I know it's been a while since I've posted, and we'll catch up. Obviously, Michael Jackson's death is huge news. I'm not one to get wrapped up in celebrity gossip, but I was on the road in Ohio when he died, and I had nothing better to do but watch the story as it was unfolding. I ended up learning something about myself.
When I oringally heard that he was dead, I was watching a financial show that I watch every night - Mad Money with Jim Cramer - and I was pretty mad that they interrupted my show for celebrity news. I actually thought to myself "he was a perverted freak, he's dead now, don't care." However, because I had nothing better to do (and that was all that was on almost every channel), I watched.
Over the course of the night, I became saddened. Not because he was dead - I didn't know the guy, I wasn't even a fan. I became saddened when I realized how truly sad his life was from the beginning. After a small amount of research on my part, I discovered how he became like he was - he was mentally and physically abused as a kid, he was essentially raised by a corporation and exploited every day of his life, he broke his nose while rehearsing as a teenager (which led to his first nose jobs which never healed right which led to more of them), he had a skin condition called vitiligo which made him lose all pigment in his skin (I've actually known a couple of people with this condition; hell, I dated one) and he was actually acquitted of child molestation charges after his criminal trial. Yeah, the guy made some weird decisions. But he was so messed up in the head from not being allowed to be a kid and from not being able to trust anyone around him, that I can see how it could happen.
What made me even more sad was realizing that I was actually a part of the problem. I believed what I saw on TV - that he bleached his skin to become white, that he was guilty of molesting kids despite being acquitted, that he was just a freak. I learned that I'm not exempt from the "group think" and that I can be pretty mean, just like those people that I try not to be like. I don't know the hard facts either way. What I do know is that he was a pretty talented guy from an early age and that he was entertaining.
