Michael Jackson's legend

What can you say about our culture? You're checking in with the NBA draft, and suddenly an interview with Shaquille O'Neal begins with him offering condolences to the Jackson family. Huh? Then CNN and MSNBC have dueling helicopter shots on another helicopter waiting for a corpse to cross a parking lot to a coroner's office. It was the dark apotheosis of celebrity culture, the gross spectacle at the end of modern capitalism. But of course, it is also a human tragedy really (from many, many angles), and the passing of a great artist. I remember distinctly going to summer camp as a kid (this would have been '84, '85), and meeting new kids and figuring each others' likes and dislikes out. The consensus usually emerged that you really liked Jackson's music but were a bit creeped out by the guy himself. My generation had to grow up with an innate sense of awareness about how you compartmentalize culture. The music was ubiquitous, and legitimately brilliant, but it felt like it had been around forever to us -- he was already in the same category as Sinatra or the Beatles, which seemed to mean that he could be taken for granted. And "Jacko" himself was so hard to understand, and therefore so easy to mock. Of course, as the years went by, he just got harder to understand. And his sudden but perfectly predictable death just leaves a ton of questions we'll no doubt have decades to pick through. For example, I've always wondered who are all these people screaming and crying during his press conferences and outside the courthouses? What do they do with the rest of their time? And as much as I hate to say it, Al Sharpton made a good point Thursday (repeatedly, across many different media platforms, naturally) about how tons of people would put out statements about his passing, but where were all those people the day before? Indeed, that's what has been the most disturbing part of his ridiculous efforts to rehabilitate his image over the past 17 years. Was there no one to stop and tell him, "Wait a sec. This looks crazy!" Janet? Quincy? Elizabeth? Anyone? And these ill-conceived ideas were wildly compounded by the gleeful willingness of the media to go along with the circus, because freak-shows are terrific ratings. And what's worse, knowing his family and the ranks of sketchy hangers-on, it is perfectly clear that this is going to go on for a long time. The closest analogy has to be Elvis -- a historic early career, an embarrassing end, and decades of sordid gossip. But as with any pop cultural turning point, there is more to this than the cheap spectacle, something at the root that is very important and true. One afternoon in 1996 (or '97), I was hanging out at my favorite coffeeshop in Philadelphia with two close friends, talking about music. These guys were black, natives of Philly, and had an honest sense of patience and humor about race, and taught me an awful lot about black life and culture which I only learned about before through a mediated distance. But when I made a joke about Jackson -- something perfectly common about how weird and possibly criminal he was -- their faces went blank, and an actual chill seemed to come over them as they asked why I thought that was funny. I think that was the one time I can recall stumbling upon a racially awkward moment that I completely couldn't have foreseen. They explained to me about how they listened to their Jackson Five records until the grooves wore out, and about how much they meant to them and their parents and their families. They were aware of his substantial flaws, but regarded them with the resigned patience of a wayward family member. They then spent a long time reliving their favorites in earnest falsettoes, and joyfully imitating dance moves from the early days. So, I'll just think about that day as Michael Jackson's sad, contested legend continues. Now, what were we talking about a day ago? (Iran, I mean Iran. Not Jon and Kate, whoever they are.)