The King is Dead

In a week that started with the inevitable divorce of Jon and Kate transitioned to the shocking, "tragic" death of Michael Jackson. A lot happened between the two events...Ed McMahon found death to be his only escape from staggering debt, Farrah Fawcett lost her long battle with cancer, and a heroic football coach from Iowa was senselessly shot down in his school's weight room. I don't want to diminish the significance of the three "other" deaths that occurred this/last week, especially that of the football coach, but I don't have time nor the ability to write poignant tributes to a football coach or an actress or a sidekick I really never paid much attention to. All I know is the world is becoming a stupid, stupid place, and it's culminating in people shooting others dead.

Michael Jackson is dead. I debated putting my thoughts into the written form, but after diving in head first and reading gads of "he'll be missed," and "what a treasure," articles from various media sources (ranging from a novelty pop-culture site I frequent due to its up-to-date professional wrestling news--411mania.com--all the way to a pretentious, small liberal newspaper out of the "Greatest City on Earth"--The New York Times) I felt someone had to comment on the coverage of Michael's life rather than Michael himself.

First things first, let's all stop pretending we're going to miss Michael. Or at least let's have all the people who are saying, "OMG, he's gone forever!" stop pretending they are going to miss him. He was around for the last seventeen years and you didn't care. You don't care now either. Some people seem to be overcompensating for the guilt that comes with the death of a punchline by now focusing on the fact he was an unmatched performer.

It's similar to someone saying, "Wouldn't it be hilarious if that person on the bike over there crashed into that garbage can and flipped onto the table of people drinking coffee," only to have the person on the bike over there crash into the garbage can and flip onto the table of people drinking coffee. The joke was merely a diversion of the brain...it did not will the unskilled bicyclist into the accident. The person who thought the crash would be funny shouldn't feel guilty because the crash happened. He didn't cause it. He might feel guilty afterward for giggling when it did happen and it turned out the bicyclist broke his back or his brain or his femur and will never ride a bike again.

All the people who said under their breath, "That sick freak needs to go away," over and over again over the last seventeen years feel bad because now he's forever gone away. To cover that guilt they talk about all the good he's done for entertainment and finally add some brief reflection on his strange, sad life. At the end of each "tribute" you'll find some 'and oh yeahs.' And oh yeah, he was raised by an increasingly failed society. And oh yeah, his father beat him and forced him to be a celebrity at age seven. And oh yeah, some of the greatest psychologists in the world gave their professional opinions that his mind had regressed to that of a ten-year old. And oh yeah, we skipped that point when we vilified him for wanting to hang out with children of the same age. And oh yeah, he was arguably the last great entertainer we will ever see.

That's not to say Michael Jackson's death isn't interesting or that his life isn't fascinating. It very much is. My generation grew up on Michael Jackson. Then, we moved on and let him struggle and described every pedophile as Michael Jackson and giggled giggled because he had a song called Beat It. We reduced his talents to kitsch and nostalgia because a man so strange surely couldn't be so good. That did not compute in our mere human brains. We watched with cursory interest as Michael Jackson staged comeback after comeback and dangled babies out of windows and dressed in traditional female Muslim garb to buy lavish gifts his bank account could not afford and treated monkeys like people. We wanted it to all go away. As we grew up and realized the world really isn't all that great of a place we learned our childhood idols really aren't all that great of people. Regardless of whether or not he had deep-seated psychological problems, it's hard to invest in a grown man who has sleepovers with young boys. That's why my relationship with My Brother has been so strained lately (or as he's known around Ankeny--the King Queen of YMCA Junior High Lock-Ins).

As mentioned, Michael was alive for the last seventeen years. Over those seventeen years the same entertainment industry he helped mold, wrote him off. The "It" rap stars of the day would rather beat their "It" rap girlfriends prior to the Grammy's Michael was no longer invited to than be associated with that "child molester" and "freak." Then he died. Then Twitter (whose world-ending potential is a subject for another day) exploded with messages from celebrities being oh so sad. Did you see Lindsay Lohan was in shock? Oh no! Did you know that some guy from a Jimmy Fallon's house band loved himself some MJ? Did you know every performer who uses bass beats as his/her primary melodic device wouldn't be where he/she was if it weren't for Michael? It's easy to pretend and be sad while you're making a peanut butter sandwich and texting on your cell phone. The same people that could have easily used their fame to help their fame-seeking fallen idol via some sort of collaboration when he was alive, now lament his death.

I hate to say this, but I think John Mayer was the only celebrity who nailed how people felt when they heard the news. It wasn't as much we were going to miss Michael as much as we were going to miss "our childhood sitting around listening to Thriller on the record player" or something like that. This is the first (and maybe one of the only) musician death(s) that has (or will) resonate with my generation. I have several Michael Jackson related memories from growing up.

I remember the time when my family visited my Rich Uncle in Chicago, My Brother and I could each rent one movie to watch while the Adults went out for dinner. My Brother chose Robocop. I chose Michael Jackson's The Making of Thriller VHS. I had never seen it. It scared the absolute bejeezus out of me. Later that night when My Brother and I went to bed I could not sleep. I told him that while I wasn't scared of the zombies, because I knew I could take them if it came down to it, the werewolf freaked me out and could pose a problem.

I remember the time at my old babysitter's house where everyone in the neighborhood sat and watched MJ videos on MTV all day because at 4:00 PM they were going to debut his brand new video (the strangely animated but quite fun "Leave Me Alone"). I remember the time I did this again for the debut of "Black and White." I remember the time I did this again for "Remember the Time." I remember the time the girl across the street and I played MJ's "Bad" and Weird Al's "Fat" back to back to back to back to try and figure out which one came first. We were stupid. I remember the time the same girl across the street and I wished that "Man in the Mirror" was on Side A of the "Bad" album with the rest of the good songs. We then decided that he put it as the first song of Side B so it would be easy to rewind the tape to the beginning of the song because it was so good. I remember the time I watched a Simpsons episode and saw Michael Jackson and Bart Simpson write what is still the best birthday song ever written. I remember the time I tried to dance a spin move in my parent's living room wearing a button-up shiny red jacket. I would end the spin move by ripping open the jacket to reveal my bare belly, similar to Michael Jackson in his "Dirty Diana" concert video. I remember the time I got excited when Dangerous came out. I remember the time no one ever felt that way again.

Doubling back, will any musician make us feel this way again? There are a few lingering 80's era stars that are true legends--Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Madonna--but none of their candles burned as tall and bright as MJ's. Besides, they all seem poised to die normal deaths, old and anti-climactic. They won't die at age 50, suddenly practicing their asses off for one more chance at a comeback with only agents and background dancers they just met and don't know as their only company.

Call it a lost childhood if you will, but I think Michael represents something different we all lost along the way. He reminds us of times we didn't have mortgages or jobs or savings accounts, and we didn't have to read the newspaper or drink coffee or get the car fixed. Michael made a whole ton of mistakes between 1992 and his death, but so did we. Since our generation is incapable of reflection, we're using MJ's death as a lightning rod for our own "what ifs."

It's almost appropriate that the week he died Jon and Kate Gosselin, reality parents of eight children, filed for divorce. MJ grew up as a star in the seventies and the eighties then the media decided to change how news was reported/created and and they destroyed him in the nineties. They've used this model for every celebrity that has come along since. They tell us to like them for a short time, then they tell us why we shouldn't, and then they crush and pound and destroy the likeability of anyone famous. That's what they do. It took over twenty years for MJ to get crushed. It took Jon and Kate about three years.

I'm not here to say that Jon and Kate are anywhere near as relevant as Michael Jackson, but I do think there are eight more kids out there who are destined to be victims of the media circus, tabloids, and Go America's lust for dirt on people. I keep hearing that "Jon and Kate asked for it by being on TV." What the hell? Just because people agree to be on a television show (exploiting their kids or not), does not mean they deserve to have the media pressure their lives to ruin. Why does it have to be that way?

In my mind Michael Jackson owns the top five music videos ever created. Nothing else even comes close. We could have had seventeen more years of entertaining videos and impossibly hypnotic dance moves. We could have, but we don't. We didn't want it. We wanted to be more entertained by the tabloid coverage and the possible going-ons of his personal life. Why can't it be as simple as someone who is entertaining releases something entertaining and we are all entertained? Why does it have to be more? Why does it have to mean more?

It doesn't. But we'll probably continue to make it that way.