R.I.P., Michael Jackson

By Jennifer J. Foster

I couldn’t believe the news this afternoon.

Michael Jackson is dead.

I know I’m not alone in this surreal feeling I’m having as we watch the news and the tributes to the King of Pop.

Because of Michael Jackson’s two-part career—one part child star, one part worldwide entertainment phenomenon—just about everyone over the age of 16 has knowledge of, or at least experience with, Jackson and the way he changed the music and entertainment industries forever.

But for my two eldest daughters, ages 7 and 4, the news reels and B-roll tonight offered them their first exposure to Jackson.

Their comments were interesting.

They wanted to know what happened to him.

We talked about drugs.

Seeing photos of him later in life, they first asked whether he was a boy or a girl. Then, seeing photos of him as a child, they asked who that person was; they seemed perplexed as I explained that that, too, was Michael Jackson.

We talked about plastic surgery.

After a while, they began asking why the news was talking so much about him. I told them about his career and how famous he was. The eldest girl said, “He’s not more famous than Hannah Montana!“

To which I replied, “You know how famous Hannah Montana is? Take that and multiply it by about a million. Then you know the kind of fame we’re talking about.“

So they began to pay more attention to the video clips. The verdict from my four-year-old: “Well, he is a pretty good singer. And he does have good moves.“

Which spurred the seven-year-old to ask, “Mommy, did Michael Jackson win ‘American Idol?‘“

I marveled at the parallel she drew between AI and fame. And then I marvelled at the disconnect.

“No, honey. Michael Jackson was THE American idol,“ I said.

I don’t know the real story behind the allegations that clouded Jackson’s later years. But this much is irrefutable: Rarely, if ever, has the force of one man’s talent, vision and performance ability had so much impact for so long. Jackson pioneered the concept of the music video as art; his dance moves, frequently copied but never truly duplicated, are the stuff of legend; he gave away millions to some 40 different charities. Yet his personal life was riddled with bizarre, sometimes disturbing, curiosities, and the drugs that had once helped him to function slowly choked him of his strength.

The only real parallel to the King of Pop is, of course, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll—Elvis Presley. It is a sad reality that, in death, Jackson appears to have developed another parallel with his counterpart in enduring fame.

But time has burnished Elvis’s legacy in music, somewhat glossing over the drugs and the personal failures to emphasize only the fairytale story of unknown guitar picker to international sensation and cultural phenomenon. And so I hope it will be with Michael Jackson.

May his enduring symbol be the glove, not the mask.

R.I.P., Michael Jackson.

UPDATE: Check out the front page of Friday’s Los Angeles Times. This is why people still save newspapers for their children.