Death/Life of Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson’s death, like the last twenty years of his life, will become a circus.  A circus of lies, posturing, showmanship, and fantasy, so that his coffin, like his talent, will be obscured.

There is no doubt Michael Jackson was a fantastically talented child.  As a member of the Jackson Five no one saw anyone or anything when Michael was on stage.

His solo career put him in a category by himself; he could sing, write music, dance, and create fantastic excitement, his music videos are tiny movies, with plots, effects, no one could challenge.

Sometime in the 1980s, Michael Jackson stopped being famous for his talent and became a freak. A freak who went from being a black man to a white woman.  Whose constant plastic surgeries left him looking as if he’d just stepped from The Night of the Living Dead, and whose personal life became a series of sordid events.

Rumours about Jackson’s sexuality or lack thereof had bobbled about since the late 70s, as did those concerning his racial identity.

‘Wacko Jacko’ began to overshadow Michael Jackson, and his veracity and sometimes sanity was questioned.

His ‘marriages’ and the ‘fathering’ of children added to questions, not answers, and the first public mention of pederasty and his payment of twenty two million dollars in 1993 seemed to prove the rumours.

His claim of being abused as a child left the public split; there were those who were unfamiliar with psychological trauma who would believe anything Jackson said; there were those who considered it a mere smokescreen to explain what appeared to be text book pederasty.

It is standard for the man who likes little boys to enmesh himself in childish things; movies, food, toys, etc.  Jackson’s behaviour fit the profile.  Suddenly introducing the ‘abuse by father’ did not ring true.

It seemed a stunt, as many of the stunts Jackson pulled over the years, from dangling a baby over a balcony, to claiming the baby was dying, to admitting he had his skin de-pigmented as if that was the only treatment to vitiligo.

To many, Jackson always had a ‘victim’ answer to any question, and his last court case, appearance and behaviour, sent a signal to those not caught up in the hysteria, that this was a very sick man who had a difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy.

His financial problems were much of his own making, and the proposed series of shows in London were met by mistrust from one group, while others raced to buy tickets.

Image via Wikipedia

His death, unexpected, at first denied, then admitted, moved into circus.  There will be forever doubts as to what he died of, when he died, on and on, each story as believable or unbelievable as the next.

Most intriguing was the nacent fight over the children.  

Firstly, are they Michael’s children?  DNA tests would need be run, then the question of acceptance/ supportance, etc. would be raised.  This would be a rather bad idea and there would be no winners.

Wisely, Jackson’s ‘wife’,  Debbie Rowe, declined the chance to prove Michael was not the father and accepted visitation rights not custody, no doubt for a tidy sum.

The public, greedy for the sordid facts, will anxiously await each and every squalid revelation, and people will be minting money on the various biographies of Jackson.

The true tragedy is not that Michael Jackson physically died in 2009, but that inner demons led him on the path he took.

If he had been ‘normal’, marrying, truly marrying and staying with Lisa Marie Presley, (or any other woman he could have loved) and fathering and raising children the normal way, and kept performing, and writing, and doing all his charitable work, then perhaps who we would mourn today would be a rose without thorns.