White - Black - Gray

Likely tomorrow, a new frenzy of media chatter on Michael Jackson. He was born on August 29, 1958.

At Jackson’s death in June, Kathy and I - both pop music fans- placed a long play record (LP) on the turntable and listened to "ABC" and "I'll Be There."

More recently however, an old copy of the book, "Black Like Me" has turned our attention: the world obsesses on one whose skin was lightened; we are reading of one whose skin was darkened.

I first read it 40 years ago. In the year 1959, J. Howard Griffin used medications intended for sufferers (as Michael Jackson later became) of vitiligo. It is a splotchy loss of skin pigmentation. Griffin also spent time under a sun lamp. He shaved his head and shaved the hair off of his hands. His skin turned temporarily black.

Then he travelled about in the Deep South of the United States as an African American and was treated as a second class citizen.

Black Like Me excelled as first-person journalism, holding up a mirror to show a society its own “Picture of Dorian Gray.”

Sometimes we would rather look away . . . and markets-driven media know it. In June, Jackson’s death prompted a media stampede, revealing our diminishing news judgment and the declining scope of news coverage. Journalists still do the heroic, but the herd mentality can be both contagious and dangerous.

Fortunately social networkers in Iran used Twitter and blogs to keep before us an ongoing story of international import. Fortunately journalists were willing to risk those wayward steps into North Korea. Fortunately we have technologies to use in right and proper ways.

A Virtual --And Virtuous? -- Community

Does social networking create community? Does it promote healthy relations with other people?

With God?

Yes and no.

Using Twitter, you may now send a short prayer request to Israel. A young economist, Alon Nir, and his team will print it and stuff your prayer into the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Community, I suppose.

A California teen, Alan Wright, has devised “A Note to God”, by which people would be able to pray using their I-phone.

Community, if you consider “other-oriented” or selfless behavior as a necessary element.

So much of it however, centers on self. “Like many of you, I reluctantly entered into the world of virtual social networking, primarily swayed by the argument that it would be a good way to stay in touch with friends and family,” writes David Sills on http://davidsills.blogspot.com/2009/08/tweet-tweet.html. “However, reading the Facebook updates and Twitter tweets that inundate the web through the day makes me suspect that their primary purpose is self promotion.”

Where is the virtual community taking the younger generation?

I watch our sons minimize the homework screen, pop up an online chat (multiple conversations, no less), then check on the status of a video that's loading, then go to homework. Can normally mono-tasking males be transformed by this media to multi-taskers who do everything all at once?

If -- and I have NO proof but just am wondering -- there is biological change in brain circuitry occurring, can the mental and spiritual remain exempt? Can media, which changed the way we look at candidates and national events with the advent of television, also modify the way we look at ourselves and how we posture ourselves before others?

Awhile back, a newspaper reporter and I were using e-mail to discuss the use of Twitter in journalism. Don also observed a "self-obsessed twist in the nature of Facebook updates . . . and Twitter that, over time, is unhealthy for society." I tucked it away, only to find the same observation amplified recently by Dr. Sills.

Our start point may be “I can ride my bike with no handlebars.”Will our claims about ourselves then morph into "I can destroy the planet in a holocaust."? No, because we do not become megalomaniacs overnight.

A likelier scenario: a much subtler, smoother slide to "hey, hey look at me!" And collateral damage in that slide: a loss of the fine art of listening, the discipline of meditation, the give and take of true friendship. Replaced by white noise of "everybody's talking at me; I can't hear a word they're sayin'" as Harry Nillson sang in a simpler day than ours.

We may also lose discernment, for it's awfully tough -even for multitaskers- to evaluate as we're pecking out our next Tweet.