Exegesis
It is a medically proven fact that Rex Murphy is the worst columnist in the world. Still, every now and again he manages to surprise even the most cynical of readers with his ability to plumb the very deepest depths of inanity, fathomless distances beyond even a Margaret Wente column about the time she got boned in a canoe. To wit.
A few illustrative quotations from the begininning of the column, to set the scene:
"The American media went the full Niagara with the news of Michael Jackson's passing."
"Over at Fox News, another anchor was playing clips of the singer and running repetitive interviews with people who didn't know much or anything more than that he had died."
"There is something Pavlovian about the modern mass media when they deal with any of the various extreme moments of a hyper-celebrity's life. The bell rings and report - at length - they must."
These quotations assure us that, before the end of the article, Rex Murphy will have a)discussed Michael Jackson's death b)without discussing any attendant facts other than the blunt fact of the death and c)will do so for no good reason other than because a celebrity has died.
We know this because the only column Rex Murphy has ever written is the one about a media-frenzy surrounding a celebrity, from which he extrapolates some non-moral about the vacuity of American politics. All his editors do is substitute in different names, depending on the news cycle. For all his fancy vocabulary and high-falutin' anti-populist book larnin', Murphy still does not have enough of a sense of irony to realize that he is the problem. Every time a celebrity does something stupid, he must, absolutely MUST! tell us all how silly it is to pay so much attention to celebrities. Time spent reading about celebrities might be better spent reading the classics, after all. Never mind that reading a Rex Murphy column invariably involves reading about celebrities...
Particularly rich is this bit at the end: "But Mr. Obama may usefully contemplate that celebrity has its furies. To the degree that Michael Jackson was inflated to the outer orbits of stardom by the machinery of celebrity, he was also savaged and tormented by the same machinery. (He made his own contribution to those torments, but that's for another day.) About the celebrity machine, Mr. Obama should mark this: It is powered only by the need to feed itself. And it will be equally content and very likely more gleeful, should his fortunes turn, in excoriating what and whom it once exalted."
Aside from his neat elision of the degree to which Michael Jackson's "torments" were self-caused (if you had a ranch called Neverland where you molested 13 year old boys you'd be infamous too, even if you never had a top 10 single), there is his dispassionate tone as he dispenses advice to the president. These guys are vicious, I tellsya! Love to see a celebrity fail! Take it frome me! Of course, no one loves a celebrity-centred feeding frenzy more than Rex; the fact that he is telling Obama to beware the fate of Michael Jackson before Obama's secret boy-love ranch has been discovered belies his true feelings. He is waiting, just waiting for a slip-up, thesaurus and Bartlett's in hand, so that he can warn us all over again that we were suckers to have ever paid so much attention to someone who was only famous because people as shallow as Rex Murphy kept talking about him.
A few illustrative quotations from the begininning of the column, to set the scene:
"The American media went the full Niagara with the news of Michael Jackson's passing."
"Over at Fox News, another anchor was playing clips of the singer and running repetitive interviews with people who didn't know much or anything more than that he had died."
"There is something Pavlovian about the modern mass media when they deal with any of the various extreme moments of a hyper-celebrity's life. The bell rings and report - at length - they must."
These quotations assure us that, before the end of the article, Rex Murphy will have a)discussed Michael Jackson's death b)without discussing any attendant facts other than the blunt fact of the death and c)will do so for no good reason other than because a celebrity has died.
We know this because the only column Rex Murphy has ever written is the one about a media-frenzy surrounding a celebrity, from which he extrapolates some non-moral about the vacuity of American politics. All his editors do is substitute in different names, depending on the news cycle. For all his fancy vocabulary and high-falutin' anti-populist book larnin', Murphy still does not have enough of a sense of irony to realize that he is the problem. Every time a celebrity does something stupid, he must, absolutely MUST! tell us all how silly it is to pay so much attention to celebrities. Time spent reading about celebrities might be better spent reading the classics, after all. Never mind that reading a Rex Murphy column invariably involves reading about celebrities...
Particularly rich is this bit at the end: "But Mr. Obama may usefully contemplate that celebrity has its furies. To the degree that Michael Jackson was inflated to the outer orbits of stardom by the machinery of celebrity, he was also savaged and tormented by the same machinery. (He made his own contribution to those torments, but that's for another day.) About the celebrity machine, Mr. Obama should mark this: It is powered only by the need to feed itself. And it will be equally content and very likely more gleeful, should his fortunes turn, in excoriating what and whom it once exalted."
Aside from his neat elision of the degree to which Michael Jackson's "torments" were self-caused (if you had a ranch called Neverland where you molested 13 year old boys you'd be infamous too, even if you never had a top 10 single), there is his dispassionate tone as he dispenses advice to the president. These guys are vicious, I tellsya! Love to see a celebrity fail! Take it frome me! Of course, no one loves a celebrity-centred feeding frenzy more than Rex; the fact that he is telling Obama to beware the fate of Michael Jackson before Obama's secret boy-love ranch has been discovered belies his true feelings. He is waiting, just waiting for a slip-up, thesaurus and Bartlett's in hand, so that he can warn us all over again that we were suckers to have ever paid so much attention to someone who was only famous because people as shallow as Rex Murphy kept talking about him.