MICHAEL JACKSON, A LEGEND? PLEASE COME AGAIN!!!

Summer school is taking its toll on me. I hardly have time for any other thing aside writing one assignment after another. When I was rushing out of my room this morning for an early lecture, one of Michael Jackson’s songs was playing on tele. I paid no heed as I was running late. I must admit, I haven’t heard of him in a long while. When I got to class, coincidentally, he was the subject of discussion among my colleagues. I craned my neck and tried to listen more attentively just so that I could hear what the heck the Jackson talk was all about. Well, I didn’t hear much, neither made sense of the little I heard. So I decided to surf the internet after class. I did, and found out that the guy had passed on into the church triumphant.

So this was all the entire hullabaloo was about. I signed on to facebook later and the story wasn’t any different. All sorts of accolades and appellations were pouring in for him from all angles. I was uncomfortable and a bit hesitant to swallow all that hook, line and sinker. I got curious and decided to run some background checks, if only to establish the genuineness of those praise lyrics. I discovered, among other things that:
• He had made a lot of money as the king of pop music
• He had won a number of awards for his artistry and so-called ‘moon walk’ dance
• He made some of the most horrifying musical videos
• He had done more maxillofacial surgeries than any other human being, dead or alive
• Changed the color of his skin several times as result of identity crisis
• He had never kept any marriage for more than 3 years
• He had sodomized a 13 year old boy (and probably several others; though he was acquitted under some shadowy circumstances later).

So having discovered this much, I went back to read the tributes and praise lyrics again on facebook. Then I was beginning to wonder if Lucifer himself would not be canonized if he should die today. All of a sudden, Jacko, as his fans affectionately called him, has become a saint, a legend and all. Again I decided to look up the meaning of the word LEGEND. The closest definition that describes him is, A CELEBRITY: SOMEBODY FAMOUS, ADMIRED FOR A SKILL OR TALENT. 

To all intents and purposes, the tributes pouring in for him on facebook, cast him in a much stronger shade, way beyond the pale of his scorched earth past. At a point, I stopped to query myself, has Jacko always been this super human or people are just being overly generous with their comments? Is somebody being fair to posterity by painting this guy in such a strong light? Can’t we for once be sincere about what people’s lives were when they lived? Must we always canonize even the devil’s charcoal burner himself? For me, of all his songs, the one I find most sensible is “HEAL THE WORLD” (has the world been healed since, anyway?). But I must hasten to conclude that, in life, we owe it a duty to ourselves and to generations yet unborn, to narrate some of these stories in all their ramifications with all the crude edges intact. Enough of the cosmetics. After all, no amount of success in life, can compensate for failure in the home. 

Anyway, just my piece of mind, from the cold. 26/0609
WORLA