Michael Jackson: bigger than Jesus

Remember John Lennon’s bigger-than-Jesus remark? Well, would you imagine that Michael Jackson’s spokesman thinks that, I guess since he was the King of Pop, that he was just he emitted more love than any human to ever live:

“Talk about a worldwide figure of love,” spokesman Ken Sunshine said on the “Today Show.” “MJ is the biggest figure and person emitting love … ever!”

That statement is not surprising considering the rush to beatify Jackson, but it’s so far from the truth. Of course, no one has wanted to say that during the past two weeks. As LA Times columnist Steve Lopez noted yesterday, Jackson has achieved in death the get-out-of-jail-free card he couldn’t get in life:

I can’t remember the last time I saw so much media fluff, hype and hoopla. News organizations that have pulled out of Iraq arrived by the convoy to pay homage to the King of Pop.

Jackson had some great years as a groundbreaking and barrier-crashing, once-in-a-lifetime talent with a message of peace and harmony. But that was followed by a decade or two of extremely disturbing weirdness — not that you’d know that from the recent news coverage.

What was host Meredith Veira’s response to Sunshine? Mollie at GetReligion says she had none at all:

This is a woman who last week went out of her way to inexplicably trash the outfit of one of her guests — and yet she doesn’t have the journalistic chops to ask whether, say, Jesus, or Mother Teresa, or Nelson Mandela, or SOMEBODY, might be a worldwide figure of love more than The Gloved One?