talking Points Memo today, Mr. O'Reilly condemned Jackson for his "incredible selfishness," citing the fact that Michael "spent hundreds of millions of dollars on himself." Excuse me, Mr. O'Reilly? Why shouldn't he have? Whose money was it? What business was it of yours on whom he spent it? Why is it virtuous to spend money one has earned oneself on others and a vice to spend it on oneself? As it happens, Mr. Jackson did spend hundreds of millions on charity; does he become virtuous in your eyes only when he gives it all away? Where do you suppose, Mr. O'Reilly, your morality differs from that of Hitler, Stalin, Osama, Obama or any of the America-haters whom you affect to despise?

Rather than mindlessly espousing the world-view of the sadistic, repressed nuns of your childhood, Mr. O'Reilly, why not ponder the following, by Ayn Rand ...

The Objectivist ethics proudly advocates and upholds rational selfishness—which means: the values required for man's survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the "aspirations," the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered an industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment. The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.

... and then proceed to emancipate yourself from the sick immorality of self-sacrifice?

In the meantime, Mr. O'Reilly, for your comments about what Michael Jackson did with his own money, you are a pinhead.

Lindsay Perigo

SOLO (Sense of Life Objectivists): SOLOPassion.com

ENDS

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