The Dark Side Of The Man In The Mirror

Much will be said about Michael Jackson's legacy over the coming days, but Andrew Sullivan sums up what ultimately destroyed him:

Of course, he bears responsibility for his bizarre life. But the damage done to him by his own family and then by all those motivated more by money and power than by faith and love was irreparable in the end. He died a while ago. He remained for so long a walking human shell.

I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy, tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time; and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.

I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours' and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.

Michael Jackson seemed to represent the two-sided face of fame better than few other performers in our era. Elvis was one; so was Marilyn Monroe. Like them, Jackson reached a level of fame through a culture that has a habit of building up its icons and then tearing them down. His music will endure for a thousand years. Hopefully, the cynicism of the mass pop culture that he was a part of won't.