Death of an Icon or Death of a Creep?

The news came in fast Thursday evening; music legend Michael Jackson was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital, in a state of vegetation. Minutes later the 50-year-old was dead. About 10 seconds later, the eulogies poured in from people who knew him best, people who knew him least, and people who knew him not at all.

Countless media reports labeled his death “tragic” and “shocking” while others focused on his last few years as a resident of this planet. His child molestation trial was revisited, as was his transformation from black child music prodigy to white-ish weirdo engaged in felonious behavior.

Radio stations began music marathons and TV stations quickly produced fawning biographies and remembrances. Jackson’s professional triumphs, personal mishaps, and every inch of his life was picked over, like vultures feeding on the remains of a rotting animal.

He’s being remembered both as a hero and a villain; the man who wanted to be Peter Pan; the man who thought there was nothing criminal about sleeping with children; the man whose childhood was nonexistent, and whose adulthood was riddled with problems — some of his own creation, others the result of unscrupulous jackals by whom Michael Jackson was surrounded.

Jackson made billions of dollars, but died penniless and in debt. There is something Shakespearean about how he lived and how he died — the mighty musical titan, later the captain of a meandering ship that ultimately drifted aimless, before sinking into the unforgiving depths of a cold and empty ocean. He lived in a kind of public seclusion; in a state of unrealistic reality, familiar only to those who confuse fiction with fact, dreams with life.

In life, Michael Jackson was tortured. Perhaps he’ll find whatever peace that evaded him for a half-century in another world, a world that cannot be chased, but one that can be found.

Michael Jackson — either an icon to generations of admirers whose music touched many, or a dangerous pedophile whose personal touch was admirable to no one.