The only thing that has been able, it seems, to force cable news to move away–for the slightest time–from Michael Jackson is Sara Palin. Why is that? Despite their enormous differences in nearly every aspect of their lives, it seems to me that they have one trait in common. A large amount of people seem to treat them as living symbols, projecting desires and plans, hopes and fears upon them. They are no longer individual people –they are, almost, collective projection of  wishes, regrets, pasts, and future.   Needless to say, what’s projected on them is very different–Michael is about the corruption of innocence, the loss of youth, Sarah, for some people, is about the regaining of innocence -simple American values.  Whether Palin or Jackson, the attention is ultimately about ourselves.

Does this thesis seem true to you?

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