Gathering Gloom

In case you missed the weekend blips:
Shark Bait?
&
Did you call my bird a Puff(in)?

Can we have a thunderstorm please? I love 'em and it would make a Monday worth getting out of bed for. Could have been worse though, the boss inexplicably didn't turn up today, so all quiet on the Western Front. And allegedly after this week he's working abroad for a couple of weeks. Woo hoo!

Still, couldn't shake that Monday lethargy even when out for a wander at lunchtime, and shot precisely nothing. Still, things could be worse, I could be a distraught Michael Jackson fan.

[caution, the following may offend die hard Michaerl Jackson fans - read at your own risk]

I've saved commenting on anything to do with Wacko amidst the Lady Di-esque sycophantile hyperbole, but seriously, can we just let it (and him) lie? (and I do realise the irony of asking that when I'm about to spew forth)

It's not the usual lines of 'It's as if I knew him' (well you didn't) or the constant radio play for the 'king of pop' that grates. It's that any other person would have been in an institution of either a penal or a mental flavour long before he got to the stage of having his doctor satisfy his ever pharmaceutical whim.

The guy had problems. They may stem from his upbringing and his father, or they may simply have been latent within his soul. But he had problems. Once we revelled in them (hence the 'wacko'); once we reviled him (for obvious $25m pay-off reasons); and now it seems that unresolved psychological trauma and a fondness for children is okay because he was a musical genius.

Well I heard Harold Shipman could play a mean jazz trombone...

There have been people on television saying that we should forget the controversy surrounding his life and focus on the good. A friend of mine was singing at a christening down south and the vicar mentioned Jackson, and his recent passing, at a christening, as being childlike. Although coming from the church... A chicken forum that Mel looks at every now and then (yes, there exist such things) has members who asked that the thread discussing his demise referred only to his music because children might be reading and shouldn't know about tendencies of men in overcoats, and someone suggested that they would be perfectly happy to let their children stay overnight with Jackson.

Innocent till proven guilty. Yes. A cornerstone. Absolutely. $25m is a lot of money when you're innocent, even to an international music star.

The man is dead. His music will live on (and I'll admit, a lot of it is good music). But there's a greater legacy left in terms of how we raise people up on a pedestal and forgive them transgressions, in life and especially in death.

I remember hearing one woman on the radio when Jade Goody died. She'd stood in a vigil outside Jade's home for the entire week ebfore she passed away, explaining this as Jade being a girl who never forgot where she came from (this particular town, the name of which I can't be bothered to look up) and I couldn't help thinking, 'do you stand vigil outside the home of everyone in this town who is ill then?' Celebrity transcends sense.

It may feel 'like you knew them' but in many cases it's probably better that you didn't. Jackson strikes me as a deeply troubled individual who didn't receive the help and support he needed from those around him, who slipped into a life that he may or may not have realised the issues and dangers of. But because he recorded Thriller it's all okay. And that's Bad.