Briefly, and I'm sure I'll have more later for the man walked very tall in my imagination, here is my initial reaction to the death of Michael Jackson today:
May you rest in peace, Michael. You brought excitement, joy and wonder to millions and millions. I pray that God will have mercy on your soul. I recently had a "paradoxical reaction" to a clinical procedure and I suspect Michael *lived* his life as a paradoxical reaction to juvenile stardom.
I loved the guy. Always have, always will. And I deeply mourn his death.
J.B.
Please understand that I am not comfortable disagreeing with my host, but the life and death of Michael Jackson leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. Let me first of all admit that I never cared for his music, since my youth was dominated by the original rock and roll and rhythm and blues sounds of the 50's and early 60's.
Since his music held no sway, I became appalled by his really strange, reclusive lifestyle and his deliberate mutilation of his own body. His hypochondria demonstrated that he was not mentally stable and his inability to make the mental transition from successful child star to mature icon stood out. He was consistently caught up in his own lies and exaggerations.
You know where I am going next. Michael was accused of child molestation in 1993 and paid upwards of $20 million to shut down the civil lawsuit and to buy the boy's silence in the criminal investigation. Given these facts, i can only conclude that "where there is smoke, there is fire."
If I believed him to be a child molester in 1993, you know that I believe that the 2005 jury that acquitted MJ of even more child molestations were influenced by his fame.
Michael Jackson is dead. His yearly earnings probably topped $20 million . . . but creditors will be shafted to the tune of an estimated $400 million by his estate.
Posted by: gadfly | June 26, 2009 at 07:06 PM
Gadfly, it would be impossible for me overstate how deeply I feel about Michael Jackson. I'm watching MTV Jams as I write this; they have a continual loop of his music videos.
I'm trying to take in what others are writing. I'm going to address the subject in another piece but let me say this; I don't believe for a second that Michael Jackson molested any children. People simply couldn't conceptualize that he was an asexual kid, but that's what he was. And because people couldn't understand his weirdness, they bought into the grifters who wanted to scandalize his name so they could get paid.
This I firmly believe. More later.
Posted by: RattlerGator | June 28, 2009 at 10:50 PM