No Luck in My Efforts at a Proper Eulogy.

The words just haven't been there. What with the sad, exploitative display everyone's made of Michael Jackson's childhood career, his polished-like-a-new-penny, reconstructed family life, his early childhood history, and, in the end, even his own, innocent children, paraded in their grief and confusion across the stage at the Staple Center in what I found to be the most horrifying way, it's been hard to hear my own self think above the din of revisionist history. Even in death, people seem unable to let this guy be who he actually was.

Fortunately, former A&R exec John Niven went and wrote it for me, and beautifully, in this final, no-holds-barred stroll down the Memory Lane that actually was Michael Jackson. The article was originally published in The Independence, on Independence Day.

I couldn't have said it better myself. R.I.P., Michael. Now, can we move on to another topic of conversation and never discuss this tragic, dangerous, damaged and damaging man again, please?

Thank you.

~C~

Would That Quitting Would Be Political Suicide

I'd like to think that Sarah Palin, after her very public "turn-tail-and-run" expedition last Friday, would henceforth be about as politically relevant as H. Ross Perot*. Unfortunately, I have very little faith in conservative America's ability to remember past last week. Re-electing George W. Bush in 2004 solidified my theory that the average Republican has the memory span of a Mayfly.

Also, because of the sheer lack of depth in their political dugout, the Republicans lack the star power to replace her. This was my secret fear. It was the nagging little voice that whispered somewhere behind my left mastoid region as I watched liberals and conservatives alike say that Palin was done in politics forever.

"Yeah," I told myself. "She's so over."

As I'm often fond of saying, "It's the little lies we tell ourselves that are the most tragic."

Roger Simon at Politico confirmed my silent, unspoken fears with this opinion piece on why Palin can't be through in Republican politics. Until there's someone to eclipse her epic (though inane) status, she remains the only "A-lister" they have. Not that I wouldn't like to see her go up against Barack Obama in 2012. His numbers, though dipping due to the slogging economy, are still fairly high, and people continue to express faith in his ability to eventually turn things around. If anyone is upset with the Obama Administration, in fact, it's us, the liberals, who've watched Rahm Emanuel water down every piece of legislation to pander to MOR and Conservo-Dems in order to avoid being killed in Congress. (I say, let Democratic senators vote down health care legislation that doesn't include a public option. Speaking of career death knells....) And I guarantee you, no matter how pissed off Dems are with this current administration, they ain't votin' for Sarah Palin. Ever.

But that's hardly fair to the roughly forty-something percent of the population that still identify themselves as Republican. Shouldn't the party be working hard to find their own personal Obama, rather trying to pump some kind of life into Palin, a professional victim, or Newt Gingrich, a washed-up windbag?

So, no, dear ones. For the moment, our little Sarah will go on crying in her beer because someone's been mean to her in order to appear to be the little princess in the castle who needs to be rescued. I'm just hoping for the day when someone can come along and pull up the drawbridge and board up the windows once and for all.

~C~

So, Just to Clarify, Soon-to-be-Ex-Governor Palin...

You are failing to complete a designated term in office which you actively sought, campaigned for, convinced backers and fundraisers to help you finance, won, and have been supposedly occupying, so that you can "campaign for other candidates"? That's what you apparently told Nick Ayers of the Republican Governors Association.

According to Ayers, you want to expand your role in the Republican Party. So you figured the best way to do that was to quit doing the job you convinced voters to elect you to, leaving them kind of in the lurch. Good thinking, sister. Quitting midstream is usually the most effective way to show people you're a hard-working and innovative leader.

Ma'am, either you are one shallow, parsimonious paper tiger, or you're a liar. I guess we'll find out which in the next few days. But let me tell you this: if you aren't a liar, and the Republican Party chooses you as the leading voice of their party, it deserves every bad thing that happens to it. Much like your checkered academic career, your checkered pre-gubernatorial employment history and your checkered resume with regard to telling any form of the truth, this move is just another side-step in the career of someone who just can't be bothered to finish what she starts. If ever there were a poster girl for failing upward, you have proven to be that.

Until now. I hope and pray that this moment will be your political Waterloo, and you will stay out of the public eye forever, turning into the pop culture joke you deserve to be, like Anna Nichol Smith and that Shamwow pitch guy who beat up the hooker. Please... on behalf of all of us... do not let the screen door handle hit you on your way out.

~C~

What's a Master's Degree Worth?

The New York Times, in it's Room for Debate section, focuses on how much a master's degree is worth to prospective job-seekers in today's market. Based on the cost of a post-graduate degree and the time expended acquiring it, not surprisingly, the verdict isn't good. Like everything else in today's economy, a master's degree has lost a bit of it's sheen in terms of salary boost and hiring benefit.

I'm not worried. It's an argument I've heard before. People incur heinous amounts of student loan debt (yours truly included) to get a master's, then find it wasn't the ticket to wealth and success they expected. To which I have only one thing to say.

Boo-fucking-hoo for you.

If you're going to grad school solely to earn the big bucks, you deserve to be left in the cold. Let me explain to you the purpose of education -- all education, lower, higher and otherwise. Education isn't so that you can have something calligraphied and pretty to hang on your wall. Education isn't something you can write down on a resume so that the guy in the $1200 suit will be impressed with you. Education isn't so that you can say that you did something smart once.

Education is supposed to change you. It's supposed to open your mind and broaden your spirit and show you the possibilities of the world. It's designed to take you some place you might never have thought to go, to push you and goad you and entice you to be better and grander than you ever hoped you could be. If you're doing it properly, you're not picking a grad school simply because you want a set of letters after your name. Granted, the letters are pretty bitchin'. I have checks that have my full legal name, followed by a stately (and expensively obtained) "M.F.A." Because I earned it. But I didn't earn the degree just to have it. I spent two years, writing, rewriting, reading, re-reading, workshopping and listening to other learned people speak on the topics I was trying to learn. I wanted to be a better writer. If I managed a teaching gig out of it, fine. If I didn't, if I never used that degree to get a job ever, those two years will never leave me.

As I apply for a spot in Pacifica's MA/PhD program in Mythology,, I would never think of spending the money on that degree simply so I could put a "Dr." in front of my name. When it all seems too daunting, too overwhelming, too difficult, I go back and look at the course curriculum, and I realize that's where I'm supposed to be. Not because of what having a PhD will earn me financially. But because of how the topics touch me spiritually, how the subject matters makes my imagination explode and sparkle, like a fireworks display.

The object of education is not to simply get education. It is to learn how to learn and go on learning until the end of your life. If you've toiled to get a master's that's proving worthless in the area of garnering employment, then you've wasted your time, the professors' time and the time of every student who matriculated with you. You've wasted your money and the government's money. You should have just learned how to weld instead.

In the words of the teen whore in Risky Business, "Go read a book, Joel. Go learn something."

~C~

Let the Al Franken Decade Begin!

At long last, it is official. We can now begin referring to him as Senator Al Franken. Minnesota's Supreme Court ruled today that Franken was the winner of the November 5th election against Republican incumbent Norm Coleman. Coleman conceded later in the day, saying he will not contest the ruling.

Ya know, when he was on Saturday Night Live all those years ago, talking about the Al Franken Decade, I personally thought he was just kidding around.

Who knew?

~C~