On June 25, entertainer Michael Jackson died. On June 26, the U.S. Congress held a moment of silence to commemorate his life and death.

I feel sympathy for anyone who loses a loved one. I've lost my father and a sister myself, and I'm quite sure that the Jackson family is grieving. However, here is what I have serious problems with:

Since when have celebrities ranked so high in our level of congressional importance that a special moment of silence is not only asked for by Reps. Dianne Watson, D-Calif., and Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., but observed and received? As if Congress has nothing more pressing to discuss!

I didn't see anyone ask for a moment for Farrah Fawcett or Ed McMahon. For that matter, how about asking for a moment of silence every day for those who have lost their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan?

It's a direct slap in the face of Americans in general, not to mention the indication of our own moral decline in this country. Has Michael Jackson become so important that his death is more newsworthy than Sgt. Jones who lost his life trying to protect a small town from insurgents in the Middle East? How about a daily devotional for every American who has ever served in a war zone throughout America's history?

Has our culture become so desensitized and accustomed to the garbage we see that an accused pedophile is commemorated? Isn't this the man who during an interview a few years back replied yes when asked, "Do you think it's right for a 45-year-old man to sleep in the same bed with a young child?"

In August 1997 Princess Diana died. Unfortunately for Mother Teresa, she died on Sept. 5 of the same year. Too bad for her! For more than a year, we had to listen to and endure the media hype over Princess Diana's life and death. Why? Because she was a princess?

Mother Teresa was 87 years old when she died. She willingly spent her life in abject poverty with the express intention of helping the sick and poor -- people poorer than we will ever know, never one time complaining. What did she receive in the news? Virtually nothing comparatively, overshadowed by the notoriety of a celebrity.

Michael Jackson made sizable donations to a number of different charities. I guess that overshadows his situation with children. So other than money and entertaining people, what positive thing did Michael Jackson do? It's a sorry world, folks, when we can let our entertainment be more valuable to us than our own morality.

It's a sorry world when the death of a media star is more important to our Congress than the death of every hero in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's not all Congress' fault; we have created this problem ourselves, and we need to fix it. It makes me sick to my stomach.

Terry Newton

Hephzibah