The Best Reality Show EVER!

Outside the Conrad Murray trial, a Murray supporter described the doctor as a saint. A few hours later, someone else told me Michael Jackson was Jesus. While I think it unlikely that either of these enthusiasts had it exactly right, I didn’t tell them that. They seemed very convinced.

The trial, of course, provides a good backdrop for the study of other human dramas. As one of Jackson’s emergency room doctors testified that she was summoned to assist in the care of a “VIP patient” who seemed to be beyond rescue (and who, in fact, appeared to be clinically dead — that being the same Michael Jackson) — a group of unhappy Americans across the street (the “Occupy L.A.” demonstrators) were protesting what they see as a growing indifference to those who typically don’t receive VIP treatment of any kind. Life is quite different for those who don’t have doctors at their beck and call but interestingly, everyone eventually ends up in the same place. (Dead rich people may get more medical attention than the living poor but sometimes even their treatment is not all it’s cracked up to be.)

The Murray trial, of course, is not America’s only spectacle. Partisans of a certain Texas governor who yearns to be president think that there is “no significance” to the fact that said governor’s family leased a ranch named with a slur used to taunt African-Americans as they were hunted and lynched in the Grand Ole Confederacy (and elsewhere, for that matter).

No significance at all! Stop that race card playing!