Ambivalence. It has long been a friend of mine. Ask anyone that knows me. What I'm feeling ambivalent about today is, of course, Michael Jackson. I thought he was exactly my age but he was 2 or 3 years younger than me. I remember when I was very, very young, seeing him on the TV. He was sooo cute! He could sing and dance and he made you think his world was wonderful. Like it should have been but evidently wasn't. His songs have lasted through the decades and still give me a chill when I hear some of them. Later, as he aged, he still seemed pretty fabulous to me, even though I am at heart a rock n' roll person.His music transcended the boundaries in a way that lots of others have not been able to do. I would rather have my toe nails pulled out than have one small lyric from Celine Dion, as an example. I even bought a copy of Thriller and to this day, it hangs around on the shelf with Neil Young and the Grateful Dead. Yet, as time went on, his weird side started showing and it was with a sense of revulsion that we saw what happens to some children brought up in such rarefied atmospheres. Hell, grown ups can't seem to weather the waves of fame without getting crazy, as we see time and again. Listening to the hours of broadcast folks, talking about his mourning of his childhood starts to sound a little trite. Lots of people had bad upbringings but they didn't cling to it forever. They got on with life and lived it fully without molesting little children and trying to justify it on a daily basis. All the money he used to buy parents and keepers off could have been used for shrinks and therapy that helped him and kept him from screwing up more and more children. We will never know how many children were sacrificed for his misery, but I'll bet we hear lots more about it now than we ever have before.
So, I am ambivalent about Michael Jackson. So talented, so fragile and, in his own way, such a predator. I'll never forget the little guy, singing and dancing circles around his brothers in the sixties. Nor will I forget the pictures of him going to trials, holding his own kids out of windows and skittering through crowds in disguises. It's sad no matter how you look at it.
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