“Winners Line Up for Jackson Memorial Tickets” is how the headline reads on CNN’s Web site home page this afternoon. Please tell me this is an anomaly and CNN has NOT called anyone who was selected to attend the memorial observation for Michael Jackson a “winner.” 

Tell me Mr.CNN CEO, when was the last time you felt like a “winner” going to a funeral? Or were photographed smiling about it? Now, I know the employees in the CNN newsroom are getting younger and younger, as are the Web tenders and dare I mention management, but come on already! This is exactly the kind of stuff that fueled the circus-like frenzy around MJ when he was alive. At least, I thought I could count on CNN to adhere to level of propriety with an issue like this.

 On top of that I also heard Nancy Grace describe that people would need to “pay” for a ticket to get into the memorial service. Now that was flat out wrong, as it was made clear from the initial press conference on the service that the Jackson family was making these tickets available to fans at no charge.

Now I may be channeling Bart Simpson here, but ay caramba this is bad!!! This is disrespectful and it seems like the general feeling about this event is comparable to going to a Michael Jackson concert, not a wake. While the family does wish to celebrate their loved one’s accomplishments in life, this callous treatment of his passing is just a scary sign of what may lie ahead when it comes news reporting in the digital age.

Here’s an idea. How about “Jackson Memorial Ticket Holders Announced,” as an alternative. Not nearly as sensational, I am sure, but it serves the purpose. What about that?

It occurred to me as I was riding into work this morning–using my steering wheel as an interim guitar to the sounds of Poison’s Don’t Need Nothin’ But a Good Time–that my generation grew up in what I’d like to call the Sweet Spot. Our music reflected these times. It was, quite frankly, just fun and happy. I think this revelation actually began taking root last night while I was watching the coverage of Michael Jackson’s tragic death.

His music was the keystone for our “Let’s have fun,” “Party all the time,” generation. I concluded that our music– as pop-y and unsophisticated as some of it was–could have been a result of our generation not having the threat of war hanging over our heads. Unlike many generations before us, the boys in my high school and young men of my college era were able to totally focus on building a life. There was no talk of a draft and no major political or foreign conflicts that would denote the prospect of a protracted war in those days. How idyllic.

My son, however, has known nothing but war or the threat of it since nearly the day he was born in 1990. It seems the world became a different place in the blink of an eye. In 2001, when he was 11, he reacted to the 9-11 attacks with a steely, sad, and eerie Teflon-like resolve, as if he weren’t surprised at all that the world could offer up such a nasty dose of hatred-based reality. His music— in all its chaotic and thrashy glory, definitely reflected the frenetic, uncertain times he grew up in.

I began playing my “happy music” around the house. I now know that he thought I was nuts as I bopped around the kitchen to Van Halen’s, Dance the Night Away. I thought by some crazy osmosis I could make things all right for him—that he might actually like and start listening to my music. Of course, that did not happen. Today, at 19, my son is an extroverted, opinionated proponent of social reform. He carries a chip on his shoulder and a catalog of Rage Against the Machine songs on his iPod.

While my iPod has some current music on it, it is mostly full of my idyllic ditties. I will always wish that my son could forge ahead as we did–totally oblivious to real world issues–banging our heads and spinning each other “right ‘round, baby, right ‘round.”

God, those were good days.