Prior to our recent trip to Lake Chatuge and Edisto Beach, I made a trip to Barnes and Noble to pick up some “I don’t have to think about it” reading. You know, those mysteries and novels that you can read with “half your brain tied behind your back” (sorry, Rush). I picked up a couple of Tony Hillerman novels and a novel by Neil Gaiman, American Gods. First of all, let me assure you that American Gods is not a light-brain novel. It is, however, well-written and so engrossing that I never did get around to reading any of the Hillerman novels. The plot of the novel revolves around an ex-con who gets involved in a war between the “old gods” and the “new gods” in a mythological, realistic American landscape. Even though I think that Gaiman wimped out on the ending, the book was a great read and mind-opening. Gaiman pulls off a coup by doing both in the same book, and doing it well.
This blog, however, is not meant to be a book review of American Gods. That book merely provided a backdrop for my observations on the hullabaloo surrounding the death of Michael Jackson. On the television tonight, one of the talking heads said that people were trying to show a reverence for Michael Jackson. At first, I recoiled at the phrase, but then I began to understand that in the minds of many in the secular culture where God is irrelevant, people like Michael Jackson are the closest things to gods that any of these people have. I am sorry that Jackson is dead, and I offer my condolences to the family, but Jackson was no god. He was a human being who made gobs of money and achieved fame by singing and dancing. It is a pity is that many in America have let their gods become so small.
