Looking for Boundaries

IF you put “Michael Jackson trial” into an Internet search engine, you get links to approximately 5,110,000 web pages. If you put in “Mao Zedong,” you get about 509,000; “Lenin” comes up with 2,770,000. Thus the trial of a show-business celebrity appears to interest the world more than the lives and careers of the two framers of the most disastrous revolutions in world history.

The case is a surpassingly sordid one, of course, and the accused bizarre beyond belief. His celebrity and wealth have allowed him to indulge his whims to such an extent that the most egotistical Roman emperors, by comparison, seem models of psychological stability. And whether innocent or guilty, Michael Jackson is certainly the Nero of kitsch.

IF you put “Michael Jackson trial” into an Internet search engine, you get links to approximately 5,110,000 web pages. If you put in “Mao Zedong,” you get about 509,000; “Lenin” comes up with 2,770,000. Thus the trial of a show-business celebrity appears to interest the world more than the lives and careers of the two framers of the most disastrous revolutions in world history.

The case is a surpassingly sordid one, of course, and the accused bizarre beyond belief. His celebrity and wealth have allowed him to indulge his whims to such an extent that the most egotistical Roman emperors, by comparison, seem models of psychological stability. And whether innocent or guilty, Michael Jackson is certainly the Nero of kitsch.

About the Author

Theodore Dalrymple

Mr. Dalrymple, a retired doctor, is a contributing editor of City Journal and The New English Review. He is the author of False Positive: A Year of Error, Omission, and Political Correctness in the New England Journal of Medicine.