The summer of Jacko

My say on MJ. I'll start by stating the obvious, he was an exceedingly talented boy, and a very screwed-up man. He could sing and he could dance. There were better singers and better dancers, but perhaps not anyone who combined them quite as well as he did. By many accounts, he was a pedophile, addicted to painkillers and plastic surgery and was 500 million dollars in debt. I shudder to think that he was anyone's hero or role-model. He was emblematic of all the excesses of our society; a creature who mirrored the very worst in us, our vanity, our greed, our acquisitiveness, our self-medicating indulgence, our narcissism, our immaturity, even as he sang about love and racial tolerance. In the end, he became our monster, and like all monsters that are really reflections of our worst tendencies, we secretly want to destroy them even as we embrace them. I am saddened. Not for his loss but for the future of his progeny, and for what awaits his three kids too.