First Act - Intermission....

Real people with homes facing foreclosure and mounting credit card debt, lost wages and lay-offs, rising prices and diminishing paychecks - suffer. Meanwhile our politicians engage in a war of words; parsing and re-imagining, spinning and re-stating, denying and affirming, re-iterating and responding.
This in essence is the great divide - and the reason that nothing has been accomplished by this Congress and nothing will. We are fighting the wrong enemy (ourselves) and losing ground to the real foes of 'doubt' and 'fear'.
When there is a crisis of confidence you need a resurgence of the "Reagan" spirit that restored hope. President Obama evidently feels to hope might be a little audacious because he has done little else since inheriting the economy than lower expectations and revise projections. No wonder Sarah Palin has exited stage right...

Strangely moving

I watched the Michael Jackson Memorial Service live from Staples Center this afternoon, expecting it to be awkward and weird. However I found it strangely moving. Some parts were transcendent for me - for example Stevie Wonder singing "Never though you'd leave in summer." and John Mayer's surprisingly lyrical guitar playing on "Human Nature". Other moments seemed forced - Mariah Carey's "I'll Be There" and Rep Sheila Jackson's remarks bordered on grandstanding. On the other hand, Queen Latifah reading a Maya Angelou poem and Brooke Shields reminiscing were magical.
Then towards the end we were treated to Shaheen Jafargholi's version of "Who's loving You." that reminded those of us old enough to remember, what it was that drew us to the Jackson Five and to Michael in particular all those years ago - whether we were "Black or White"!!
Watching the family -reminded me that all of them are a little other-worldly, with Michael being a little more extreme than his siblings.
On the "fact check" monitor - it should be noted that Michael Jackson did not bring us LIVE AID , and "We are the World" wqs written as the response to Bob Geldof and Midge Ure's "Do they know it's Christmas?" which spawned the worldwide crusade against famine in the mid 1980's.