Michael Joseph Jackson passed away yesterday after suffering cardiac arrest. He was 50 years old. An often misunderstood and wildly famous performer who helped transform.... oh who the fuck am I kidding? Jacko was a weird fucking dude and I'm not all torn up about the fact that he's dead. I don't care how you want to explain away his creepiness, it doesn't mean he wasn't. That whole family is fucked to be honest with you and sure it probably goes back to being super stars when they were young and having an overbearing and abusive father as a manager, but again -- fucking crazies. And some of the shit that he's pulled over the course of the last two decades does not get excused because he grew up hard and is now dead.
Back when MJ was black he was the shit. No one is going to argue that point. He revolutionized popular music and Thriller is the coolest music video that has ever been made. The man made billions of dollars performing around the world and befriended some of the richest, most powerful people on the planet. You know many of his songs by heart and he seemed to come off as a gentle human being. By most accounts, just about anyone that knew him loved him. But let's be frank, shall we?
I don't care how much money you have, some times you can actually be too eccentric. (Yes I know. That concept is kind of oxymoronic.) MJ should have been institutionalized, not allowed to live a life of extreme extravagance that even the king of pop ultimately couldn't afford at Neverland. No, instead he was pimped out by those whom I assume he trusted as the show pony that he was. I do not lack compassion but when someone who needs help doesn't seek it and is allowed to slowly and very publicly self destruct, I find it hard to empathize.
Britney Spears went nuts two years ago so the court basically took away her rights as an adult, and now she's I guess at least doing better. Jackson, on the other hand, was like a human train wreck that everyone was so enthralled with that they didn't really want to stop it. It was one publicity stunt after another with him whether it was the plastic surgeries, marrying Lisa Marie Presley, obsessively hiding his children from the public thus causing people to seek them out more, or using a surrogate to father a third child that he would then dangle over a balcony. (I know that the baby dangling thing to Jacko is like the fans throwing snow balls at Santa Clause thing is to Philly sports fans. It happened once and no one ever lets the Philly crowd live it down so whatever... fuck him, he's a psycho for dangling the baby.) Jackson was just a living, breathing freak show for almost two decades and no one did a damn thing about it but point the cameras in his general direction.
He became addicted to painkillers in 1993 (Wikipedia is awesome, by the way) and it was that addiction that it would appear was a major contributing factor to his death. But guess what? He got addicted to the painkillers and anti-depressants because of the pressure put on him by the fact that people found out that he had, at the very least, questionable, and at the most, criminal relationships with young children. Some actions are inexcusable. When you are a grown man you can't just play with little boys because you didn't get to have a childhood. Just because you have the resources to relive something you didn't get to doesn't always mean that you should. Of course the parents of some of these kids should be blamed just as well by subjecting their children to what was obviously an unstable man interested in an inappropriate friendship (for lack of a better word) with the kids. But honestly, who lives their life the way he lived his and gets away with it? Yeah, poor Michael Jackson was just a misunderstood boy trapped in a man's body. But he was a man none the less and as such should not have been afforded the acceptance and encouragement of having the same fanciful nature as a young child.
When you to live your life as a side show I just can't find it in me to feel bad for you when the whole thing begins to collapse around you. Michael Jackson was a creation of his own making. While tragic, the events of his life were not at all anyone's fault but his own. His untimely death at 50, likewise, was caused by his own habits and behaviors and he should not be martyred (as sure he will be) as another casualty of fame and excess.
Back when MJ was black he was the shit. No one is going to argue that point. He revolutionized popular music and Thriller is the coolest music video that has ever been made. The man made billions of dollars performing around the world and befriended some of the richest, most powerful people on the planet. You know many of his songs by heart and he seemed to come off as a gentle human being. By most accounts, just about anyone that knew him loved him. But let's be frank, shall we?
I don't care how much money you have, some times you can actually be too eccentric. (Yes I know. That concept is kind of oxymoronic.) MJ should have been institutionalized, not allowed to live a life of extreme extravagance that even the king of pop ultimately couldn't afford at Neverland. No, instead he was pimped out by those whom I assume he trusted as the show pony that he was. I do not lack compassion but when someone who needs help doesn't seek it and is allowed to slowly and very publicly self destruct, I find it hard to empathize.
Britney Spears went nuts two years ago so the court basically took away her rights as an adult, and now she's I guess at least doing better. Jackson, on the other hand, was like a human train wreck that everyone was so enthralled with that they didn't really want to stop it. It was one publicity stunt after another with him whether it was the plastic surgeries, marrying Lisa Marie Presley, obsessively hiding his children from the public thus causing people to seek them out more, or using a surrogate to father a third child that he would then dangle over a balcony. (I know that the baby dangling thing to Jacko is like the fans throwing snow balls at Santa Clause thing is to Philly sports fans. It happened once and no one ever lets the Philly crowd live it down so whatever... fuck him, he's a psycho for dangling the baby.) Jackson was just a living, breathing freak show for almost two decades and no one did a damn thing about it but point the cameras in his general direction.
He became addicted to painkillers in 1993 (Wikipedia is awesome, by the way) and it was that addiction that it would appear was a major contributing factor to his death. But guess what? He got addicted to the painkillers and anti-depressants because of the pressure put on him by the fact that people found out that he had, at the very least, questionable, and at the most, criminal relationships with young children. Some actions are inexcusable. When you are a grown man you can't just play with little boys because you didn't get to have a childhood. Just because you have the resources to relive something you didn't get to doesn't always mean that you should. Of course the parents of some of these kids should be blamed just as well by subjecting their children to what was obviously an unstable man interested in an inappropriate friendship (for lack of a better word) with the kids. But honestly, who lives their life the way he lived his and gets away with it? Yeah, poor Michael Jackson was just a misunderstood boy trapped in a man's body. But he was a man none the less and as such should not have been afforded the acceptance and encouragement of having the same fanciful nature as a young child.
When you to live your life as a side show I just can't find it in me to feel bad for you when the whole thing begins to collapse around you. Michael Jackson was a creation of his own making. While tragic, the events of his life were not at all anyone's fault but his own. His untimely death at 50, likewise, was caused by his own habits and behaviors and he should not be martyred (as sure he will be) as another casualty of fame and excess.
I think the word you were looking for is "diddling"
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