King vs. King!

U.S. Representative Peter King, a Republican from New York, recently posted a video that's bound to make them the most unpopular man in America - even more unpopular than George Walker Bush or Dick Cheney. The Long Island lawmaker, considering a run for the Republican nomination for the special U.S. Senate election in New York next year, complained that society is glorifying a low-life like the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, and not honoring the teachers, police officers, and firemen.

King called Jackson a pervert who was obviously a pedophile because he slept with young boys (Jackson insisted it wasn't sexual) and added his constituents were complaining about all the media coverage given to Jackson's death. He did admit, though, that he was a good singer and dancer.

While King's arguments about the media coverage have some merit, and even though many people have been suspicious of Jackson's claims, this video was the least tactful and most obnoxious way of getting his point across. But then, King is a Long Islander. Newsweek journalist Howard Fineman even suggested that King may have been trying to score points with white voters in suburban areas like Long Island by picking on a minority entertainer with a large black and Hispanic urban audience, but Jackson had a large white suburban following as well.

Jackson's fans are already calling for their own version of Jacksonian democracy. They want King to resign, and some of them are even collecting money for his primary election opponent, and, if nominated, his general election opponent.

King is lucky he didn't bash Madonna. He would have been forcibly removed from office by now. Her fans are even less tolerant of detractors.

Rodney Frelinghuysen, my own congressman, once got into similar trouble complaining about the 1995 Marilyn Monroe U.S. postage stamp, insisting that movie stars were inappropriate subjects for stamps. So I've seen this before - but never like this.

King claims to have been spurred by his constituents, and while he praises teachers, policemen (many New York Police Department officers live in Long Island), and other working class heroes, he, being a Republican, is hardly suited to drinking to the salt of the earth. (He probably thinks the Rolling Stones are animals. No, that would be Eric Burdon. :-D)

While King has yet to join the Senate, Al Franken joins it today. His sixtieth vote for the Democrats, while welcome for the party, is less important than the fact that Minnesota now has a second vote in the Senate.