Smooth criminal

After hearing Michael Jackson's older brother Jermaine saying the Jackson family is "ready for war," I just have one thing to say to him: "Bad."\nWe all know the storyline, which includes an allegation of child molestation, then the settlement, now another accusation. I'm not even going to touch them. After all, we all know Michael is a little off his rocker. I mean, this is the man that, after the birth of his daughter Paris in 1998, snatched her and just went home with the entire placenta all over her. Naw, I'm not even going to touch the good ol' "King of Pop."\nBut I don't have any qualms about talking about Jermaine's recent comments to the media. \nIn his "20/20" interview with Barbara Walters, Jermaine said of the police investigators, "They're a bunch of racist rednecks out there who don't care about people." \nThen in an interview with CNN anchor Kyra Phillips, he said, "This is nothing but a modern-day lynching." Geez, Jermaine is really "Off the Wall." \nUnlike most of the criminal proceedings in America, this case is not about color. I don't see "Black or White"; I just see green. According to www.msnbc.com, the first allegation of alleged sexual misconduct in 1993 ended up in a settlement in the $15-20 million range. \nNow there is a contention that the current accuser's assertion of sexual misconduct could be false. On the www.denverpost.com, the accuser and his mother's attorney, Michael Manning, said he remembers the mother saying positive things about Jackson as recently as April or May. "'He was really good to us' -- that's what she said at the time."\nBut did you really think I was going to take my article this week to talk about the Jacksons? Hell no. There are much bigger issues to talk about. Although I must admit I was a huge Michael Jackson fan. In fact I'm still trying to do the moonwalk. But, like I said, there are much bigger things lighting a fire in me this week. \nThe real "Smooth Criminal" in all this nonsense is the media, specifically the mainstream media in the United States. \nThe day Michael Jackson turned himself in to police on charges of child molestation was the same day thousands of British citizens protested President Bush's visit to England, and Turkey was hit by a terrorist bomb. What did the national news lead off with? Michael Jackson … like you didn't already know that. \nLet's look at the broader perspective of things. Does Kobe Bryant, Elizabeth Smart, Scott Peterson or O.J. Simpson really have an effect on our daily lives? I think not. The way the media reports about them, you would think so. \n Steve Chermak, who is an associate professor in criminal justice at IU, says, "The media skews its coverage of crime. It mostly reports on murders even though murder is the least likely crime to happen to a person." When I asked him why the media reports on so much crime, he said, "Crime stories are easy to produce, and they are sexy." \n Maybe I'm just a political science geek, but Medicare, tariffs on imported steel and school vouchers are just as sexy, if not more. Was there any slow white Bronco chase showing senators coming to the capitol to cast their vote on the passage of the current Medicare bill? \n Nope!\nNow it's true that there was a lot of coverage of it, but compared to high profile celebrity cases, the coverage was nothing. It's true these cases are of some interest to us; after all, these people are in the spotlight. So when they are suspected of breaking the law, it needs to be covered. \nBut this around-the-clock-minute-to-minute-interview-everybody-and-their-momma coverage needs to stop. The media just needs to "Beat it"