Which Man to Mourn?

In a way, that's what anyone who wants to comment on Michael Jackson's career, life and passing has to deal with: Which Michael Jackson to remember?

Pay homage to the gifted performer? Recoil at the man who's extremely likely to have been some kind of predator? Shake your head at the warped fellow he was, predator or no? There's probably no way to split them apart. First with his brothers, then solo with Quincy Jones as his producer, Jackson carved out a piece of soul, dance and pop music that he will forever own. His parting from Jones is a good boundary line to mark the decline of his music: the trio of Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad represent the creative high point of his work. He would never draw the same critical acclaim again, even though worldwide sales remained high.

But at the same time, his eccentricities became more and more manifest, involving omnipresent surgical masks, hanging out with Macauley Culkin, marrying Lisa Marie Presley (and thus proving Elvis was dead; no way he would have stayed hidden for that if he hadn't been), a face that the surgeon's knife made look more and more like Diana Ross's...the King of Pop was one weird dude.

Accusations of child abuse surfaced in 1993 and a full-blown molestation trial followed in 2005. Jackson was found not guilty in the trial.

I think I feel on safe grounds with three opinions about Michael Jackson's death:

1) This is likely the last time the death of someone who's not a public official will spark such an amazingly wide public reaction. Jackson is pretty much the last pop culture emblem from the time when our nation had a unified culture of some kind. Modern entertainment is too fragmented to produce a similar figure anymore. I think only the death of a president while in office would come close (and I pray daily against such an event, by the way).

2) Money in carload lots can insulate people against many of the consequences of their bad behavior. Jackson's deep pockets hired the attorneys that won his 2005 case, and he paid more than one civil judgment concerning similar matters. His apparent hypochondria, which led to the surgical masks, oxygen-chamber sleeping habits and weird impulse buys (Bubbles the chimp, for example) didn't really hurt him all that much because he had the money to handle it. Until he didn't, but that's a different kind of problem. If the money's there, it's easier to act like an idiot and get away with it. Rich women pregnant without husbands can hire platoons of nannies; nannies pregnant without husbands lose their jobs and are stuck with Aid to Families with Dependent Children checks. But money isn't a perfect shield -- unconfirmed reports suggest Jackson may have been addicted to prescription drugs and those could have contributed to his death.

3) Many of the people on television masquerading as reporters have had their charades exposed -- hours of news time was devoted to something that happens to each and every human being sooner or later. During that time, the Iranian government's crackdown on democracy protesters began to have an impact as those protests lost steam. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that didn't actually exist in order to enable an unworkable plan to deal with a threat that may not exist, man-made global warming. The U.S. announced it'll stop trying to kill the Afghanistan poppy crop as a method of fighting opium and heroin use, since the unemployed farmers queued up with Al Qaeda instead of the seed corn store. President Obama is considering an executive order allowing the indefinite detention of terrorists. But rather than really dig into any of these stories, all of which will have lasting impacts on our lives, the TV folks spent their time showing "Thriller."

PS -- Here's a fourth opinion for a bonus. A local radio station played all-Michael Jackson a couple of afternoons in tribute. A whole lot of great music, as well as a whole lot of gunk. On the up side, rare appearances by "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" and "Rock With You." On the down side, spins of "Dirty Diana" and the Michael Jackson-Paul McCartney duet "The Girl Is Mine." And it's been a loooong time since the 1984 Mick Jagger-Jacksons collaboration "State of Shock" had radio airplay, and the country hasn't exactly been worse off for the omission.