Billy Mays Was More Important to the American Way Than Michael Jackson

I hope that by now the media love affair with an unrepentant pedophile is over so it can get back to its primary business of trashing Republicans (Governor Sanford is the Devil, Michael Jackson is an angel.) Lost in all the foolishness has been the deaths of some other folks.

Farrah Fawcett: Here's a person that did very little harm to anyone, except maybe the militant feminist movement.

Ed McMahon: A much more interesting (in a positive way) cultural icon than Jackson. His partnership with Johnny Carson defined America's sense of humor for two generations.

And then there is Billy Mays. Billy Mays? Where does he fit in? Billy Mays upon his death was participating in a television show that illustrated much of what he has been doing for many years now. Mays and others located promising inventions, usually by ordinary people, evaluated them, and sold them to the public. Mighty Putty, Oxy Clean, and many other gadgets, doo dads, and supplies were hawked by this guy over the years.

At its core, what Billy Mays did was to give an assist to people trying to live the American dream, but doing it in their own way. These inventors work for years, invest uncounted amounts of time and money, and take major risks to create a usable product. The best of the bunch were taken by Mays and sold to the American public. The show refreshingly had no silly sentimental crap about making people's lives better through a new kind of GPS holder, it just encouraged people to do what they could to make everyone the most money possible while delivering a quality product.

When it boils down to it, America has always been about that. Unfortunately this week, the United States is not known for Mays, a hard working apostle of capitalism, but for a freakish, gyrating, semi man with a fascination for little boys and a penchant for ignoring contracts with major corporations.