Michael Jackson gone too soon / LJWorld.com

Opinion

By Leonard Pitts Jr.

July 2, 2009

Sometimes, death is a blindside hit.

When it comes at the end of a long life as it did last week for 86-year-old Ed McMahon, you are saddened by it but not particularly surprised. When it comes after a debilitating illness, as it did last week for 62-year-old Farrah Fawcett, you have time to brace yourself against it.

But sometimes, death is lightning from a clear blue sky, a car that runs the red light, ice cold water dumped on you from behind. That’s how it was last week when Michael Jackson died.

It seemed cruel in the very suddenness of it, harsh in the abruptness of its reminder that there are no guarantees and that the next breath — the very next breath — cannot be taken for granted. Here today, gone today. Gone too soon.

Jackson’s death left those of us who grew up with him groping for resolution, words of summation in a moment when words of all kinds are elusive as smoke. What to say about Michael Jackson?

It is a difficult question to answer about anyone who suddenly dies. It is especially difficult to answer about Jackson. After all, he was a ferocious singer, boneless dancer, world class showman, music video pioneer, racial barrier breaker, astute businessman, dedicated humanitarian, profligate spender, plastic surgery addict, painkiller addict, adulation addict, reclusive eccentric, alleged deadbeat and washed-up has-been, who may, on top of all that, have gotten his jollies molesting little boys.

Yes, as a legal matter, a jury of his peers said in 2005 that the molestation never happened. As a practical matter, some of us will always wonder.

Makes it hard to find your way to resolution, hard to unearth the words that encapsulate all that you feel. Or even to know all that you feel.

It was easier before the blindside hit. At the time of his death, Michael Jackson had not released a significant record in 18 years. His public profile rested almost entirely on a series of increasingly bizarre and unsavory misadventures — debt, lawsuits for nonpayment, sleeping (innocently, he said) with boys, going to court in pajamas.

You looked at this guy and wondered what he had done with Michael Jackson — the real Michael Jackson, the boy prince of Motown with the perfect ’fro, the frictionless feet and the smile that seemed lit from within. This was not Michael Jackson. This was some odd, vaguely repellent creature unused to the way things are done in our world.

But judgments made in the heat and motion of a life are not like those made in the coolness and inertia of a death. In life, judgments are about what is immediately before you, what is now. In death, they are broader and, perhaps as an inevitable byproduct, usually more generous.

Which has some people in an uproar. They say — you see this online and in letters to editors — that we ought not be generous with this man, given what he is suspected of having done. It’s a reasonable demand. What he is suspected of having done is monstrous.

So you wonder, many of us who grew up with him, why you don’t share their anger. Maybe it is that he is only “suspected” — a loophole for conscience. Maybe it is sentimental memory and residual affection washing down like rain, cleansing his sins. He was with us and we with him for so long — maybe we owe him that?

Or maybe we should just admit resolution is not possible. Michael denies it to us. Instead, in one last act of legerdemain, he forces us to split ourselves in two, become a union of opposite emotions, find a way to simultaneously hold contrary viewpoints in mind, minimize none of it, accept all of it — balance like a dancer frozen on tiptoes.

How fitting that image became his logo. And now, I think, it is his truest legacy.

So I’ll say only this: Michael Jackson died last week. I scorned him; I admired him. And I’m sorry he’s gone.

— Leonard Pitts Jr., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a columnist for the Miami Herald. He chats with readers from noon to 1 p.m. CDT each Wednesday on www.MiamiHerald.com..

Discussion

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2 July 2009
at 1:06 a.m.

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RonHolzwarth (Anonymous) says…

I'm not so sure he was an “astute businessman”. But, that's just my opinion based upon reports that he earned something like $600,000,000 over his career, and just might be bankrupt in death.
2 July 2009
at 7:27 a.m.

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RoeDapple (Anonymous) says…

Like Elvis, he will be worth more dead than alive.
2 July 2009
at 8:21 a.m.

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number3of5 (Anonymous) says…

Given the way in which Michael Jackson chose to live his live - with multiple plastic surgeries, using pain medications, and most likely other drugs, - his death is not unexpected. Also if you are of almost any faith in God, you know God will not take you before it is your time.
2 July 2009
at 8:25 a.m.

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KansasPerson (Anonymous) says…

Karl Malden died yesterday at age 97. Now that's a nice long life!
2 July 2009
at 8:59 a.m.

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maffupps (Anonymous) says…

Legerdemain?
This article was legerde-LAME.
2 July 2009
at 9:02 a.m.

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snap_pop_no_crackle (Anonymous) says…

As a memorial to MJ, I will be grabbing my crotch and squealing today.
2 July 2009
at 9:22 a.m.

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charliejohnson (Anonymous) says…

He was what he was. Now lets get him into the ground. Get it done.

2 July 2009
at 9:24 a.m.

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canyon_wren (Anonymous) says…

I wasn't going to read this column, but am glad I did so. All I really knew about MJ was “what I read in the newspapers” and certainly don't have a very positive idea of him. His music—which was apparently his real strength and “gift”—was not my kind of music. But there are people I feel the same ambivalence toward (a loyalty mixed with disgust) that Pitts has for MJ, and I have no real rationale for my admiration of those people, so can appreciate Pitts comments more than some other writers' reactions to MJ's death that I have read.
2 July 2009
at 10:05 a.m.

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cthulhu_4_president (Anonymous) says…

Love him or hate him, timeless music is a rarity, and something to be treasured.
2 July 2009
at 10:07 a.m.

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grammaddy (Anonymous) says…

We hear a lot of things about what”bad things” he MAY have done even though he was acquitted on all charges, could we please concentrate on the good??! I believe his good works offset the bad.”We are the World” comes to mind along with all he did for sick children. I prefer to remember him as the 11 year old musical prodigy dancing his way into my heart in December of '69. R.I.P. Michael, you are sadly missed.
2 July 2009
at 5:41 p.m.

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frwent (Anonymous) says…

Frankly, I am getting sick and tired of hearing about him. I think the news media needs to be reporting on real news and let this dysfunctional entertainment icon drop from view, permanently.
2 July 2009
at 7:37 p.m.

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oneeye_wilbur (Anonymous) says…

hey, mr. pitts, you should read the news, plenty of folks in kansas city dying daily younger than 50, what about that.
why doesn't pitts do a real story about young black males shooting each other in the inner cities.
I hope Pitts will buy a hot dog from oneeye wilbur who will be along the parade route,,,just a $1.50 mr. pitts and the bun will have the image of michael toasted on it and it can be sold on ebay.

Pitts just wants to be part of the media frenzy. will he attend the funeral or do as Dionne Warwick sings “Walk on by”