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Letters
to the Editor
Face
Book, My Space,
and Twitter slowed to
a crawl under the search-engine demands from a morally obtuse, but
technically savy community, in search of what passes for enlightenment in
our modern age. The world-wide hysteria surrounding the demise of Michael
Jackson is completely comprehensible to anyone who has read Charles
MacKay's opus, "Extraordinary Popular
Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" (1852).
The
sanitised and sanctified paean from the media and the masses to the
phantasmagoria that was Michael Jackson falls well short of the complete
picture. This portraiture lacks perspective and
verisimilitude; it ignores both Voltaire and Confucius in their
request that we always call things by their proper name --and Oliver
Cromwell's dictum to always paint a person "warts and
all."
If we NEVER speak ill of the dead, history would
be meaningless. That's why in the Catholic Church every candidate
for sainthood has to go past a "devil's advocate" whose job it is to make
the strongest case against
canonisation.
Objectively speaking, Michael Jackson was fairy
floss; like Gertrude Stein's description of Los Angeles: "There is no there
there." His entire life was a cardboard cut out, a cariacature
of a man --a manufactured and monumental myth, a fairy tale for
pre-pubescents.
It falsifies reality to speak of his death as
if some potential greatness had been nipped in the bud. Wacko Jacko's
mystique owes more to the bizarre way he lived than to any
creative attainments.
The mentally-plagued pianist and film
star, Oscar Levant, said: "There is a fine line between
insanity and genius. I have erased that line." So
did Wacko Jacko. Any serious society would long ago have thrown a net over
this bloke.
There's the joke about "Call me a taxi. Okay, you're a
taxi." So Michael had no trouble being any colour
or gender; a perpetual child; a metrosexual; effeminate;
polymorphously perverse; a psychological if not actual castrati ;
abandoning Christianity he became a convert to Islam (placing "his"
children in burkas, and naming one child with the moniker, "Blanket"). Having
no natural core, he didn't know who or what he was. But those of us paying
attention had no difficulty in identifying both the man and the
myth.
Sadly, Jackson was a self-loathing misfit who
thought to turn himself into Diana Ross ...or The Phantom of the Opera
...or Heath Ledger's Joker. Or perhaps
he simply sought to hide away from any possible facial physiognamy
with the brutish patriarch of the Jackson clan. Some have suggested
that Michael endured all those bouts of plastic surgery simply to destroy
any sign of his father in his own face.
It reminds one
of Winston Churchill's old man, Lord Randolph. Upon having a benign
tumor removed, someone commented to leave it to medical science to find
"the only part of
Randolph that was NOT malignant and remove it."
Unfortunately, the malignancy of corruption dissipating
Michael Jackson's inner coherency was too deep below the surface of
his epidermis to respond to the surgeon's
knife.
Michael's
progenitor, the execrable Joe Jackson, who treated the boy like Simon
Legree treated Uncle Tom, said upon Michael's death "We're going to miss the
Superstar." Sickeningly he was incapable of calling the
boy "my child" or "son," just couldn't avoid treating him as a
cash cow
even in death.
Jackson's doctor said
he found him "in bed
with a pulse." I expect he's been found in bed with many
things worse. The "man" was a freak show from Side Show Alley:
Sleeping with either Bubbles the Chimp
or in a Dracula-style casket; attempting to purchase the bones
of The Elephant Man
(despite John Merrick's deformities, at least his head
was "on straight"); and palling around with Elizabeth Taylor. Who
knows? Perhaps as a substitute for Anna Nicole
Smith.
What can Jackson's supporters say in response to
his sleeping with young boys, describing this as "sweet and
charming," as he plyed the youngsters with what he
called "Jesus Juice,"
and more rational people called "Wine." One
such charming episode is thought to have cost him as much as $20 million
in restitution to avoid prosecution.
Does anyone seriously
think this sartorially-challenged King of Pop was an icon?
Unlike Elvis's quite natural movements, Michael's masterbatory
crotch-grabbing and public thrusts were not so much sexy or obscene
as pathetic. T.S. Eliot described it well "This is the way the world
ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."
The
pervasive public sexuality of this age is the product of our permissive
environment. Jackson's predatory perversity was simply part of the
metastasising of the sexualisation of children at younger and younger
ages; such as the Playboy
Magazine produced "Sugar and Spice,"
a book of nude shots of Michael Jackson's later close friend,
Brooke Shields --age 10!
"We Are the
World," sang Michael and his fellow rock musicians.
They were right --if the world is the barroom scene of
convoluted creatures appearing in the first Star Wars flic.
His death is just one more tacky topic for braindead FM radio jocks to
opine upon.
Someone was once asked what we should send into
outer space to best represent the human race; he replied "the entire works of Johann
Sebastian Bach." Are there really people who would rather send
a video clip of Thriller
?
So Elton John call your office;
it's time to light another candle. And if Elton can't make it,
there's always commiserations from that other flake, poser and
humbug, Barack Obama; who sent no condolences to television icon and
Marine combat pilot in WWII and Korea, Ed McMahon, or pay his
respects to the valiant Farah Fawcett, both of whom died the same week as
Michael.
Personally, if I need a
Moonwalk, I'll call Neil
Armstrong
Charles
R. "Chuck" Brooks
Educator/Broadcaster
chuckbrooks1@hotmail.com
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