RIP MJ

I turn the key in the ignition, just to be blasted with the first...er, chords, of that infamous song with zombie werewolves and moon-walking all in the same video.

Normally, I’d be pissed to listen to the radio station my mom never remembers to turn down and turn off. But today, I actually find a big pit of what can be referred to as sadness inside of my 16-year-old heart. I find myself not only continuing to listen to the generic radio morning show, but also keeping the volume at an obnoxious decibel as they have an entire Michael Jackson marathon.

The previous evening--a day that shall be lived in infamy!--at the crisp age of 50, MJ, the King of Pop, succumbed to cardiac arrest.

At first, I received a Tweet saying that he was dead. I hopped up and flipped on CNN to witness Wolf Blitzer interviewing seemingly random and insignificant Joe Shmo’s of the MJ fan base. And at that time, the death had not been confirmed but by golly, they had pictures of his hospital transportation.

Well, within the hour TMZ (or the L.A. Times) confirmed that he was. Who trusts CNN anymore anyways?

I was moving furniture around and pasting glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling after my walls had been freshly painted a mint green. Maybe it’s just one of those moments that, in 20, 30 years, I’ll recall, “Oh, grandkiddies, when Michael Jackson died, I remember exactly what I was doing....” You know, a catastrophe on the same scale as 9/11.

But in all honesty, it was a pretty tragic day. Child molestation and abuse scandals and everything else aside, MJ was undoubtedly the King of Pop. And everybody loved him, from his debut as a little black boy with an enormous and powerful voice, to the era of his gloves and trademark glasses, all the way up until he died with white skin and relaxed hair in the beginning of the equally-evolving 21st century.

He’s filled a generation gap, or at least between my mom and I. Upon hearing about his death, she got nostalgic and opened up to me a bit. She told me she owned his vinyl record and his cassette tapes for her very first Walkman during college. We determined that “Billy Jean” was his greatest hit. These are things I never think about or even think to discuss with her; these things draw generations closer in many cases.

Most people, as they say, are more popular after their deaths. Well, maybe that’s just because death is like a filter, and we need to stand back to see the bigger picture. While the passing of such a phenomenon is undeniably a sad thing to see, it’s obviously inevitable that we’ll move on in our direct lives. Sometimes it just takes an incident like this to happen in order to connect the dots in a meaningful or relevant way, or to put valuable things in perspective.

#IranElection

With journalists and reporters being shot down and shut up, Iran’s common people have become the sole individuals documenting these historical events with a simple Tweet or snap of a cell phone camera. The Iranians are rising up in a pro-democratic and fair way; they’re utilizing a freedom of speech that only social networking can adequately supply. These people are so passionate about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. There are plenty of reliable quotes in the newspaper and online from Iranians who just want a peaceful and righteous outcome--a happy ending that everybody wants to see happen in Iran.

And without these election protests being so publicized, the light may have never been shed on the situation for Iran’s global audience. To see a social networking site (see: Twitter) literally explode into a massive arena for international public posts, discussions and insight is more than amazing--it’s inspiring. This kind of situation gives hope to a future that will see even further technological innovations. This kind of situation proves the legitimacy of and necessity for social networking sites like Twitter. Because without this means of communication, Iranians wouldn’t even be able to present their struggle to the world in an accurate or meaningful way.

To watch a video of thousands of protesters donning green ensemble and shouting what they believe in their native tongue is compelling, for a lack of better word. The Iranian protesters are obviously extremely passionate in what they stand for. For a population so suppressed by their so-called “democratic process,” living their lives in such a vacuum, their courage to fight for their undeniable rights and suffrage is unbelievable. So often it seems as if these things are a given privilege; however, the Iranians must fight for these rights which they know they deserve, thus creating a unified adrenaline that makes the ultimate solution more significant for all involved.

Just look at what happened after a single day of protesting after the suspicious election--Supreme Leader (“Excellency”) Ayatollah Khamene called for a recount although he had already justified the impossible landslide in favor of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a divine appointment. And the protests haven’t stopped since then.

Endurance is a key for these people. And it’s evident that they possess this characteristic; protesters in the streets don’t go home and shut their doors in fear because the Basij militia and other police forces try to break them up and tear them down. No, these people have something so valuable inside them that they’ve tapped into and they simply can’t let it go. They know that authentic democracies exist, and they know that through oppositional candidates like leader Mir Hossein Mousavi this process might actually be possible.

The Iranians’ peaceful protests put them on a solid common ground with contemporary activists and common citizens in Western societies, as well as throwing everything into an entirely new perspective. And in order to preserve that common ground, Westerners are striving to help Iranians in any way possible, with sites like “Simple Ways to Help Iranian Free Speech (http://reunifygally.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/help-iran),” and blogs with “How-To’s” discussing anything relevant to Iranian life, ranging from useful proxy Web sites to get around government-enforced blocks to medical procedures for gunshot wounds and infections.

It’s also astonishing to see the aforementioned process of proxy usage to help Iranians maneuver around government-blocked Web pages. Outsiders are willfully using their computers in an innovative and, for once, useful way; rather than hosting games and/or otherwise useless things on their desktops, they are providing an unmarked and untraced destination for Iranians with a voice to send their words to be sent back into the global society’s uncensored Internet.

Clearly, Western society and Middle Eastern traditions lie on respective sides of the cultural spectrum, but that is hardly the issue at stake here. Americans, Europeans as well as others around the globe are all rallying for Iranian justice to be served--this is obvious through the rising-by-the-second amount of Tweets and Hash Tags referring to the Iranian election protests with a slight fondness. The small glimpse of Iran’s current state evoked a yearning to serve from Westerners that most had never felt before.

What must be known in these times is that right now, it isn’t about Muslims or Christians or Jews or any racial divisions to be made; it’s about giving the Iranians that needed aid in whatever their urgent plight may require. And if it isn’t possible to take action, then the least Westerners can do is lose the ignorance toward Iran and its people and listen to what these pro-democratic Iranians have to say (or tweet).