I’ve been pretty silent on the whole Michael Jackson mess this week. Perhaps because I wasn’t a huge fan of his. But I have to say whenever I hear Thriller at a club or a party or even just on the radio I start to get excited. I also liked the song “Man in the Mirror.” And it seemed that Mr Jackson really didn’t like his own man in the mirror–or he at least longed to like him and found it nearly impossible to do so.
Andrew Sullivan over at the Daily Dish said it better than I ever could:
I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy, tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time; and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.
I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours’ and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.
I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life. And I pray that such genius will not be so abused again.
Amen. Moonwalk in peace, Michael.