More than an entertainer

I don’t think it occurred to me before last Thursday that Michael Jackson was human.

From supernatural entertainer to untouchable freak, he was a god of pop culture.

Sure, plenty of men and women have martyred themselves to the religion of rock – its excesses, highs and riches.

But those people died because, aside from their talent, they were human.  

But Michael Jackson didn’t seem human.

He wasn’t a public figure to latch onto; he was something to worship.

He moonwalked and moved in ways no human could and wore clothes so outlandish no one else could get away with them.

He made an album with seven top-10 singles that became the best-selling album of all time – but even more impressively, made an album that united almost everyone around their love for it and sounds epic 25 years later.

He took a TV channel made of teen-oriented commercials and infused it with the energy, soul and passion that made it an icon – and a world where he reigned.

And he made it a place where, to say the obvious, it don’t matter if you’re black or white.

Transcendent passion is one of the few tools that can break down racism, and Michael Jackson had it.  

For most stars, their superhuman persona ends at their art.

Offstage, they seem like people.

Prettier, richer people, probably; maybe narcissistic or funny or drug addicted or anything else along the spectrum of human personality and experience.

Maybe people we want to like or people we want to mock.

But Michael Jackson consistently did things, for better or worse, that made everyone say, “Who would do that?” Buy his own personal amusement park? Get bizarre, unflattering cosmetic surgery – and then keep getting more when he didn’t like the way it turned out? Become white? Dangle babies from balconies?  

All of that seemed so out of touch with reality that no one could find him relatable.

It was especially easy to set him aside as a freak of excess because he also looked like a freak.  

And yet suddenly, in his death, it’s amazing to realize how human he was.
Like most people last Thursday, at first I was in disbelief.

It wasn’t hard to believe that Jacko could live in his fantasy world of excess; that he could die in the same world as everyone else was unbelievable.

When I found out it was true, I felt a sadness one can only feel at the death of someone who’s had an impact on your life.  

Maybe that sounds disingenuous because my knowledge of the man is only through recordings and sensationalized media reports, but I don’t think it is.

I wasn’t sad because he was the superhuman who was my salvation or a personal hero.

When he died, I started reading more about the conditions of his life up until his death and saw a much different picture than the tabloid covers that had been my information on the man for the past decade.

Every wild antic could be traced back to wanting companionship and having never been allowed in the world where everyone learns the skills to get it.  

He tried to make up for it by donating to more charities than any other celebrity and spending money on the people he loved even as he went broke.

He sacrificed his health to drugs after his fans turned on him because of the accusations of child molestation, despite not being convicted.   

And at the cost of destroying his own chances for companionship, he united otherwise-unconnected people around some of the world’s best music.

Almost everyone can tell a story of one great moment in their life when Michael Jackson was playing.  

For a man who didn’t seem human, he made being human a better experience for all of us.