Our Dying System - Celebrity Style

Odd when I think about the celebrity deaths of last week, a sweepstakes peddler, a sex symbol, the King of Pop, and a product pitch man. Each represents part of the system America has been built on for the last fifty years - and each very much signifies why our system is crumbling.

Ed McMahon who sat on Johnny Carson's sofa laughing at jokes that were not funny, the original "Yes Man", who later went on to get millions of gullible people to subscribe to magazines they never read and sleazy tabloids they read to much of, all for a chance to strike it rich with Publishers Clearing House.

Farrah Fawcett she was the undeniable symbol of sexuality and beauty for more than a generation, she was who millions of boys jerked off to while sharing at her poster on their wall and who millions of women wanted to be, she created the hairstyle of the 70s and 80s and we still see it's remnants today. Farrah Fawcett was the most important sex symbol since Marilyn Monroe and as a post 1960s woman she had a freer spirit and an easier demeanor, there was no sex symbol as important until Pamela Anderson. Farrah was a woman that every man would want to possess the quintessential "trophy". Ultimately like basically every sex symbol I can think of she was as much a victim as a vixen.

Michael Jackson, "the King Of Pop" whose audacity and perversity knew no bounds, his crazed excesses from Neverland, to the bones of the Elephant Man, to the extravagant 20 minute music video that was 'Thriller'. HIs excesses and his ability to throw a never ending stream of money at them was unbelievable. He was the ultimate waster, destroyer, megalomaniac. He represents everything sick within our monetary system.

Finally, the pitchman Billy Mays, the most benign but no less dangerous of our "capitalist pig system" (whatever that even means). He was a corporate shill that made people believe in products and consumerism more than themselves. "You need this", "Buy, buy, buy". More corporate greed to make people spend more money to fill the void they have within themselves that they have been conditioned to believe only shopping can ever fill. Shop till you drop the battle cry in malls and Walmarts around the country.

How ironic that all of these people have died just days apart as our our economy crumbles thanks to those they represent, the false symbols of our mutated system.