It’s Princess Diana deja vu all over again. I am referring, of course, to the untimely yet entirely predictable demise of Michael Jackson. I mean, poor, sad sonofabitch who, in recent years, was more commonly known as ‘Wacko Jacko’ in even the mainstream media.
Yet all of that, the awful surgeries, the rumored drug abuse, the denial of his racial heritage, the dangling babies, the surgical masks, the trials seem to have been forgotten in this massive outpouring of grief. Even outpourings of grief from kids who weren’t even born when Thriller was current and who have never heard of the wonderful group, the Jackson Five, in which little Michael made an amazing debut. How sad the way the thing all played out ultimately.
But the huge (and somehow horrifying) displays of international grief over what was bound to happen before too long strain credulity. It is almost as if there is no Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, fiscal meltdown, people being thrown out of their homes, or the equally sad demise of Farrah Fawcett. Maybe people need some sort of outlet for their angst via a massive grief meltdown that really contains all the other shit, and Jackson is just the vehicle. I really don’t know.
That Michael Jackson in his heyday was an amazing musical performer is undebatable. Alas, that was a long time ago. He ultimately became like the pathetic late-life Presley, a sad shadow and almost mockery of what once he was, which was a major trend-setter in pop culture. Jackson was no different in the manner in which he captured the public imagination of the (then) young.
That in later years Michael Jackson was not only dysfunctional but also extremely mentally (and physically) ill is not debatable in my esteem. And that is frightfully sad. It is tragic to have had so much and yet arguably through no direct fault of your own, to have squandered it all. In that he is monumentally different from, say, OJ Simpson who made some frightful decisions. In Jackson’s case his bad decisions (and there were many) were doubtless beyond his power to rectify. That others did not help him to do that is equally tragic.
I have no problem separating an artist from his or her art. That Michael Jackson was bizarre (to state the case kindly) does not detract from his worth as an artist of primo importance. Likewise drunkard Dylan Thomas and suicidal Sylvia Plath should be judged by their works, as should alcoholics Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald.
So, as I say, the death of Jackson is sad, but to me the gratuitousness of the grief outpourings are both bemusing and somehow vulgar and disrespectful. But, maybe that’s just me.
