Michael Jackson is Dead

I honestly can hardly believe it. I know I have said before on this blog that I sometimes don't understand why celebrity deaths even matter to me, but they do. And this one in particular. I posted this picture also because that is how I remember him most from my childhood.

Michael Jackson was a man who shaped the music and dance of an entire generation... and beyond. His movements were liquid - smooth, flowing and so fast and fluid. He was the definition of "cool" and "smooth" to me growing up. My sister and I had the original 'Thriller' album and we wore that shit OUT. I can vividly remember sitting in our tiny little yellow house on Watson Street dancing to this music and running around screaming on the "scary" part of Thriller... I couldn't have been more than 8 years old. (I had to look it up, but that album was released in 1982, so at the time it came out, I was just 5 years old.)

Reading comments all over the web, there are mixed views on his death, just like there were on his life. Very few people can deny his amazing talent as an artist, but some people still are angry with him and believe that he molested little children. I don't know what the truth is, and now that he is gone, he is surely answering to a higher power than you or me or any one of the billions of people here on this Earth. There's no doubt the man had... issues. Hell, can you honestly sit there and tell me that if you were as famous as he was from the time you were a small child, and if you had a father that constantly was abusive, telling you you were too black and ugly, and if you were one of the most recognized faces in the ENTIRE world, you would have handled it much better than he did? Of course, most people say, "Yes, I would have been a better person." But the truth is, you can't judge another man until you've walked in his shoes. And let me tell you, if you walked in MJ's shoes, you would have been a freak too, I can almost guarantee it.

Watching his personal demise over the years has been a great sadness. So many people took advantage of him over the years, and he was forced to endure so much media attention and public stoning. I personally felt that if some of the people accusing him of hurting their children were more interested in civil lawsuits instead of criminal, there was definitely something fishy going on there. Everyone has their own opinion of what type of man Michael Jackson truly was, but it is my own personal belief that the man was a troubled genius who never hurt a child. He loved children more than anything. He just hated himself and I believe that he would have given anything to have his childhood back to live over again. Only God and the people who accused him truly know what happened, but people, when you allow your child to go into the home of someone accused of such crimes, you take those chances. Not that any child ever deserves to be molested or abused, but seriously? Parents who willingly allow their child to spend the night with an accused and trouble extremely rich man without a chaperone and then suddenly come up with their own accusations about him and want to only file civil suit against him... those parents are more whacked than MJ ever was. Just my two cents.

I didn't know Michael Jackson, of course. Not personally. As G has told me, he's not in my "monkey sphere". But I loved him. He made a difference in my life. I truly wanted to see him make a comeback and overcome the hate and sorrow and pain of his troubled life. I can only pray that in death - which has come way too soon for such an amazing genius - he has finally found the peace that he so desperately sought here in life. My prayers are with his family and his three children... and with his fans all over the world who today are in mourning for the passing of a truly great man.