Reality Check
How does one go from much-maligned pedophilic circus freak to honoured hero in twenty-four hours?
The answer is to die suddenly from a relatively inoccuous-sounding cause, most likely brought about by drug use of which no one else was aware until after you die and then everyone can say how much sense everything makes after the fact.
He was, as every single news station is now reporting, a heartbreakingly talented, ground-breaking artist. I just can’t stomach the way the very same reporters who covered the child molesting stories with such obvious relish are now pretending to such respect and mourning. I understand that people like to feel like they are a part of something, but I’ve never had any respect for people who congregate at hospitals and such to ‘mourn’ someone they never knew, much less understood in any way whatsoever. I mean, come on, I loved him in the eighties too. I saw him live during the Victory Tour at the height of his career. I wore the glove. I even have all the songs on my mp3 player now. But the man was a freak. Whether or not he was a kiddie-diddler, he had some really serious psychological issues without any of the common sense to deal with them in private like the rest of us. The last couple of decades of his life were bizarre and sad. The only real tragedy here is in the fact that he didn’t die sooner so he could have retained some shred of his dignity in the public memory.
So let’s not sit around his star on the Walk of Fame and gloss over twenty years by saying that although his life had been overshadowed of late with scandals and legal trouble, he will be sorely missed. I’m sure his family and friends will miss him, but most of us won’t even notice once the media finds something juicier to suck on.
Happy June 25 everyone.
Willowmist
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Reader Comments (2)
Posted Wed Jul 1, 2009 12:26pm PDT by Andy Pemberton in Musictoob
Michael Jackson's loathing of his father Joe Jackson caused the star to undergo the plastic surgery that disfigured his face, says friend J. Randy Taraborrelli.
"The plastic surgery was not so that he could resemble his idol Diana Ross," said Taraborrelli in a newspaper article. "It was so that he would look less like his father, the man who had so mistreated him and whose strong, broad-nosed face he saw looking back at him from the mirror."
Between 1979 and 1986 Jackson underwent four operations on his nose. According to Taraborrelli, he told a friend the "greatest joy I ever had was in knowing I had a choice about my face."
Jackson wore a surgical mask in public to hide the scars of his multiple plastic surgery operations.
"Escaping his childhood demons had led Michael to recreate himself," said Taraborrelli. "Gone was the brown-skinned, broad-nosed youth with an Afro whose natural charisma charmed an audience. In his place was a fragile, doll-like man it was impossible not to stare at in sheer disbelief."
By 1990, said Taraborrelli, Jackson had had 10 operations on his nose. Finally his nose collapsed and he had to wear a prosthetic tip to his nose in public.
"He had achieved his goal of transforming himself, but at a barely imaginable price."
If even remotely true, then what a sad, tortured soul Michael was. I wish him only peace.