Sadly, and it's hard to escape what happened to Michael Jackson as even today I was listening to "Thriller" with a friend while working out at the gym, it's reported that Michael Jackson death was a homicide. The L.A. County Coroner reports that Jackson was given a lethal combination of drugs by his doctor Conrad Murray, but also that another doctor Arnie Klein may be involved, too.
Terrible.
We have to give the man his due: Michael Jackson was - beyond a shadow of a doubt - a great artist whose recorded legacy will endure for decades, maybe even a century or more. But an examination of his life is riddled with questions of all that might have been; all that should have been. It is more than likely that this was a severely mentally ill human being who never sought the treatment he so desperately needed; surrounded by fawning sycophants who enabled his sickness by constantly reassuring him that he could do no wrong. As John Lennon once said in the same context about Elvis Presley, another victim of the excesses of fame: "It's always the courtiers that kill the king".
ReplyDeleteThe sad, inescapable truth is that for reasons we will probably never be able to fully understand, his talent and his career were ultimately wasted. Like Charlie Parker, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland and Lenny Bruce before him, his brilliance as an artist would be overshadowed by severe, psychological torment and an unexplainable desire for self-destruction. Therein lies the real, unspeakable tragedy of Michael Jackson.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY