I suppose I should begin by apologizing to the millions of people I’m about to insult, because my confusion regarding Michael Jackson has little to do with him and much to do with the level of public grief surrounding his death. I’ll readily admit that I also never really understood similar reactions to the deaths of Elvis, John Lennon, or Kurt Cobain. Of these, only John Lennon can be said to represent anything beyond his popularity as a performer; Lennon was an outspoken crusader for peace, but what actual effect his music and crusading had on the war in Vietnam, or anywhere else, is purely speculative.
As I think about “celebrities” whose deaths moved me, I really can up with only three, and they were less celebrities than public figures—JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy. These men actively sought change, though in JFK’s case his effect was probably more mythological than actual, even during his brief presidency; LBJ accomplished significantly more, both in constructive and destructive ways, than Kennedy. I was eleven when JFK was assassinated reacted more from shock than a sense of genuine loss. Five years later, I was deeply affected by the assassinations of King and Bobby Kennedy. By then, I was able to appreciate both what they had achieved and what they might have been able to achieve. This goes far beyond musical performance.
In terms of musical contribution, of the four performers I mentioned, Cobain was the only one in the midst of his career. At the time of his death, Michael Jackson was staging a circus that might be variously regarded as a comeback or an exit, but nothing I’ve heard about the tour suggests he was breaking new ground. In fact, it’s likely that the pharmaceutical cocktail he was being given to help him make it through the ordeal killed him.
The performer who excited so many had been dead for almost two decades. As The Onion noted, the very talented boy singer effectively died at the age of twelve. What remained was a man who was insulated enough by wealth and fame, which equates to power, to indulge his troubled psyche in ways that made his real life as bizarre as a tabloid fantasy. When his behavior included the reckless display of a infant from a balcony, he let the world glimpse the Dorian Gray portrait of what he was, though with his repeated facial reconstructions, he actually displayed the depth of his troubled mind for everyone to see.
And then there are the children. While it’s true he was never convicted of “actual” molestation, that’s really beside the point. His behavior with those boys was inappropriate and irresponsible, even if the only crotch he ever grabbed was his own. Of course those surrounding Jackson and the boys’ share in that responsibility, but that doesn’t diminish Jackson’s actions. An adult man who brings boys into his bed, regardless of whether or not he went beyond “harmless” horseplay, is endangering those boys’ wellbeing. If anyone wishes to argue that he didn’t understand how inappropriate his actions were, well, then he fits the legal definition of insanity—someone who doesn’t understand the difference between right and wrong by virtue of mental defect.
That he himself suffered a childhood abusive apparently in many ways provides an explanation, not an excuse. Statistically, an overwhelming number of pedophiles (and serial killers) were victims of childhood abuse. That doesn’t mitigate their actions or change the fact that their brains were rewired so that they cannot stop. Chemical castration is no solution. If the real penis no longer works, they can—and do—resort to phallic surrogates.
I was touched inappropriately when I was a boy. He was a member of my church five or six years older than I was, and my mother encouraged the “friendship” because he seemed such a nice, religious boy. Perhaps I was the first boy he’d actually gotten enough nerve to touch, but both times he grabbed at my crotch, I pulled away, and he didn’t pursue. Later, the boys he molested were not so lucky. I’m sure their mothers thought he was a nice, religious man. I was almost fifty when I realized—emotionally realized—what these acts were. We can disguise and conceal from ourselves for a long time the effects of what might seem at the moment insignificant and harmless acts, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t traumatic. We will probably never know whether Jackson’s misguided attempts to reinvent his own childhood through the surrogacy of the boys he “befriended” will have a pronounced effect on any of these boys. It might be years before they realize it.
So I suppose I wonder whether a sick man who sings and dances warrants the kind of accolades tossed his way upon his death. Was he so “artistically” gifted, a “genius” whose manifested disturbance he put on big-screen media display, that we can say that the other part of his life is something we can ignore or excuse because, well, everyone knows geniuses are misfits, and, hey, nobody ever proved he did anything really, truly wrong?
Forgive me if I don’t think being a victim constitutes an excuse. And forgive me if I don’t applaud.
