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Originally Posted by Martian
Michael deserves respect for his contributions to the music world. He was a great performer, and I respect him for the things he did in that regard.
Regarding his personal issues, they were more tragic than anything. Everything that swirled around him painted a picture of a man who was deeply, fundamentally disturbed. I never got the impression that he was as depraved or evil as some made him out to be, though. Naive, perhaps. Having never met him, naturally, it's difficult for me to make any such claims in an authoritative fashion.
The abruptness of this heightens the impact.
He'll be missed.
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I find it interesting that when the topic of Michael Jackson comes up, I frequently find myself in the position of defending him for this very reason.
I have a really hard time believing he was a bad person... just severely disturbed. And not in the child molester sense, but in the incredibly naïve and unable to function socially sense. Everyone recognized that he was not mentally healthy, and that made it easy to see him as a child molester. The thing is, I don't think he was mentally together enough to actually avoid being caught and convicted, and he certainly wasn't given special treatment.
It seems to me that he was a victim of his own massive success, combined with being the victim of a pretty messed up family. His song, "
Childhood," in particular gives a crushing view into the pain that was in Michael Jackson's mind. It's a terribly sad song in the context of his life. He lived his entire life in the spotlight, and he just never learned to deal with it.
---------- Post added at 04:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:47 AM ----------
Andrew Sullivan said it quite well...
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
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There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child. By abuse, I do not mean sexual abuse; I mean he was used brutally and callously for money, and clearly imprisoned by a tyrannical father. He had no real childhood and spent much of his later life struggling to get one. He was spiritually and psychologically raped at a very early age - and never recovered. Watching him change his race, his age, and almost his gender, you saw a tortured soul seeking what the rest of us take for granted: a normal life.
But he had no compass to find one; no real friends to support and advise him; and money and fame imprisoned him in the delusions of narcissism and self-indulgence. Of course, he bears responsibility for his bizarre life. But the damage done to him by his own family and then by all those motivated more by money and power than by faith and love was irreparable in the end. He died a while ago. He remained for so long a walking human shell.
I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy, tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time; and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.
I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours' and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.
I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life. And I pray that such genius will not be so abused again.
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