God Help the Muslims

That's not a sentiment we at the Egg have expressed very often. But we just learned that Michael Jackson has converted to Islam.

This means that the soi-disant King of Pop (or NY Post-disant Wacko Jacko) is no longer a publicity nightmare for the Jehovah's Witnesses -- a fact which saddens us just a bit, as his ertswhile affiliation added so much zing to those Saturday-afternoon chitchats with wide-eyed doorbell-ringers at the rectory. ("So Jehovah has given you a distinctive moral code, eh? Hey, I read about this guy with a glove and a giraffe ....")

But it also means that Jackson, in the waning days of his career, has managed to hook himself up to one of the greatest publicity-engines imaginable. He is already absurdly famous overseas, a fact long since confirmed for me in remote Andean villages and Indian schoolrooms. But now he will have the fame of a prestige convert to the world's second-largest faith. It will help him sell millions of his lousy records in Muslim nations -- at least the ones that permit people to buy records.