One day I’ll have to sort out why I always felt for Michael Jackson, but not for his contemporary (born just two weeks before him), the pop star who calls herself Madonna, whose popularity, like his, derives, in large part from her ability to put on a great show. Both have enjoyed tremendous success in their professional lives (yet her stardom doesn’t even come close to rivaling his), yet never seemed to have found happiness off stage.
A friend told me yesterday that he once heard King of Pop had say he only felt comfortable on stage. No wonder. Groomed from his earliest childhood to be a public performer, he likely wasn’t equipped to do much else. He just didn’t know how to interact with his fellows in private.
All that said, he and he alone is responsible for the mess that his life became, just as Miss Ciccone is for hers. My sympathy for him would be more complete if he did not have any children, taking responsibility for their upbringing by bringing them into this world (or into his care, as with his youngest).
Many have called his life a tragedy. And in some sense it was, even if we rely on the original context. Like a Greek tragic hero, he fell from grace due in large part to a flaw in his character. For the pop star, it was to seek his solace on stage and to ignore the imperative of making changes in his private life. A true tragic hero must recognize his flaw, understanding how his own failure to correct it brought about his downfall.
And the recognition lay in the lyrics of one of his best songs:
I’m Starting With The Man In The Mirror
I’m Asking Him To Change His Ways
And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place
(If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place)
Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change
But, he, alas, sought the wrong kind of change. He worked on changing his appearance and not, to borrow the lyrics of another song, “the mess that’s inside.” He tried to derive satisfaction by crafting a particular public image and soaking up the adulation of his fans. Perhaps, he thought money could buy him happiness and peace of mind. Had he realized otherwise, he might have lived a healthier, longer and more personally fulfillling life.
His life becomes yet another example of the maxim that money doesn’t buy you love—or give your life meaning. Worldly success and financial good fortune do not necessarily yield personal happiness (though they certainly can help).
And so I feel for this man who never seems to have lived. And yet to his slightly elder contemporary, I am cold, as if she is more the author of her misery than was her thriteen-day junior.
I’m sorry–what flaw was that? I’m not sure that enjoying children is a flaw. I don’t know of anything else that he did. I’m sure you must have evidence for some tragic flaw that I don’t know about. Please explain.
I’m not sure it was a character flaw so much as something was wrong with him in the head. Besides his indiscretion with youngsters, the guy turned himself into a circus sideshow, what with mutilating himself, acting bizarrely in public, living in La La Land, and so on.
All of the interviews I’ve seen of him made me think he was developmentally delayed. I don’t think he had the capacity to be a stable, independent adult. That’s what made his life such a sad mess.
The good thing is that maybe now his kids will have a chance to experience some sort of normalcy.
Wow–that’s exactly the way gay people are described by reparative therapists!
Reports showed Jackson giving this account of himself:
I always concede it’s possible that Jackson never sexually molested anyone. Possible. But even if he never did, the way he carried out his interest in children was still inappropriate. At best, he used them as props for his own therapy. That would be the best realistic interpretation. The remaining realistic interpretations go downhill from there.
Wow–that’s exactly the way gay people are described by reparative therapists!
Not sure I follow you there. What do reparative therapists have to do with MJ parading his children around in shrouds for the better part of their life, and naming them Ladle and Bookshelf or whatever, not to mention what ILC quoted above?
I was a “fan” of Michael Jackson, not overly crazy, nor did I hate him.
But Madonna is amazing. How has her life become a “mess”? If you mean by her divorce, besides a few immediate (tabloid-reported) swipes, it was pretty non-messy. In terms of celebrities, Madonna seems a lot more down to earth than most.
I call that one big fat excuse. Many people have had much worse childhoods and guess what, they grew up to be responsible honorable adults.
I’m not buying it, there is something very wrong with this man. Aside from molesting children, he cheated and reneged on many of his business contracts as well. Always got a pass, people always making excuses for him. Maybe all of those people are responsible for enabling this man to become the monster inside as well as out.
that much body mutilation isn’t normal by any account.
Exactly what did Michael Jackson do that we haven’t seen drag queens do on any average Saturday night? Why is his extreme behavior more reprehensible than, say, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Ozzy Osborne, Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson,Mick Jagger, etc., etc.? Where, Leah, is the actual evidence that he molested children? Where, ILC, is the evidence that he slept in bed with children? Do you believe every celebrity interview? Why did no one at the trial corroborate that Jackson slept in the same bed? Why did Jackson say under oath, not in an interview, that he never slept with a child? Why were there no more accusers?
I hate, hate, hate the gay community for their blindness to anyone’s problems other than their own. If people were saying these things about Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepard, Oscar Wilde, Rosie O’Donnell (who took baths naked with her foster children), Ellen Degeneres, Paula Poundstone, Jodie Foster, etc. etc. ETC., you all would be up in arms. You’d realize that anyone who accused someone like, say, Elton John (who had strippers dress up as Cub Scouts at one of his parties), of inappropriate behavior with underage boys, that the accuser was just after the money.
Good job, Leah. Now you know what it feels like to be on the other side of false rumors and innuendo. How does it feel to be the oppressor?
If you can seriously ask that question after I provided direct quotations of Michael Jackson not only confessing he did so, but defending or practically boasting of it, clearly it is a question with no possible answer that you would ever be willing to believe.
Please follow this link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/28/60minutes/main590381.shtm
ED BRADLEY: As — as we sit here today, do you still think that it’s acceptable to share your bed with children?
MICHAEL JACKSON: Of course. Of course. Why not? If you’re gonna be a pedophile, if you’re gonna be Jack the Ripper, if you’re gonna be a murderer, it’s not a good idea. That I’m not. That’s how we were raised. And I met — I didn’t sleep in the bed with the child. Even if I did, it’s okay. I slept on the floor. I give the bed to the child.l
Michael Jackson did not sleep in the same bed with children. There was nothing he did that the average camp counselor does not do. Again, it might be odd, but, as he says, he grew up in a small house where people–including family friends–sleep in close proximity with children.
Nice hand-wringing, Ash. Regardless of whether Michael Jackson was a molester, he definitely had a bizarre and inappropriate relationship with children.
And if Michael Shepherd pretended to live in a space ship, surgeried his face until he looked like one of them gray aliens, and asked his visitors to play Anal Probe with him, I would doubt his sanity. Just as I doubt Michael Jackson’s.
“Bizarre and inappropriate”–Are you talking about Pride week? Adam Lambert? John Waters movies? Wet t-shirt night at the Cock ‘n’ Bull? When did “bizarre and inappropriate” become an insult in the gay community? Most drag queens pride themselves on their bizarre inappropriateness, and we celebrate their Stonewall day as a time of liberation.
If you want bizarre and inappropriate, I think Rosie’s behavior with her foster daughter was bizarre and inappropriate. No one accused her of molestation. What about all those parents who bring their kids to Pride parades? I think Paula Poundstone has kind of a weird record with kids. So does Woody Allen. And Mark Foley. Yet they don’t get the level of vitriol Michael Jackson gets.
But it’s apparently important to you to believe that Michael Jackson is a pedophile. It is important to Mormons to believe gays are pedophiles. Facts aren’t all that important to either of you. Enjoy your belief and the pleasure it gives you. I don’t feel the need to think of myself as morally superior to Michael Jackson. But I support those people, like you, who do.
And you know that for a fact because….????? You are secretly him?
Ash: I NEVER wanna go to whatever camp you went to, as a child. I mean that. I hope none of my nieces, nephews, future great-nieces and nephews ever go there either.
I see that the Reeeeverend Jacksonnnnn has high-tailed it to LA to get his ugly mug on camera. Pathetic.
Jacob Weisberg in Slate has an interesting take on this pathetic person:
People tend to throw up hands at Michael Jackson’s multifarious bizarreness. But is it really so strange? The boy was forced to work by a cruel and physically abusive father starting at the age of 7. (If he’d been sent into a factory or coal mine, instead of onstage, we’d have more compassion for him.) As a boy, he was denied what even most abused and underprivileged children have: school, friends, and play.
http://www.slate.com/id/2120889/
La Rochefoucauld wrote the famous maxim: “Hypocrisie est un hommage que la vice rend à la vertu.” (“Hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue.”)
Michael Jackson was one messed up human being. He opted for the bizarre, which in and of itself, is a vice. I can not call him a hypocrite, because I do not know that he preached one standard and practiced another.
However, those who choose to castigate Michael Jackson for his style of life had best look to their own house first.
An honest man struggles with his honesty. The Judeo-Christian ethic recognizes that we all give in to vice. However, atonement and an earnest effort to overcome our failings is our pathway to salvation and the ethic demands it.
I have little, if anything, to say to the moral relativist. That person has drawn up his own boundaries so as to avoid huge amounts of “responsibility” to combat his vices. The fallen, after all, have nowhere to fall.
Without the Judeo-Christian ethic, we all become willing victims of our vices and pay scant attention to the virtues. It is easy to be a spectator and call out those who are hypocrites to their values, all the while enjoying the security of knowing you can not violate standards you have not set for yourself.
Michael Jackson is in short supply of actions we can point to as wonderful examples of role modeling. He was consumed by his greed, vanity, and cowardice. Those who enabled his vices were simply acting on their own vices.
Now he joins all those who pushed well beyond decorum and walked on the edges of indecency. Nothing can save him from himself. His music and dance talent may live for a long, long time, but he will never escape being a freak.
Just to put this out there–if I wanted to make a million dollars right now, I’d claim to have seen an extremely thin person in a mask escaping out the back of the MJ mansion while the ambulance was in the front. Meaning–the next phase will be the Great Michael Jackson Death Hoax in which people start making money by claiming to see MJ. There will be a theory that he faked his death to escape his bills and legal troubles. People will find all sorts of mysterious coincidences to back up this theory. You heard it here first.
Fag.
There will be a theory that he faked his death to escape his bills and legal troubles. People will find all sorts of mysterious coincidences to back up this theory. You heard it here first.
Well, it happened with Elvis and Jim Morrison. Wouldn’t surprise me at all.
“Bizarre and inappropriate”–Are you talking about Pride week? Adam Lambert? John Waters movies? Wet t-shirt night at the Cock ‘n’ Bull? When did “bizarre and inappropriate” become an insult in the gay community? Most drag queens pride themselves on their bizarre inappropriateness, and we celebrate their Stonewall day as a time of liberation.
If you want bizarre and inappropriate, I think Rosie’s behavior with her foster daughter was bizarre and inappropriate. No one accused her of molestation. What about all those parents who bring their kids to Pride parades? I think Paula Poundstone has kind of a weird record with kids. So does Woody Allen. And Mark Foley. Yet they don’t get the level of vitriol Michael Jackson gets.
Yep, all bizarre stuff. However, if you combined the bizarreness of the people you mentioned here and elsewhere in this thread, Michael Jackson still comes out more bizarre.
As for the molestation, the evidence isn’t there as much for the others as it is for Jackson.
I have little, if anything, to say to the moral relativist. That person has drawn up his own boundaries so as to avoid huge amounts of “responsibility” to combat his vices.
Heliotrope, I believe that is true of all persons. Even the ones who don’t consider themselves moral relativists.
It is easy to be a spectator and call out those who are hypocrites to their values
I agree with you that a person who sets standards for themselves will sometimes fail. No problem with that. It’s when they call out others and want punishment meted out on them when the others fail, but somehow don’t want to mete out the punishment for themselves.