He was also ill with lupus which caused a pigment disorder, his scalp was scarred where his hair had caught on fire, and he was addicted to painkillers. He had to lighten his skin to even out spotting and wear a wig from a young age. He was a child star abused by his father, and he seemed confused about his sexuality. He was odd-looking and acting as a result, and people of odd appearance and behavior often attract rumours and sometimes unfounded accusations. Particularly those with money. But again, I note that innuendo and rumor aren’t the same as a legal conviction.

And despite all that, Jackson was a very gifted dancer and performer. I was not a big fan of his music when I was a teenager in the 1980s, but I could not deny he was a cultural phenomenon. It is the juxtaposition of the two images of misfit and cultural icon that people find fascinating, probably something Maya Angelou found fascinating. Maybe that is why she decided to write about it.

Even when brilliant writers like Joe S. Harrington and David Keenan show Michael Jackson was no innovator whatsoever in purely musical terms, it is still important to understand the nature of his legacy (something I overlooked reasoning those and similar writers’ arguments). I agree that people today have trouble mourning deeply for the issues that are critical and that many will focus on a person who had a amazing level of visual talent and significant business acumen – together it was capable of making him into a superstar. Even to very conservative outer suburbanites Michael Jackson was a significant force – judging by Thriller’s seven hundred thousand sales amongst a population of fifteen million in Australia. To the young people in these suburbs Jackson’s music was easy entertainment that they could like without effort, and which they will remember forever even without listening to it for a long time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnxGd_zUUjE

Towards the end, there’s some very good thought on grief. Baker talks about how, in indigenous cultures (she studied with an African shaman) they will occasionally conduct public funerals even if no-one has died, because they know it opens up things they need. (I believe Martin Prechtel has talked about something similar in South America.)

That really is ‘mourning without object’ — in any literal sense — but it has a deeper, non-specific and non-rational object which remains valid even if the grief has no definite source.

I believe the Jackson funeral set off things of that kind. I don’t believe the ‘need to grieve’, the instinct for it, even in the absence of full consciousness of events, should be shouted down as pointless. On the contrary, at the unconscious level, it may serve very important purposes.

When you are dealing with Michael Jackson you are dealing with symbols of certain things, and the idea of laying them to rest can be significant on the symbolic level which exists in all of us.

By instantly moving to condemn the (admittedly less than fully conscious) process the mainstream is going through, I feel Sharon’s approach to this question may have missed important aspects of it.

I’m sure no-one is really coming back to this page to look, but I thought it was worthwhile to say.

That interview’s great anyhow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnxGd_zUUjE

Also, Michael Jackson seems to have meant something different to a lot of African-Americans than he did to me or my white peers. I don’t get it, but I trust that they aren’t nuts. Something is there for them that isn’t there for me.