Just some last thoughts on some of the high profile cases that seemed to be about more than just a legal decision:

Terry Schiavo
I think I’m surprised that there wasn’t more ringing of all the bells in the Mainstream Media about the results of Terry Schiavo’s autopsy, since the news is all good from their point of view:

The autopsy released Wednesday on Terri Schiavo backed her husband’s contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding she was severely and irreversibly brain-damaged and blind as well. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused before she collapsed.

Because of the politicization of this case, I could’ve wished for different results, just so that the many, many people who wanted to fool themselves about what it meant to starve her to death wouldn’t now have the impression that they were on the side of angels. But I don’t want to be downcast if it turned out that there was some mercy for this woman, no matter how bad Michael Schiavo’s intentions might have been. It’s still a very complex case emotionally, and I won’t pretend to think that I’m completely objective about it. I am still very troubled by the actions of her husband, the courts and some portion of the American public (in that chronological order). But somewhere at the bottom of this is one woman who, in my grandmother’s language, has gone to be with her Maker. God give her rest, and I hope He gives those of us who are still here mercy.

Michael Jackson
I happened to be listening to the radio when the verdicts were read in Michael Jackson’s case, and before they had quite finished, the news station went to record the near-hysteria of the crowd outside over the not guilty verdicts.

It would be kind of wonderful to believe that the crowd was that euphoric because they had just found out that a hero of theirs was not a child molester, but it didn’t seem to be the point whether he was or not. Or at least it wasn’t the main point, judging from the interviews with the throng. The main point was that Michael Jackson was hero, a martyr, a victim, they loved him. They loved him with that frightening, monomaniacal idolization with which star-struck people today love those who are famous (or have been famous), and they didn’t want him to be called a child molester and suffer the consequences of a child molester — both of which would have constituted a gross miscarriage of justice and pure, unfiltered evidence of racism, class-envy, Australian confidence-trickster-moms or something else really awful. (I’m not sure I even understand the question of racism in this case. As one commentator put it, “We didn’t have any problem with Michael Jackson in this country when he was a talented, rich, black kid. It was when he turned into a creepy, rich, white woman that we got concerned.”)

I’m just glad to have seen the end of this trial. I’m tired of it being Halloween every day on the evening news. Michael Jackson is a weird dang dude and the people around him are weird. The way he makes people act is very, very weird. And maybe they’re part of the reason that he keeps being weird, and round and round it goes.

Actually, I think the verdicts were probably right, even if they didn’t happen to be accurate. The court case seemed flimsy as near as I could make out, and I don’t want people being convicted based on weak evidence. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not even sure I believe Jackson is a child molester in the usual sense of the word. But even just based on the things he has been saying for years, I don’t think he should be permitted to be alone with children, and I’m sorry that there are parents who would sooner sacrifice their child’s moral and mental well-being than say no to a strange, rich celebrity with a Peter Pan fixation.