Blaspheme
I am not, nor have I ever been, a Michael Jackson fan. There. I’ve said it. Or typed it. Whatever.
He had a couple of songs I liked, but not enough to ever buy an album or CD (although I do have a Michael Jackson CD… I won it via a radio station contest). He was a good dancer and was entertaining to watch, but I don’t recall ever making a concerted effort to tune in when he was on television.
He was a musician and a dancer. An entertainer.
And his bizarreness kept him in the limelight and elevated him to ultra-celebrity status, even when he wasn’t working. The extreme plastic surgeries and make-up, the molestation charges, his denial that there was anything at all improper or untoward with a grown man sleeping in the same bed with young kids… it was all just too creepy and, frankly, it made me like him even less. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know… abused as a kid, tortured artist, whatever. Dude was seriously odd and had more than enough money to seek professional help.
From what I’ve seen on television… and good grief you can’t turn the television on without seeing/hearing something about Jackson’s death… it appears that perhaps Jackson may have died the same way as his ex-wife’s father, Elvis Presley. Prescription drug overdose.
Sad? Yeah. But not nearly as sad as when entertainers die in a manner that was not of their own doing… Marvin Gaye and John Lennon spring to mind. Or even when they die of natural causes or disease, as opposed to murder.
But, hey, what do I know? I never understood the cult-like following Jackson had in the first place.
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June 29th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
The only way MJ had any effect on my life was because “Thriller” was the first (and only album of his) album I ever bought. Of course, at the same time, I also picked up Duran Duran’s “Seven and the Ragged Tiger,” the Thompson Twins’ “Into the Gap,” and the Cars’ “Heartbeat City.” It was 1984, what did you expect?
I reacted to the news of his passing the same way I reacted when I heard that a co-worker’s father-in-law had passed away over the weekend: “Gosh, that’s too bad for her…but I really don’t care.” I mean, how could I possibly care? (Never mind that I think the people in my department have some kind of weird obsession with death. Any time any member of anyone’s family dies, whether it’s immediate or very distant, around goes the sympathy card with donation envelope. After the fourth or fifth dead grandmother I just stopped caring, especially when it was a co-worker I barely knew. I just call it my inner heartless bitch/curmudgeon expressing herself.)
I predict the first album of his new work to be released posthumously will be in…October. Definitely before the end of the year. The man is going to be the next Tupac Shakur.
June 29th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
I feel for his friends and family. Losing someone sucks. But I don’t subscribe to the “Michael Jackson was the best thing since sliced bread” theory. And I don’t think his passing warrants the constant coverage on actual NEWS channels.
As for his kids… maybe they’ll get to be raised by someone a little less bizarre?
Frankly, knowing what an ultra-celebrity he was, I think it was pretty selfish of him to have/adopt/buy children in the first place, knowing that paparazzi and even the “mainstream” media would be hounding them for probably the rest of their lives.