The road to Obamacare was paved with a series of overt lies.

by: david bozeman | published: 07 27, 2009

Oscar-winning actor Karl Malden died July 1 at age 97. The one-time steelworker with a foghorn voice and over-sized nose was never a matinee-idol type, but he dominated stage, film and television, usually in supporting roles, as reliable, working-class types, such as the supportive priest in On the Waterfront and the veteran cop partnered with a younger and much hipper Michael Douglas in TV's The Streets of San Francisco.

If you look hard enough online, you will find an occasional mention of Malden's death and maybe (if you look even harder) a word or two in tribute to the industry giant who served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and lived an apparently blameless life. World attention, of course, is still fixated on Michael Jackson and it is unlikely to abate any time soon. Walter Cronkite is receiving due treatment -- a media legend, his colleagues will see to it. In terms of accomplishment, Malden's stature should need no justification. Sadly, in the pop-culture hierarchy, his brand of working-class reliability relegates him to character-actor status. His professional stamina -- and let's face it, some probably thought he had died years ago -- just isn't the catharsis for international wailing and speculation, thus Jackson-mania continues, with ghost sightings, family grief updates, a will controversy and a brewing custody battle.

Jackson's bizarre life and death would garner attention in any age and it is just a sad fact of human nature that perversity and freak show antics draw more attention than consistency, responsibility and normality -- or what used to be called adult behavior. One could argue that celebrity culture is just a by-product -- even a healthy one -- of a free society. Who among us has never ogled or discussed our favorite stars?

Modern culture reached the saturation point, however, in the first week after Jackson's death. Ideally, the world would offer the cursory condolences and a few remembrances and move on. Back in reality, Michael Jackson, a troubled pop star with a Peter Pan obsession, is a perfect, albeit a sad, symbol of the adolescent mind set that is America in 2009. US soldiers remain in harm's way on two fronts (and a number have lost their lives in recent weeks), much of our economy has fallen under federal control, unemployment is inching up to 10%, and the world, up to and including the President of United States, cannot gush enough over this troubled (and, yes, undeniably talented) 50-year old man-child. President Obama even bragged that old Jackson tunes comprised his IPOD collection. Notice he didn't mention Bach or Chopin.

The underlying assumption guiding the Peter Pan Brigade -- whose votes count just as much as yours -- is that the important foreign affairs and policy stuff will work themselves out. Meanwhile, Larry King will interview Michael Jackson's gardener and serious journalists will identify themselves and sign off from the "Neverland Ranch" with the professional, somber tone of an Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite reporting from a foreign capital or war zone.

Diana West detailed the phenomenon in her 2007 Death of the Grownup, the thesis of which is that a society that exalts adolescent tastes and values lacks the adult requisites of authority and judgment to counter Islamic terrorism. Now that foreign affairs are out of fashion, according to the trendwatchers, the same principle applies to reigning in the ever-bourgeoning state. Which could more people name, each of the Jackson brothers and sisters or any three provisions of the Cap and Trade legislation?

But does a culture that favors adolescent tastes necessarily presuppose a weak and indecisive nation? It's a bit more complicated than that. Nonetheless, short of a what-came-first thesis, one could consider the British Empire, on which the sun, at one time, "never set."

The land of Winston Churchill and great monarchs, knights and poets is but a shadow of its former self, eclipsed by socialism and a growing militant Muslim population. Today, the world's most famous knight is, arguably, Sir Elton John. Just ponder that and the notion of Sir Mick Jagger.

I belong to a generation of guys, born in the 60s, to whom being called 'Mr.' or 'Sir' is jarring, even nearing 50. Recounting it to male friends is cliche: "When I hear 'Mr.' I think my Dad." Many of us note with awe and regret everything our fathers had done by our age -- military, marriage, kids, steady job -- while we were mired in indecision, with no direction and no focus.

Still, our fathers and their values resonate like Karl Malden on the national radar. A Peter Pan culture, shaped, in part, by relativism and non-judgmentalism, cannot foster adulthood while it memorializes perpetual childhood. At one time, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and others comprised an adult pop culture, conveying distinctly adult personas that the young wanted to emulate. Today, many adults, with sneakers and backward ball caps, want to be the teenagers.

Again, there is no seamless correlation between adolescent culture and a faltering national identity, but then great institutions seldom fall in one piece. Growing resistance to Obama-care signals hope that maybe we have awakened from our Jackson-induced stupor just in the nick of time.

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