America the Undignified

I’ve been trying to ignore the endless craziness about Michael Jackson. But it ain’t easy.

Predictably, the reverend Al Sharpton has been milking the situation for all it’s worth. Like many others, he’s giving the people what they want: emotional blatherings about Jackson’s epoch-shattering greatness and his importance to each and every one of us.

Evidently, yesterday, a reporter asked President Obama whether he agrees with such assessments.

I was a little worried.

I shouldn’t have been. Obama did not join in the unseemly emotional gushfest over the death of the self-appointed “King of Pop.” Jackson, he said, like so many other black entertainers and sports figures, has raised Americans’ “comfort level” with African Americans.

That’s pretty understated. Let’s hope this doesn’t inspire calls for his resignation.

Yesterday, the New York Times’ David Brooks managed to put Jackson into some perspective—in a way that likely won’t inspire angry calls that he be fired. (In Search of Dignity.)

His piece concerned the importance of dignity, a trait once exhibited by some of our leaders. He wrote about the death of the “dignity code” and placed Mr. Jackson—and the rest of us—in that unfortunate retrograde saga:

The dignity code commanded its followers to ... put national interests above personal interests. It commanded its followers to be reticent — to never degrade intimate emotions by parading them in public. It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate — to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm.
…
But the dignity code itself has been completely obliterated.

Each week, Brooks writes, one witnesses horrifying new episodes “featuring people who simply do not know how to act.” Some recent examples:

First, there was Mark Sanford’s press conference. Here was a guy utterly lacking in any sense of reticence, who was given to rambling self-exposure even in his moment of disgrace. Then there was the death of Michael Jackson and the discussion of his life. Here was a guy who was apparently untouched by any pressure to live according to the rules and restraints of adulthood. Then there was Sarah Palin’s press conference. Here was a woman who aspires to a high public role but is unfamiliar with the traits of equipoise and constancy, which are the sources of authority and trust. ¶ In each of these events, one sees people who simply have no social norms to guide them as they try to navigate the currents of their own passions.

Brooks ends on a positive note. There is, he says, “the fact of President Obama”:

Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact. He may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery.

May he? Brooks is dreaming. For every dignified and intelligent Presidential moment, there are dozens—hundreds—of moments in which a celebrity gushes or weeps or lets it all hang out.

And America is riveted.