The whole world has gone Wacko.

I seriously can't believe the outpouring of grief for Michael Jackson. Yes he was a good singer, but he was also a very sick individual who I would want my kids to stay as far away from as a pit of acid spitting crocodiles. The way the world is at the moment, the more you are seen to care about Princess Diana, Jade Goody and now Michael Jackson the better person you are. Never mind that millions of people will starve to death this year, and that 348 British troops have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, somebody you've seen on the telly once has died!
I hear people my age talking about 'how gutted' they were when Princess Diana died. I was about 5 years old and I was pissed off because Dennis the Menace was cancelled for those boring news people. People traveled halfway across the country to lay flowers outside Buckingham Palace for a person they never met, and never knew they existed. Seriously, WTF?
Now i'm not a big fan of Big Brother, but I do know that Jade Goody was ridiculed by the public, even winning a most hated woman in Britain vote. Cancer is a terrible disease, and I have lost a person special to me to it, but for people to fall over themselves to talk about how much they loved Jade who just weeks ago had been laughing at her made me feel ill.
And now Michael Jackson. Clear to anyone that this man had a great talent, but people wailing in the streets about it makes me wonder if the whole world has gone beserk. This video on the BBC News website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8120132.stm has a woman openly wailing after leaving flowers outside what is presumably his childhood house. She starts by saying "He was only 51 years old...". No he wasn't love, he was 50. If you're going to cry on national TV about your hero, learn something about him first eh? About 1:16 in there's a man dressed up as Jackson. How must his family feel seeing this? Using the death of a member of his family to get in the fancy dress cabinet and get on CNN. Other 'tributes' include people who thought "Michael Jackson's dead, let's go to the White House". Uri Geller has been appearing on any form of media that will have him, presumably to remind the public that he does indeed still exist. Other people rushing to pay tribute include Craig David, who wouldn't know talent if it bit him on the arse on Monday all the way through to Sunday. He's about as serious a musical artist as Ali G for gods sake.
To me, the culture of celebrity mourning shows how shallow a society we have become. Millions of African children die each year, and we don't bat an eyelid until it's on Comic Relief. Millions of people are taken away by cancer each year, including some of the most wonderful people in the world, but nobody is bothered until it happens to someone they've read about in Heat magazine. People are killed thousands of miles away from their homes looking after us, but instead the world's media focuses on a 50 year old man who wrote some good songs about 20 years ago. I feel sorry for Michael, Jade and Diana's families and friends, everybody else needs to get a grip on themselves. Rather than trying to make the world a better place, we're happy to fiddle about on our Iphones, until somebody famous dies when we must all go out in the streets and beat the ground with our fists, that it isn't fair and how can we go on from this? I liked Michael Jackson's music. Who didn't? The coach that I travel to Cardiff City games on often sings 'Ben' to me. Despite this, he wasn't part of my life, and I feel no need to rush to make a hysterical tribute to him. By falling over yourselves to update your Facebook status to R.I.P Michael Jackson, you are making sure that he cannot rest in peace. Let his family mourn, they have lived a life in the spotlight, don't make them face death in the spotlight as well.

I'm going to end by posting two links. They contain the names of every British serviceman killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are the guys who should be mourned and have public funerals. But hey, they've never been on Big Brother, so who cares right?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8040620.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7799610.stm

R.I.P to the fallen, and may the list of lives lost grow no larger.