A Quessay: Michael Jackson

I came home from work a week ago today, flipped open my laptop, and saw the news headline “Michael Jackson dies.” Was I surprised? No, were you? Did the hair stand up on the back of my neck? Yeah, did yours?

As always, I have more questions than answers… ?

Will the beer expert and fellow drunk of the same name (Michael Jackson) finally get to be somebody in his own right now that the competition is out of the way? Oh, wait, he died two years ago. Never mind.

Didn’t Lisa Marie Presley once state publicly that the high-pitched, breathy Liz Taylor/Diana Ross speaking voice that Michael Jackson spoke in was not, in fact, how he talked in private – that his private speaking voice was an ordinary, baritone man’s voice – and isn’t that really the eeriest thing of all to think about?

Was Michael Jackson at all aware of having any debilitating neuroses or mental illnesses? Did he ever once look at the “man in the mirror” and say, “Jeez, that’s f*cked up”?

Why do I somehow suspect the answer to that question is yes? Would that change how you think about him?

Was MJ born to be an enigma, much as George W. Bush seems to have been?

Didn’t the young child star Michael Jackson always seem older than his age, ala Shirley Temple, whom someone once described as a “50-year-old midget”?

How bad was his scalp burn in the 1984 Pepsi commercial incident? Was it really the life-changing event it’s been presented as? I.e., the beginning of his long-running plastic surgery and painkiller misadventures?*

Will Diana Ross be a good mother to the young children Princes Michael I & II and Paris Jackson after Katherine Jackson (age 79) passes away?

Am I the only person who knew from the first moment I saw a picture of them many years ago that the children were too light complexioned, light haired, and light eyed to be Jackson’s own? And isn’t there more than a whiff of “eugenics” around the specifications Jackson had surrounding their creation?

What are they like? Perhaps they are like many children of eccentric and troubled famous people: Absolutely, amazingly normal?

Will they write “Michael Dearest” books as soon as they are old enough?

From the way Katherine dutifully attended every day of MJ’s trial back in ’05, and generally has remained a loyal, stoical Class Act while the LaToyas of the family ran amok causing embarrassment everywhere, doesn’t she absolutely deserve to administer or flat-out HAVE all the money? Isn’t there something totally satisfying and fitting about it?

Isn’t Michael Jackson’s three-year “marriage” to Deborah Rowe pretty much the ultimate example of venal, criminally frivolous straight marriage – even more than Britney’s – for gay-marriage advocates to point to?

When all is said (and done, but mostly said): Isn’t it entirely possible, as a friend of mine wondered aloud the other day, that Michael Jackson died a virgin? That he never had any sexual contact with anyone?

Other than the example above about his voice, why did Elvis’s daughter cover for Michael Jackson for so long? Was it something related to working through some stuff about her father?

How similar was Jackson’s 2005 trial and acquittal to O.J. Simpson’s 1995 trial and acquittal, in terms of certain jurors (and certain segments of the public) blindly refusing to believe someone they idolized is capable of behavior like murder or child molesting?

Every time I see Kendall-Jackson (no relation) wine at the grocery store, don’t I think of the testimony of that stewardess regarding “Jesus juice” and remember her weird snobbishness in pointing out that MJ gave the kids not the good stuff, but “yucky Kendall-Jackson”?

Why is mega-quack Deepak Chopra pushing to the front of the line to start a second career as a posthumous PR flack/protector of MJ’s precious legacy? Did I just answer my own question with the words “second career”?

Were you aware (I wasn’t) that the mother of Jackson’s 2005 accuser, Janet Arvizo, has since married a man named Jay Jackson (no relation) and now goes by the name Janet Jackson?

How does MJ fit in the canon of flawed geniuses?

__________

* I ask this not without empathy, as someone who was partially scalped in an accident. But despite having over 100 stitches along half of my scalp, I took no painkillers once I left the hospital, nor had plastic surgery for it. Furthermore: “Some studio audience members said he was so calm, they thought the incident was part of the act. ‘He was wonderful. He reassured people even as he was being taken away on a stretcher,’ (Fan Virginia Watson)”

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

TAGS: 1958 births • 2009 deaths • American entertainers • Britney Spears • Deborah Rowe • Deepak Chopra • Diana Ross • Elizabeth Taylor • Elvis Presley • George W. Bush • Katherine Jackson • Kendall-Jackson Winery • LaToya Jackson • Lisa Marie Presley • Michael Jackson • O.J. Simpson • Paris Jackson • Pepsi • Prince Michael Jackson • Shirley Temple