You covered this in one of your GBC posts, I think; although there it was more referring to Tom Cruise, and also Bill Cosby. It's that "critical fame level" where you're famous enough that, when you fire someone, the public interprets it as their failing and not your tantrum.

As MJ and I both aged, and he became more eccentric and infamous, I drifted away from what I would deem "fan-dom". I found myself having a difficult time compartmentalizing the man from the musician; while there was no denying his exceptional talent as a performer, musician, and businessperson, for me his personal life and various legal (Bubbles the chimp? Hyperbaric chamber? Facial demolition?) and illegal alleged proclivities began to overshadow his music. There was also the fact that he annoited himself the "King of Pop", as that he went all "George Forman" and giving all three of his kids some semblance of his own name (including his daughter); I just couldn't stomach the hubris that all of that implied.

It's difficult for me to think of Michael Jackson as a "victim"; at what point do we become responsible for our current reality, despite what our past rained down upon us? I do agree that he was a tragic figure, and that his fame precluded honest relationships with people he could trust; I also concur that his parents (his dad in particular) is/was a selfish, abusive man who helped set the stage for what MJ would become. Having said all of that, his death – which, for me, was also the death of someone my in own age cohort – has hit me much harder than I would have predicted. I'm glad that he is finally at peace, and in a place where no one wants anything from him any longer, And I hope that – somehow – MJ's kids are able to have something resembling a healthy, happy childhood, and that their memories of their father comfort them in their grief.

Mostly, I knew him as the weirdo man-child who'd had too many plastic surgeries, and brought children to his ranch without any other adults around, and was alleged to act inappropriately around them.

But that doesn't mean I'm not saddened by his death. You could see how much potential he'd had – how much he could still do…if he just…
But it's too late now. And it's sad, that a lot of people aren't going to remember him for his music – but for his behaviour, post-1985; he deserves a better legacy than that.

I was a little young for Michael Jackson, I think (I was born in 1979). Or else I was too busy listening to my parents LPs from the 1960s to really get into him. I'll get up and dance my arse off when an MJ song comes on at a club, but I've never considered myself a fan.

Of course, I found the news sad. I feel for everything that Jackson has lost over the years, and for his children. But I wasn't upset.

But, dammit, Sars… You just made me cry. (I've lost count of how many times you've done that!)

One of my lecturers once described him as the great interlocutor between our binaries, as someone who was both and neither black or white, beautiful or hideous, adult or child, innocent or guilty. Perhaps this might partly explain what makes the strangeness of his death so difficult to locate, culturally speaking.

It's things like this that make me say, "Damn she is an amazing writer". Nicely said and with the added effect of making me cry. (That's twice in one day! Good shootin' Sars!)

Also, I don't know if it was true or not, but I remember reading that Joe Jackson actually gave Michael some kind of hormones to keep his voice high. If it was true, then it could have wreaked all kinds of havoc on his body (although again, that could have been a wild tabloid story). I do believe that Jackson would have done anything necessary to keep his kids earning money.

What a beast.

I loved him when I was a kid. I remember quite vividly parking myself in front of the TV with my brother for almost all of his music video premieres in the late 80s/early 90s, I remember watching the original ending to Black or White and thinking, "What the hell was that?" That was when the love started to die I think. I didn't understand why he felt the need to grab his crotch so much, and then he started looking weirder and weirder and then the molestation charges…I lost all respect for him as a human being. It was like part of my childhood had died and I was still just a kid.