Michael Jackson

The king is dead (in case you somehow hadn’t heard) and I think he would be pleased by the outpouring of coverage and consumption that has followed in the wake of his passing. Michael Jackson, by his own admission, just wanted to be loved…albeit loved on his own sometimes eccentric terms…and the breathless (and all too often lurid) media coverage, the lionization by fans (both those who stuck by the self-anointed “king of pop” through thick and thin and those who fell by the wayside along the way), and the booming sales of his music would have doubtlessly pleased him to no end.

In much of the world…and especially here in America…we regard our celebrities as royalty (something that proves a double edged sword for those put up on the pedestals) and no one reveled…and reviled…that status more than Michael Jackson.

His life was magical, strange, amazing, sad, imaginative, delusional, and, yes, thrilling…his death is something of a circus. But that’s par for the course and, again, I don’t think that he would see this as a bad thing.

The king is dead…and when all is said and done…when the circus has left town and the stranger aspects of his rollercoaster life have receded into the background…we’ll be left with the magic he strove so hard to present…with the astonishing dancing, with the quirky but entertaining videos and little films, with the often wondrous music. And when all is said and done, that’s cool with me.