America is dying. You could smell it at the Michael Jackson trial.

Snapshot from the end of the case: It is early on a Tuesday morning on the last week of the proceedings. The verdict is days, perhaps hours, away. The courthouse compound is in an advanced zoolike state. The pro-Jackson crazies have descended en masse for the verdict, and they are fighting, in some cases with fists, to get places in front of the cameras. At the courthouse gates, a fat creep from Tennessee named BJ — journalists have dubbed him "Superfan" — is pushing two Polish girls aside so that his weirdo buddies can dance, out of tune, to "Black or White," for the amusement of a row of mute European photographers. One of the shooters takes a place on the Tennessean's ladder, which he stands on every morning to cheer for Michael. "Watch the fucking ladder!" BJ shouts.

Thirty yards away, inside the compound at the courthouse front door, the journalists are assembling. Correspondents, pens in hand, are calling out to their producers in the tents. The word is out: "Jesse's going to speak!" Jesse Jackson is here, and he's going to make a statement.

Why is Jesse Jackson here? Why is he giving a statement? Who knows? It's the Michael Jackson trial — why ask why?

Jesse comes out. He looks just like Jesse Jackson: $10 million blue suit, perfect Windsor knot, grave expression, the spotless wing collars of your dreams. And he starts talking. He's into his "Keep hope alive" act within thirty seconds. This is a hundred-year-old George Carlin, performing in a Peoria VFW hall, doing his "Seven Dirty Words" routine — but he can remember only five of the dirty words. Well, five will do, the audience has already paid....

"If the choice is between hope and fear," Jesse says, "Michael chooses hope.... We must not be paralyzed by fear."

A reporter next to me scribbles in his notebook: "MJ — chooses hope."

It's a deathbed scene. Even in his best days, Jesse the cultural figure was a pastiche of old ideas. The presentation was a pale copy of Martin Luther King Jr. The politics were a fifty-year-old New Deal. But at least the candidate was a young man full of fire and ambition. Now only Jesse's suits are new, and his shtick is a hideous self-plagiarizing parody of himself from better days. All he is is a celebrity; no longer a leader, he's just playing a part here, obeying the logic of this thing, whatever this thing is.

A Fox reporter named Aphrodite Jones squeezes to the front to ask a question. Another loud, middle-aged TV creature with too much makeup and an extra layer of flesh, bearing the name of a pro wrestler.

"Reverend Jackson!" she shouts. "Why haven't the other public figures come out here to support Michael at this time? People like Elizabeth Taylor — they don't seem to be here. Why aren't they here? Why?"

Exactly what I was thinking. Where the fuck is Elizabeth Taylor? Slacker! At Aphrodite's second "why," Jesse looks up. For the first time in his life, he's speechless.

"Um, I don't know," he says. "I don't know their schedules.... I, uh..."

A few minutes later, some nameless handler rescues Jesse and pulls him back inside the courthouse. He will be back tomorrow, he says. As if he's going anywhere. A half-hour later, he's drifting in front of the TV tents, begging for airtime — right in front of the pro-Michael freaks (the majority by far), the crusading Christians, the PETA activists with their prancing veggie girls in lettuce bikinis, who are all here for exactly the same reason. Anything to get on television.

Somewhere inside the courtroom, a jury is deliberating, trying to bring this whole business to a climax. But who cares what they'll say? What can a verdict possibly tell us that this case hasn't said a hundred ways already?