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PASSING TOO SOON?
Michael Jackson, 1958-2009....

 

Society properly grants a certain moral license to the productive members of the creative community.  But there are limits to this indulgence.  We draw a line when the artist allows his or her creative work to support the dark side, as in when film maker Leni Riefenstahl became a skillful, uncritical propagandist for Adolph Hitler in the 1945 film, “Triumph of the will”.  No one would suggest that Mr. Jackson fell into Ms. Riefenstahl’s category...on any level.

 

We also tend to condemn the artist, not for ordinary moral lapses, but when those tendencies become predatory. 

 

There is a substantial subset of Americans who put Michael Jackson in the latter category - however they might feel about Mr. Jackson’s significant contributions to our musical/entertainment culture.  For them, his childhood innocence was prolonged beyond its natural span and mutated (as did his surgically altered face) into a predatory faux-innocence. 

 

As to the detailed merits of the charges against Mr. Jackson, I remain an agnostic.  But for me, Michael Jackson’s passing from this world does not fall into the classic tragic category (like that of, say Buddy Holley or Wolfgang Mozart).  His demise at the age of 50 in the presence of his cardiologist in a hotel room on the front end of a huge world tour designed to retire mounting debts, does not lead some of us to join in the chorus, “Sadly, he passed before his time....”  

 

JBG