Thursday, June 25, 2009

The Death of Michael Jackson

I never liked pop, but I must admit, I loved Michael Jackson. He charmed me, he fascinated me. At least to a point. As a child and teen and early 20’s, he was magical. He glittered. He whirled and seemed the perfect mix of confidence and vulnerability. He had an incredibly beautiful voice, was a wonderful dancer, and seemed shy and sweet and good. The world was better for his presence.

As he aged, he got weird; we all know that. I suppose it was from having such a wacko childhood. He changed. He became a caricature. The real person disappeared. Chimpanzees, the Elephant Man's bones, pedophilia, endless plastic surgery, the sweet kid died. In fact, I think Michael Jackson died at least a decade and a half ago, just no one would admit it, including him.

Was it his fault? Did he give into fame? Did it go to his head?

Stupid questions. When one deposits a normal, sensitive, sweet, person, whatever their talent, into the fishbowl of craziness that he had to swim in, the only question that makes sense is why he didn’t die decades ago. He should have. Any normal person would have under such scrutiny.

What an odd society we now have. Never before has any individual be able to be under such scrutiny. Obama farts, and it’s on Twitter; one Jonas brother picks his nose and it is instantly seen on TMZ, or the like.

Having all awareness is not always good. It does not necessarily give insight, wisdom, or really, knowledge itself. It skews the truth as much as silence does. It enables quick judgment on an entire being by soundbites-or really visual bites. Go ahead, as an experiment, pick one sentence of this blog and define me by it. Examine it. Analyze it. Define me by that one sentence.

If you do so, you know nothing about me.

If someone were to do so to you, they’d know nothing about you.

What a useless exercise!!! Yet that is what the media does continually. It doesn’t matter if it is FOX, or ABC, or TMZ. All that matters is that the person’s name be known. That narrows it down to: politician, actor, musician, sports person.

This is exactly what is happening to Judge Sotomayor at present. Sure, take one sentence and define the person’s life. What idiocy! What arrogance and ignorance!

I didn’t intend this particular blog to become a rant against the media and technology. Obviously it has become so.

So here is my thought of the night. For all our technology, for all of our ability to immediately “know” things, we are no better off than we were 200 years ago. Sure, we hear more, but we really know less. And, our abilities now to “know” damage the very persons we want to “know” about to the point that such penetration into their existence warps and kills them one way or another.

And so, today Michael Jackson died. Why? I’ll let you answer.