The question is not, Who is Michael Jackson? The question is, Who are we?

The surprising thing about the 20-month extravaganza that ended last week with the pop star’s acquittal is how little it tells us about Michael Jackson. The discomforting thing is how much our fascination with this spectacle tells us about ourselves — our mindset, our media, our priorities. Mr. Jackson is now free to pick up the pieces, but we’re left grappling with questions as old as America: Who are these Americans, and what is it that most interests them?

Let’s start by laying to rest the notion that this mega-story, into which the media invested millions of dollars and viewers poured billions of hours, was an issue of deep importance. It wasn’t. If the issue is pedophilia and predatory sexuality in the twenty-first century, the important legal cases will focus on the Catholic church, not on a California celebrity whose quirky lifestyle provides little useful judicial precedent.

If the issue is Mr. Jackson’s identity, that’s hardly been clarified. Despite months of scrutiny, he remains an enigmatic curiosity who admits to living in a fantasy world of his own making.

If the issue is the role of celebrity in an age of instant communication, there’s little here to study. The fairest and best legal system treats everyone as equal before the law, overlooking celebrity rather than paying attention to it — a point enforced by Judge Rodney Melville when he banned cameras from the courtroom.

And if the issue is the media itself, remember the adage that a citizenry gets the media it deserves. Editors can count on five things to make grabber headlines: violence, sex, wealth, fame, and power. The O. J. Simpson story contained all five. The Michael Jackson story lacks only violence to be in that category. Blaming the editors, however, is too glib. They’re essentially responding to our tastes, desires, and interests. Unless we change, why should the media change?

We’re left, then, with some sobering questions. When the editors called, why did we answer? Is it that we imagined the story to be important? That’s a stretch. It’s hard to argue that pop music, or Hollywood, or the United States, or the world would be substantially changed by this trial.

So was it that we knew the story to be insubstantial, but nevertheless expended one of our most valuable assets — our attention — to follow its twists and turns? That, too, seems a poor explanation: Given the much-discussed pressure of time and shortness of attention spans, it seems odd that we should knowingly squander such a resource.

Then was it that we were ignorant of the issues truly deserving attention in the world today — terrorism, nuclear proliferation, AIDS, environmental degradation, global economic disparities, and of course the war in Iraq? There may be some who, in the words of the old Simon and Garfunkel song, “get all the news [they] need from the weather report” — or from the supermarket tabloids. But a twenty-first-century American would have to live in a fantasy world paralleling Michael Jackson’s to be unaware that these issues, if unaddressed, could have dire consequences.

But maybe that very direness holds the clue to our fascination. Is it that, at bottom, this story lets us escape from the hairier issues? Is it somehow comforting to turn on the news and find nothing more dangerous than Michael Jackson? The United States, after all, created the most powerful global fantasy-maker in the world when it invented Hollywood. And Americans have called upon it during moments of national crisis to provide a kind of Neverland alternative to the grim reality of the news. So are we peculiarly prone to these flights of fantasy — just when we should be focusing on the serious issues at hand? Is this desire to seek refuge in escapism a key facet of the U.S. mind?

And does that, finally, explain the importance of Michael Jackson — more as a symbol than a personality? If his trial has a lesson, it is to remind us that we’re all at risk of building Neverlands of the mind and escaping into them when the ambiguities become overbearing. It reminds us of the need to find within ourselves the moral resources to address confusion, master complexity, and come through it into clarity. It reminds us that we earn our way to simplicity, not through avoidance but through engagement. Of such is real morality built.

©2005 Institute for Global Ethics

“This verdict is an endorsement of the principle of equal justice under the law. Crimes committed in corporate offices will be treated according to the same standards as other crimes.”

– Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau commenting last week on the conviction of former Tyco chief executive Dennis Kozlowski and finance chief Mark Swartz on 22 counts of grand larceny, conspiracy, fraud, and falsifying business records. The men each face up to 30 years in prison for stealing more than $150 million from Tyco, using the funds in part to finance lavish lifestyles that included a $6,000 shower curtain and a $2 million birthday party in the Mediterranean. The men are expected to appeal. (“Former Tyco Chiefs Kozlowski, Swartz Found Guilty,” Reuters, June 17)

WASHINGTON
After building a felony case against accounting firm KPMG, federal prosecutors now are debating whether to actually take the firm to court, worried about destroying another major auditor Arthur Andersen-style.

Andersen collapsed in 2002 under the weight of its Enron-related conviction for obstruction of justice, winnowing the Big Five down to the Big Four, which includes KPMG.

Federal regulators began pursuing the Big Four for concocting tax shelters that helped wealthy clients evade warranted taxes, cheating the U.S. government and fellow taxpayers out of billions of dollars.

Big Four firms Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers resolved their cases with the Internal Revenue Service with fines and settlements. Now the Justice Department is deciding whether to take a similar tack with KPMG.

The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Justice regulators have built a criminal case against KPMG, but are worried about weeding out one of the last remaining major auditing firms. A felony conviction would force KPMG to surrender its accounting license, noted the Associated Press.

KPMG last week admitted that some of its executives participated in unlawful conduct from 1996 through 2002, but insisted that it has fired the bad apples and mended its ways, adopting a series of reforms to bolster ethics.

“KPMG takes full responsibility for the unlawful conduct by former KPMG partners during that period, and we deeply regret that it occurred,” the firm said in a statement.

Analysts, including Robert Willens of Lehman Brothers, last week expressed doubt that the Justice Department will try to indict KPMG.

“Not because they don’t think they might be indictable, but because it just doesn’t make sense to do that to KPMG’s clients and to narrow the choices for corporate America down to three major firms,” Willens told the Reuters news agency.

Columbia University law professor John Coffee agreed, noting that KPMG may even be feeling emboldened by its position as one of the surviving Big Four. “It’s a strange kind of immunity,” he told the AP.

NEW YORK
Financial services firm JPMorgan Chase last week agreed to pay $2.2 billion to extricate itself from a class-action lawsuit filed by investors left empty-handed when Enron went bankrupt in 2001.

The JPMorgan Chase deal piggybacks on last week’s settlement by Citigroup, which agreed to pay $2 billion to settle class-action claims that the firms helped prop up Enron despite deeply flawed internal practices.

“Our litigation strategy is to seek escalating settlements from defendants as we went down the road,” lead plaintiff’s lawyer William Lerach said last week. “This result was consistent with that.”

Firms still facing prosecution include Barclays, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Canada, and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Lerach said he expects the final settlement pool to exceed $6 billion, allowing jilted shareholders to recover “more than 90 percent” of their losses — with plenty left over for lawyers’ fees, noted USA Today.

“When we are done here this will be the largest recovery, in absolute dollar terms, ever for victims of securities fraud, and it will represent a significant recovery of their potential losses,” Lerach said.

SEATTLE
Microsoft Corp. last week defended its decision to cooperate with Chinese authorities in censoring users of the company’s free blog service, blocking the use of words including “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights.”

Other terms banned from Microsoft’s Chinese blog area include “China Democracy Party,” “Dalai Lama,” “demonstration,” “Taiwan independence,” and “Tiananmen,” according to press reports.

Users trying to title their entries with such terms receive a free speech slap-down: “This topic contains forbidden words. Please delete them.”

Similar censorship moves have been taken by search engine giants Google and Yahoo!, who, like Microsoft, have moved to take advantage of China’s booming Internet base — expected to hit 100 million users this year — according to the Guardian.

The U.S. firms have been criticized by Reporters Without Borders for abandoning free speech principles in order to increase their profits.

Asked about its decision to censor content, Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn said it was a business calculation that did not necessarily negate the company’s positive impact.

“Even with the filters, we’re helping millions of people communicate, share stories, share photographs, and build relationships. For us, that is the key point here,” Sohn told the AP.

BUENOS AIRES
Argentina’s Supreme Court last week rejected as unconstitutional two amnesty laws protecting military and police officers from prosecution for the alleged murder and torture of tens of thousands of people during the country’s Dirty War.

The Dirty War ran from 1976 until 1983, during which a military junta used the country’s forces to quash protest and dissent by killing and “disappearing” between 10,000 and 30,000 people.

After the country returned to democracy, prosecutors began filing charges and winning cases against officials and low-level officers involved in the crimes, sparking two mutinies from the military.

Under pressure, former president Carlos Menem pushed through two amnesty laws aimed at what he called “national reconciliation,” angering and frustrating the families of those who disappeared, reported the Reuters news agency.

Last week, the Supreme Court, with new members appointed by President Nestor Kirchner, who was himself detained by the military as a student, ruled 7-to-1 that those two laws were unconstitutional.

Kirchner last week welcomed the decision, saying the judges “have given our country a ruling that renews our faith in the system of justice.”

The ruling clears the way for reviving hundreds of mothballed cases against military leaders and underlings as well as allowing new charges to filed against as many as 400 officers, reported the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON
Seeking to right a historical wrong, the U.S. Senate last week apologized for repeatedly refusing to make lynching a federal crime — a failure that effectively sheltered the murderers of more than 4,700 Americans.

Rejecting requests from seven U.S. presidents and numerous civil rights groups, Southern senators used filibusters three times in the late 1800s and early 1900s to block passage of legislation making lynching a federal crime.

Under the weight of more than 4,700 deaths and a recent photo exhibit documenting the carnival-like atmosphere attending many of the killings, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said enough was enough.

Joined by Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), Landrieu led the push for a formal apology for the Senate’s behavior, saying, “There may be no other injustice in American history for which the Senate so uniquely bears responsibility.”

Far from being clandestine killings, lynchings often were community events — daytime affairs with refreshments, public transportation, and school and business closings to increase attendance, reported the Washington Post.

“These were public spectacles,” Mark Planning, counsel for the Committee for a Formal Apology, told the Post. “The civic fathers and leaders of the community often participated in these things, directly or indirectly.”

Of the 4,742 documented lynchings in the United States, nearly three-quarters of the victims were African-American. Victims also included whites, Asians, Italians, and Jews, reported the Los Angeles Times.

“Lynching was the socially acceptable way to demonstrate control,” Washington educator and civil rights activist Lawrence Guyot told the Post. “It sent a message that not only did this happen to this person, but if you as a black person thought about stepping outside of our racial code, it can happen to you. We want it to be public. We want everybody to see it.”

While the U.S. government has apologized for some lynchings — at one time paying nearly $500,000 to China, Italy, and Mexico on behalf of lynching victims — it has never apologized to African-Americans.

Last week, that changed, with the Senate formally expressing “the deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity, and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States.”

While the symbolic move was widely welcomed, some also noted that of the Senate’s 100 members, the apology did not receive support from 20 senators, including Republicans Trent Lott and Thad Cochran of Mississippi, the state with the highest number of recorded lynchings, according to the Post.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTAWA
Two Chinese defectors from their diplomatic posts in Australia have caused a political storm in Canada by alleging that the Chinese government has more than 1,000 spies and informants in Canada.

The defectors, who are seeking political asylum, additionally have claimed that there also are numerous spies and informants in Australia and other countries, including the United States, although they say that Canada has the largest number.

The defectors are claiming that the objective of these Chinese networks is to undermine the Falun Gong sect, expatriate democracy movements, and engage in industrial and scientific espionage.

One of the defectors, former Chinese Public Security Bureau police officer Hao Fengjun, claims that China has placed these operatives in Canadian cities with large Chinese communities, such as Toronto and Vancouver.

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin has stated that he has reminded Chinese officials to respect Canada’s sovereignty and that the Canadian police and security agencies are fully informed of any existing Chinese networks and are doing everything to protect the country’s interests.

Chinese officials in Ottawa are denying the espionage charges.

NEW YORK
U.S. prosecutors last week arrested and charged three former executives of Newsday with conspiring to inflate advertising prices by falsely boosting circulation figures through a series of scams.

The executives, all of whom left Newsday and its Spanish-language sister publication Hoy after an internal investigation into the charges, face up to 20 years if convicted, reported the Washington Post.

The men are accused of using shell companies, fake invoices, bogus customers, kickbacks, and other tricks to deceive regulators and industry monitors into believing that the magazines were selling more copies than they were.

The magazines then used those inflated circulation figures to set higher rates for ad prices, bilking advertisers of millions of dollars, according to U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf.

Mauskopf and others — the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service among them — are investigating whether such circulation scams are a broader problem within the newspaper industry.

Newsday spokesman Stu Vincent last week said that about a dozen employees were fired last year after the company’s internal investigation, the results of which were provided to investigators, according to the Post.

Newsday’s and Hoy’s parent company, the Chicago-based Tribune Co., has set aside $90 million for costs related to lawsuits filed by advertisers, settling so far with more than 30,000 Newsday advertisers.

“We will continue cooperating with the ongoing investigations and welcome the prosecution of any individual who has defrauded Newsday and injured our relationship with our readers, advertisers, and employees,” Vincent said in a statement.

LONDON
The British government is considering asking nursery school staff to monitor children for early signs of criminality as part of its campaign to cut crime by 2008, prompting concerns among caregivers.

The strategy was detailed in a leaked report authored by the Home Office, which declined to comment, reported the Guardian.

The government report suggests that three- and four-year-olds should be monitored for signs of antisocial behavior and disregard for authority, warning that toddlers not “under control” are four times more likely to be convicted of a crime after reaching maturity.

Children’s minister Beverley Hughes last week defended the overall principle of keeping tabs on toddlers, but told the BBC that “there is a balance to be struck between intervening early and labeling children prematurely.”

“I don’t think you can tell whether a three-year-old is likely to become a criminal,” she told the BBC. “What you can begin to identify is children who are having difficulties at an early age and … make sure that parents and the child have the assistance to avoid those problems becoming any deeper.”

Jean Gemmell, the general secretary of the Professional Association of Teachers, which incorporates the Professional Association of Nursery Nurses, agreed, but said the government’s plan is cause for concern.

Nurses and caregivers are “not criminal psychologists,” Gemmell told the Guardian. “Trying to identify potential criminals before they’ve even started school seems impractical. We would not want to see children labeled as troublemakers before they’ve done anything wrong.”

From the U.K. Equal Opportunities Commission:

“Today’s new dads are more willing than ever to combine the daily grind of work with staying at home to change nappies and warm bottles, according to new research by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC).

“Almost eight out of 10 working fathers (79 percent) revealed that they would be happy to stay at home and look after their baby, while almost nine out of 10 (87 percent) men felt as confident as their partner when caring for their child.

“These findings reflect a dramatic shift in attitudes towards fatherhood. Two decades ago more than half of dads (52 percent) believed a father’s job was that of provider while the mother’s place was in the home. That percentage has shrunk to just 20 percent.

“Responding to this evolution in fatherhood, the EOC is calling for additional dads’ paternity rights beyond those proposed by the government’s consultation paper ‘Work and Families: Choice and Flexibility.’…

“More than nine out of 10 new dads (94 percent) currently take leave from work during their baby’s first eight weeks to share parenting responsibilities and support their partners. Loss of pay, workload pressures, and employers’ attitudes were cited as the main reasons for not spending more time at home.

“The government’s consultation paper, allowing working mothers to ‘transfer’ maternity leave to their partners beyond the first six months, would not go far enough to address current issues, claims the EOC.

“The Commission is now calling for ’shared’ parental leave rights in the second six months following the birth, giving both fathers a more equal chance to a work break to care for their child, including rights for fathers whose partners were not working before the birth and so do not have maternity leave….

“Jenny Watson, acting chair of the EOC, said: ‘All the evidence shows that fathers today are different from their own fathers and grandfathers and the policymakers have to keep up and get in step….

“‘This research reveals how much attitudes to fatherhood have shifted in recent years. Dads no longer see themselves solely as the breadwinner. They want to spend more time at home, actively sharing the responsibility of caring for their baby….’”

“The desire for fame is the last weakness wise men put off.”

– Tacitus (Roman historian, 56 – ca 120)