Sarah Palin was a major political talent. The raw talent that she showed on her debut in national politics was awesome. Had she remained in office and governed for another two years, schooled herself on issues and allowed herself to be coached, that rawness might have been polished and she could have been a contender. Now, we will never know. Sarah, we hardly knew ye.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

The name Mary Lou Villar may not mean much to the average Angelino, but she was given the dubious honor of swearing him in at Wednesday's Inauguration Ceremonies at City Hall. To anyone who has ever done anything dubious, the name may mean a lot, for she is the mayor's sister and is a sitting judge.

Never mind that she wasn't educated at an ivy-league school (because, hey, we all have to start somewhere, right?), she was appointed by the guvernator. In fact, her credentials read, UCLA Law School and Cal State-LA. Not too shabby, but not a direct path to the top.

Then there is John Perez. The average mope on the street may not know his name, either, but he is the former President of the Los Angeles Teacher's Union, as in John-there-was-a-lot-of-dissention-when-you, Linda-Guthrie-and-all-your-other-cronies-were-in-office-Perez. That one. Though in spite of his credentials, whatever they may be, the mayor, who also doubles as his first cousin, appointed him to the City's Community Redevelopment Agency, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Proving once again that it's not what you know but who you know.

Every contradictory rumor is spread--and not just on the internet but on broadcast and cable shows. There's a will. There's no will. He is not the biological father. His ex-wife is not the biological mother. My favorite on MSNBC yesterday was the report that an African American Jewish woman living in England is his secret wife--and just possibly the biological mother. I'd be less surprised to find that I'm the biological mother. His brother opined today that Michael was in great health and didn't use drugs. This leads me to believe that like Elvis, he's faked his death and he and Elvis are serving burgers in Toledo.

©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

2) Bottega Louie. The place is buzzing. I said, THE PLACE IS BUZZING -- sorry, it gets so noise there that a person has to shout. Its cavernous dining area has terrific pizzas, its elegant bar has great cocktails, and it also has a deluxe heaping of deli and bakery and grocer items. The fact that it's so packed late most evenings and on weekends may be the best evidence yet that downtown has popped.

3) The Cork Bar. A classy wine bar, with California specialties and wonderful food. Try the hanger steak or the cheeseburger.

4) New Zealand Natural Ice Cream. Believe it or not, the ice cream really comes from New Zealand. If you like mango, you will quickly become addicted to the Mango Passion there. Others rave about the rocky road and espresso, though. In any event, you can't go wrong.

Those are the first four that come to me. What am I missing? Disney Hall, Cafe Pinot, the Edison, what else...? More later....

Me, I'm incomparably proud to be an American and would exchange it for nothing, under any circumstances. I love how America filled itself up with people from around the world who said, "We can do better," and who put their money where their mouth was. That progressive and reforming spirit imbues this country with the spirit of reinvention that always keeps us at the forefront. Other great nations were mainly just proud of their ancestry -- but we always believe we can do things better -- and over the long haul we always do.

While this country is not perfect, there is a reason why we have an immigration rather than an emigration problem. And that's because like it or not, this is still "the land of the free and the home of the brave." This is one of the few countries on Earth where a person can come here with nothing, set up shop and do rather well for himself. Just look at Arnold Schwartzenegger, my father, my Armenian mechanic or anyone else who came here with little more than a hope and a dream or maybe a family connection or two and made something of himself.

And this is one of the few places in the world where you can pretty much write or say anything you want without fear of being carted off in the middle of the night. That's why it always kills me when people criticize this country. Sure there are those things that are wrong, sure there is still discrimination and those who are unfairly jailed, but if someone doesn't like things, they can always work, and here's the keyword here, in appropriate ways to try and change things. Otherwise, if they find the heat not to their liking, then they can always leave the kitchen.

But unless we tighten up our laws, stop making excuses for those who have spent a lifetime making excuses for themselves and stop letting any yahoo in, then we won't remain this way for long. Otherwise, I predict we will soon be riding away into third world country land.

The general stereotype is that liberals aren't patriots. We're accused of worshipping foreign idols--usually the French. We're libeled as rooting against America and seeing only our errors and faults. This is worse than stereotype. It's caricature. You can take the most extreme and find self-hate and rejection of country. You can do the same with the extreme right. Ironically, some people who told liberals "America, love or leave it," are today threatening secession from the union.

The truth is that beyond the caricatures we draw of one another, most of us love our country. And ours is a country worth loving. Yes, we see the flaws--as we see the flaws in our own families, but please don't let anyone outside the family criticize my kids, my spouse and certainly never my grandchildren. Me? I can make a gently snide observation. You better not try. Not with my family and not with my country.

I have travelled, studied and lived all over the world, and while there're many lovely places to visit, there's no place else on earth where I'd rather live. I see our imperfect elections--Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, Chicago, well, every year. Then I look at Iran. We cannot imagine a situation like in Honduras where the president tries to change the constitution to serve his own interests, ignores his supreme court and congress and then is removed by the military. I complained about Nixon. But I never doubted he'd obey the Supreme Court's order. There was never a coup to fear.

We won't agree on many important issues, but we can and should give thanks for a nation whose founding motto is E pluribus Unum--out of many (peoples, ideas and visions) we become one nation. Happy Birthday USA!
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Dr. Conrad Murray can't win. The Michael Jackson family through their surrogate Reverend Jesse Jackson hints that the doctor may have done something terribly wrong in the death of Jackson. Jackson fans were brutal. On the website vitals.com that rates physicians there were more than 100 comments (as of Saturday). The writers mostly railed against Murray as "Michael's Killer." What Murray did or didn't do in the tragic hours before the fateful 911 call that brought the paramedics rushing to Jackson's home is nothing but wild conjecture and speculation and grist for the tabloid mill.

Yet, that Murray finds himself on the medical and legal hot seat is no surprise. When things go wrong with their celebrity client-patients, doctors always feel the heat. Because invariably the things that go wrong deal with drug use, questionable medications and treatments that they allegedly give their ailing or troubled celebrity clients. The suspicion is always there that the doctors did something either negligent or unethical in catering to and indulging their clients real or imagined medical needs. The hunt to scapegoat the celebrity attendant doctor is then on with a vengeance. Their background, training, and experience are quickly called into question.

That's the case with Murray. His training at Meharry Medical College School of Medicine, one of the oldest and most renowned black medical training facilities in Nashville, Tennessee, his internships, his years of experience and work as a cardiologist are under an intense microscope. The tons of money that Murray racked up in unpaid bills, and the liens and pending suits to get the money back have been dredged up to paint Murray as a doctor with a checkered and shady history.

The glare, however, is even more intense on Murray's clinic, Global Cardiovascular Associates, main location in Las Vegas. In a call to the clinic, this writer was referred to a contact phone number to a doctor on call. The number was a pager beeper.
HealthGrades which rates America's physicians based on their training, experience, patient responses, and quality of care, did not give Global Cardiovascular Associates a glowing four star rating. In the crucial area of patient care, there were six patient responses. They rated Global Cardiovascular on ease of scheduling appointments, office environment, cleanliness and comfort, office staff friendliness, and most importantly the wait time before seeing a physician. Murray's three person staff rated only fair in the responses. Vitals. Inc. gave Global Cardiovascular a marginal rating on the critical areas of patient response time; follow up, and most importantly, accuracy of diagnosis. The clinic ranked below the national service average in a couple of these rated categories.

This is not damning proof that the clinic doses out substandard care, or is any way deficient in its medical practice. However, patients, medical rating boards and health care providers do place major emphasis on these as measures of patient care in decisions about the effectiveness and competence of physicians and their hospitals and clinics.

Even if Murray's clinic had received a world class four star rating from the rating physician services, Murray or any other doctor who attended Jackson would still raise eyebrows even if they did everything by the book. It comes with the turf.

Heart related deaths account for more medical malpractice and wrongful death lawsuits than for any other medical problem. One survey found that they account for thirty percent of all dollars shelled out by doctors and insurers to settle malpractice suits.
Malpractice awards for heart attack typically allege misdiagnosis or mismanaged diagnostic methods or medical tests. Because the outcome of a misdiagnosed heart attack is obviously poorer than a rapidly treated heart attack, the patient may suffer severe consequences. This is the prime reason that the dollar award for heart attack malpractice cases is almost always much higher than the average payout for other alleged medical screw-up cases.

It may be that Murray did not do anything wrong in how he handled Jackson. But that won't end things for Murray. He'll likely be slapped with a lawsuit, or even multiple lawsuits. That's been the lot of legions of other cardiologists. And possible lawsuits may be the least of his problems.

He will carry an even greater burden; and that's the burden of being the doctor who was there when Jackson died. And everyone expects that doctors are supposed to save lives and not raise suspicions that they did something to end a live. It's a terrible dilemma for any doctor. Dr. Murray is hardly the first to face it, but it's one he'll have to live with.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard weekly in Los Angeles Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

In an earlier post I wrote that "Sex trumps substance." Well, death trumps sex, and so Iran be damned, healthcare slide by the wayside, global warming go lay down at the beach. We demand all Michael Jackson all the time. And that's an okay choice, I guess. The media are allowed to pander to the public. My objection is not to the public for having low taste or the media for feeding it. My objection is that the media gets so much so wrong.

The more I know about a particular subject, the more small mistakes I find in the coverage. This does make me temper my judgment. Sometimes when I think a paper or TV channel is twisting the news on purpose, I have to consider the possibility that it is ignorance and carelessness and not a plot or conspiracy.

There is a saying in the law--usually saved for jury instructions--that you may consider that if something is false in part, it may be false in its entirety. So what to make of the thousand paper cuts of inaccuracies in the Michael Jackson story?

I first learned of his death when a national cable network had a reporter, obviously unfamiliar with the Los Angeles area, report that Jackson had died in Bell. Knowing Bell, I was pretty confident that he would not, in fact, be caught dead in Bell. I guess she meant Bel Air(e). That too would have been wrong, but closer. Then I heard that he had collapsed in his rented mansion in Beverly Hills. Also not true. By evening the local TV coverage had it right, Holmby Hills, but even this morning the BBC was reporting that he died in Hollywood.

I happened to be in Westwood last night going to the Geffen Theatre and saw all the helicopters and TV trucks--as well as a fair number of print reporters hurrying back home at 7pm. There were some people gathered around but hardly a mob. It looked like the same number you would see stop for a car wreck. While having our dinner earlier, the TV coverage made it look like a huge and growing crowd. When we left the theatre around 9:50pm the civilians had mostly gone home. The few gawkers remaining were watching the field reporters for our local stations prepare or tape their stand up reports. You know the "Live from UCLA where 8 hours ago something happened is our own (fill in the blank) __________with our exclusive eyewitness report."

Meanwhile, nature and the media abhorring a vacuum, we got wall-to-wall coverage, speculation and misinformation. As late as this afternoon NPR reported that crowds were gathering around Michael's star on Hollywood Blvd, but some fans had mistakenly put their flowers of the star of the wrong Michael Jackson, whom NPR misidentified as "the disc jockey Michael Jackson." Our own Michael Jackson, the talk show host who virtually the invented the form, has not been a disc jockey since 1960.

If we in the media do not get the small things right, how can we have credibility with the big issues?
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

But he sure packed a lot into those years. First, there was that immense genius and talent. Who else but a genius would have conceived of the video for "Thriller," which was not only a music video but really a movie short that helped launch the MTV network? And who else but a genius would have come up with the "Moonwalk" or some of his other creations that became part of the pop lexicon? Though it should come as no surprise because it was clear from his early appearances on the "Ed Sullivan Show" that music and dance were part of his soul.

It was his genius, the ability to move as if he were walking on air, and to take the mundane and combine it in new and unusual ways that catapulted him to fame and made him stay there even amidst all the controversies in his life.

And there were plenty. First, there were the molestation charges brought about after he hosted slumber parties at his house with young boys. Of course, he should have known better, and common sense should dictate that a grown man who invites young boys to sleep over at his house is going to be headed for trouble, but because Jackson probably wanted to relive parts of his childhood, as is evidenced by naming his ranch "Neverland" after Peter Pan, the other boy who also never grew up, it probably made sense to him. Not for a moment do I think that Michael Jackson was a pedophile who intentionally tried inflicting harm on children, but one who wanted to fill in the missing pieces of his childhood.

Then there were his financial problems, his failed marriages and the incident where he wrapped a blanket around his own son and dangled him from a hotel balcony. (What was he thinking?)

When all is said and done, he probably won't be remembered for any of those things. He was acquitted of the molestation charges, he was planning on going on tour next month and his children, who are reportedly grieved, did not seem to hate him or seem otherwise maladjusted.

It takes a rare talent to trump the passing of two other celebrities within the same week, a rigged election in Iran and another one of Obama's proposals. But Michael Jackson could and did because he was a larger-than-life talent who brought music and joy to this world, and he will be missed.

Near the end of the first week of Michael Jackson's infamous child molestation trial in 2005, a large group of African-American community activists and leaders gathered at a community center in Los Angeles to talk about Jackson, the trial and whether he was a target because he was a rich, successful, and famous African-American. This is the slightly paranoid tinged chatter heard whenever a black celebrity, and there have been a lot of them, wind up in the court docket for real or alleged crimes or are lambasted in the media for bad behavior.

The discussion quickly took two surprising turns. The first was an impassioned message that Jackson delivered to the group through a personal emissary. He pleaded his innocence and asked for support. This brought a hush to the room. Then there was the second turn. The discussion shifted from talk about Jackson's trial and his sometimes on again off again, quirky, ambivalent relationship with African-Americans and his seemingly confused racial identity, to a reminder from the Jackson surrogate that Jackson wanted everyone to know that he took great delight in his charitable work. There was no message from Jackson about his media and self anointed title as the King of Pop, his musical icon status, the Grammys and platinum records he won, nor anything more than the perfunctory mention of his legal woes.

He clearly wanted the group to think of him as much more than an entertainer or a musician. Some present vaguely remembered that Jackson had made a splash in 1985 when he and Lionel Ritchie wrote "We Are the World" and performed the music as part of an all-star cast of singers and celebrities to raise money for African charities.
A few others vaguely remembered that Jackson forked over the $1.5 million that he got in a settlement from Pepsi in 1984 for the burn accident he suffered while filming a Pepsi commercial to the Burn Center at Brothman Hospital in Southern California. But that was it.

There were puzzled looks at the mention of Jackson's charitable giving and even more at the list of the peace and social justice related activities Jackson was involved with. At that point, most in the room listened in rapt attention at the names of the more than 40 known charities and organizations that Jackson gave to during the 1990s, both individually and through his expansively named Heal the World Foundation. The foundation was mired in a messy organizational and tax wrangle that briefly made headlines in 2002. Yet, there was virtually no press mention when Jackson jumpstarted the Foundation again in 2008 with a fresh wad of cash.

This was all new news to most of those in the room about Jackson. In fact, good news for more than a few of those who had bitterly scorned, ridiculed, and mocked him. To them Jackson was little more than a Casper-the-ghost-looking bleached skin, nose job, eye shade, straight hair and gyrating hips ambiguous black man who had made a ton of money and had been lauded, fawned over, and adored by whites. This was more than reason for some blacks to view him with a jaundiced eye.

For others, though, Jackson's wealth and fame didn't immunize him from being tarred by the press and many in the industry as a child molester. They felt some empathy for him and his legal battle.

In the months and years after his acquittal debate raged over whether he was a washed up, health challenged, damaged goods, and financially strapped one time pop star who desperately wanted to snatch back a glimmer of his past glory. Or, whether he still had some of the trademark Jackson flare and talent left. But even that debate seemed to pass Jackson by since he knew that his every word and act was still instant news, and that there were still hordes of fans who would heap dreamy eyed adulation on him.
The quest to seal a legacy as more than just the Pop King told much about Jackson's desire that the small but unseen and much neglected part of his life, that is his charitable work be known and remembered. That he be remembered as more than just a black man who made his living grabbing his crotch before millions. Or a man who's other claim to notoriety was that he delighted in surrounding himself with packs of children.
The community gathering during the Jackson trial was the last time I heard in minute details the extent of Jackson's giving and the names of the organizations that he had endorsed and helped. I was glad for that moment. This is the Jackson that not only he wanted the world to know and remember. It is the Jackson that I want to and will always remember. This is the other Michael Jackson.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard weekly in Los Angeles Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com