Just got back from Texas, and I have to go through my photos before posting a summary of the trip.
While I was out of town, though, the Michael Jackson thing happened. Specifically, I was in Woodsboro, Texas, at my wife's paternal grandmother's house, where there is no cable TV and regular television reception included three Spanish-language channels, a Fox affiliate, and an ABC affiliate. My cell-phone reception was spotty at best, but using it to check my friends' Facebook updates and various news feeds were the only contact I had to what was going on in the rest of the world.
What I encountered that afternoon is how I expect word of the impending zombie outbreak to spread - lots of "did anyone else see on the news ..." and "did I hear right that ..." and "so and so is reporting ..." type stuff. Pieces of information, but nothing definitive, and all coming from various sources.
Sure enough, when ABC's national news began, the news I had heard literally ten minutes before was confirmed. Michael Jackson had, indeed, died at age 50.
I don't know exactly how I feel about it, to be honest. Yes, I had my Michael Jackson phase when I was about seven years old. By about nine years old, I think I'd outgrown it. After the countless headlines and allegations that followed in the succeeding years, I thought most of America had, too - until his death, that is. Suddenly, an outpouring of affectionate, semi-revisionist history grew into a robust outpouring of what could possibly pass as sadness, but I'm not sure.
I find it odd that so many celebrities (and semi-celebrities - like Arsenio Hall) were suddenly running toward any video camera in their vicinities to talk about how great Michael Jackson was, and what a great loss his death was, when in the years preceding Jackson seemed like such a toxic persona with whom to be associated. It didn't seem like anyone wanted to be part of Michael Jackson when his public stock was down, but now that he was gone ... all aboard!
Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the way it seemed. The reactions I've seen from so many seems incredibly fake. It seems like people are saying what they're expected to say when any famous person dies, but I don't get the sense that anyone feels like there's been a real loss with Jackson's death - probably because Jackson didn't have, as far as I can tell, real friends or real relationships with anyone outside of his handlers. It's hard to get emotional at the death of someone about whom so little is actually known personally. I feel like people would have been just as emotional if asked how they felt about Beethoven's death in the 1820s. "Yeah, it's really sad, he was very influential ..." But those words ring incredibly empty given the magnitude of his accomplishments, and how people *should* be reacting, I think.
As for the dude himself, I kinda just feel sorry for him. On one hand, the media made him into a musical Howard Hughes; on the other, he didn't do himself any favors with the decisions he made. He undoubtedly surrounded himself with people who wanted only to take advantage of him and give him bad advice, but ultimately he was responsible for his own actions and decisions. He could/should have just walked away from it all and lived by his own "leave me alone" credo.
Was he a musical genius? I don't think so. His (terrific) material in the Jackson Five was written by others. As far as "Thriller" goes as an album and phenomenon, well ... right place, right time. MTV was an emerging "big deal", and Jackson propelled the artform of the music video into the stratosphere. "Thriller" itself is a fantastic song and still my favorite video of all time. "Beat It" crossed genres thanks to Eddie Van Halen and the more aggressive rock style. But there were some forgettable tracks, too, and the albums that followed weren't nearly as good as far as I'm concerned (though I'll be the first to admit that my musical tastes changed rapidly in the mid/late 1980s).
A talented guy? No doubt. The greatest entertainer in history? Not to me.
But to each his own. All I know is this: the media that created the monster that became Jacksonmania and helped turn the musician into a mysterious, unfortunate man-child who lived under constant public scrutiny (the oxygen chamber! the plastic surgery!) and who for the longest time hadn't been in the public eye for his actual talents but for the side-show that was his private life has now, once again, descended into a feeding frenzy with Jackson at the center of it all. Even in death, the guy doesn't seem to have earned any dignity.
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