Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson’s sudden and tragic death has revealed the truly iconic status he had achieved in the world. While some of the news media has chosen to continually harp on what they have labeled as Michael’s eccentricities, especially what they have called his bizarre appearance and behavior over the last few years, his 40 years of unbroken creativity and musical genius have secured his enduring iconic status in the minds of an adoring global public. No death in the last century, including Elvis’s and Princess Diana’s has generated the kinds of spontaneous and sustained expressions of love, respect, and tribute that Michael’s passing has.

His musical genius and his iconic status have earned him a permanent and revered place in the hearts, minds, and memories of people of all races, colors, creeds, cultures, and genders throughout the world. The bigger than life icon that Michael Jackson became did all of that for him. Becoming an icon has its price however. Icons frequently consume, confuse, and destroy their hosts. They compete with and frequently engulf the real self. They rob the person of their identity and privacy, then turn them into objects of prey, subvert normal human relations, and induce aberrant behavior. (Witness icons like Elvis, Anna Nicole Smith, and most recently Heath Ledger.) Such was likely the case with Michael Jackson.  read more »