So.

Michael Jackson is dead, as we all well know by now. There’s probably a lot that should be said about this, and god knows people are trying. Even after the first few hours, posts and articles began popping up on the web from folks attempting to put the cap on what it all means, what MJ’s life and death was all about.

Which is fine, but we’ve got a few more news cycles to go through yet before we’re ready to move on. And, while I appreciate the various stabs at authoritative analysis, or definitiveness on television and the web, I have no compunction about stating that they’re all mostly going to get it wrong. Which is also fine, because that’s people do, mostly.

I don’t really believe that there’s any one overriding moral lesson to be learned from Jackson’s life, or his death. But, if there is, let it be this: Excessive fame is bad for most people.

Michael was the most famous person in the world for a little while – no joke. (You youngsters have no idea what it was like.) He handled it poorly, and was lambasted as a freak in the press. By comparison, Brittney’s level of fame/level of odd behavior seems miniscule.

You don’t want to be the most famous person in the world for a minute.

You couldn’t handle it.

Or, maybe you could. I may be getting it all wrong.

Me and you: We’ll never, ever, ever know.

* * *

A few words about Thriller, while we’re allowing that things have meaning, and that we are able to see it. (Also because others are doing it.)

I was a pretty sensitive kid. Shy, weak, cried a lot – that sort of thing. (In older-brother parlance, I was a total pussy. But that’s not important, now.)

Thing is, Thriller used to scare the hell out of me; not even the video, just the song itself. On car trips I begged my parents to change the station if it came on the radio.

About a year after its initial popularity peaked, I realized that the song wasn’t about monsters springing out of the dark to tear your guts out with their razor-sharp appendages. It was about a couple snuggling on a couch while some low-budget creature feature played on the television.

What I learned is that in some cases, very occasionally, things that one might see as terrifying may actually not be so bad as first imagined.

It’s not a lesson that pays off very often.

stereotypist and Washington Post links via Chaos Theory