Michael Jackson and Mary Jo Kopechne

There's a trend which became most obvious after Michael Jackson first died: The general public deifies the newly-dead celebrity.

I was lucky enough to see Jackson's "Thriller" Concert in 1984 and it remains a fond memory for me. It was an exciting performance. Without question, he was a marvelous entertainer.

Still, let's be real. The man was no saint.

There are those persistent claims of child molestation perpetrated by him. No, this never was proven at trial. While publicly acknowledging no wrongdoing, however, he did make several out-of-court financial settlements with the families of boys who claimed they had been his victims.

Thus arises the question: Can one separate the artist from the person?

Jackson's issues prove that we must.

And while we deservedly laud one aspect of the personality of the deceased, we should not forget the full reality, the flawed human being who formed the whole.

Michael Jackson was no god, and the hysteria surrounding his death is disproportionate to the way he had lived. Other than entertaining millions -- for which he was well-compensated -- what real good has he left as a legacy?

Edward Kennedy ... well, Edward Kennedy is a different story.

Reading any list of his accomplishments during his extremely long term in the Senate is impressive. The man had impact. He made a difference, in many arenas. He changed this country, and for the better.

The anecdotal stories about him always are touching. He was caring, generous, engaged.

And yet....

The media has too much time to fill on broadcast and cable television, too many inches of print in publications. Especially live on camera, there is little balance to the off-the-cuff reports of the commentators who rehash (and rehash) the news that no longer is new, often using frantic tones.

Ted Kennedy, for all the good he had done, for all his many kindnesses, also was no god. It well may be that he would have been the first person to have admitted this.

Emotionally, ethically, he got off to a rocky start. There were stories, early on, of his cheating on exams. Later, he was a blatant womanizer, though married to a faithful wife. He was a hard drinker.

And it was while drinking and womanizing that he had the unfortunate episode in which Mary Jo Kopechne died. Even after he drove off that famous bridge and the young woman drowned, he did not act with any sense of responsibility. At the time, he seemed to think that simply being a Kennedy excused him from conventional behavior.

His sense of entitlement probably was proven by his attempt to receive the nomination as the Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in 1980. A decade after Mary Jo's demise, he still seemed to have little perception of how he was viewed outside of his home state of Massachusetts, judged elsewhere by a more traditional moral standard.

Did he spend the next 30 years atoning for his earlier misdoings? Perhaps. He certainly made a huge effort to do good, a great deal of good.

Let us not forget, however, that a young woman died unnecessarily in her early 20s, cheated of her entire adult life in a situation for which he bore all of the blame. She was her parents' only child and her mother survived her by 39 years, punished by her loss for a wrong she had not committed.

I'll admit, watching Edward Kennedy's life summed up today, I was surprised by how touched I was by his goodness and how impressed I was with his achievements. After he evolved past the long litany of his not-so-youthful indiscretions, his life clearly was one well-lived.

Nonetheless, it seemed to me while all of the commentators were droning on and on about the Kennedy family and its mystique and the magic that Ted Kennedy had wrought, someone should have remembered to say three little words. So I think I will: Mary Jo Kopechne.

A Killing in Euthanasia

I've always missed out on ground-breaking opportunities.

Weight-Watchers was founded before I was born. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles never would have occurred to me. There's so much that predates me or just was beyond my ken. Telephones, airplanes, automobiles all were the work of geniuses. And even now, Al Gore says he invented the Internet when this entire concept was far from my grasp--to be honest, I still don't understand it fully.

But...

I think I've found my niche, my entry-level chance.

It is obvious that tanning salons soon will be outlawed, because it has been determined that tanning salons cause skin cancer. And skin cancer is not good for the American taxpayers, because it is the taxpayers who will have to bear the cost of the medical care for the unfortunate afflicted patients.

Once all of these tanning salons close, however, their mass of vacancies will be a further burden in depressing an already-depressed real estate market. On a wholesale basis, those places must be filled.

Let's fill these locations with euthanasia salons. (Funny word, "euthanasia;" has nothing to do with children in China. No, it means mercy killing. What a wonderful concept for society!)

Euthanasia is the decent thing to do. The Democratic Party is correct: No one has the right to linger past his or her own fair life expectancy. The expenses of illnesses and patient care are unreasonable to foist on an unsuspecting populace. None of us are entitled to become a financial burden on society or to use more than our reasonable allocation of oxygen.

How about calling this chain Gotta Go? Kind of user-friendly, wouldn't you say? Casual and non-threatening.

And, for once, I'd like to get in at the beginning. There's a killing to be made in euthanasia.