Goodbye Michael, and thank you

The paparazzi and prying eyes of the press have lost another target.
Michael Jackson has left the building.
Exit stage left, sneaking out the side entrance into a waiting limousine to take him to some quiet safe place where he's free to be the kid he always wanted to be.
Nobody can deny the immense talent he had.
He had the goods - the voice, the dancing! Oh how he could move. When Thriller was blowing everybody's mind, and Beat It and Bad were in heavy rotation on MTV everybody was trying to moonwalk, and suburban kids were buying sequined gloves at Claire's Boutique. Before Thriller there was Off the Wall. I remember gym class my freshman year of high school - and learning aerobic dance routines set to songs from that album.

The teenagers of the 80s were the kids who grew up on the shining gems produced by Berry Gordy and Motown. The Jackson 5 were really the first boy band, and the songs they made their own are still heard today on oldies stations, covered by other artists, and in the song stylings of the boy bands of today.

With all his talent, all his money, all his fame all the man seemed to want was someone to love him unconditionally without expecting him to perform, "do something" for them, or ask for a cash handout. I would imagine this is why he had the ranch and the crazy collection of pets. Who can ever forget Bubbles the Chimp? This is also likely why he arranged to have children created for him, and why the mother of the children have been nearly invisible from the public eye.

When you have that kind of money and fame, you can make all manner of legal magic happen. It made us feel angry, frustrated, freaked out when he dangled one of his kids out a hotel window. We made fun of him for marrying Lisa Marie. We were furious with him for buying up some of the Beatles song publishing catalog. We made fun of him, pointed and laughed with each new tabloid photo of his plastic surgery, his health problems. We tore him asunder when he was being charged with child molestation. We treated every new shred of tabloid fodder about him as another reason to knock him down. The media frenzy that embraced him in the 80s were in the 90s and beyond, tearing him down and breaking him apart with pickaxes and explosives.

I wonder if all he really trying to do was use his money and fame to desperately fill in the blanks of his wounded, broken psyche. For all that talent, I wonder if he really struggled with the same self-doubt and insecurities that so many of us face.

Like so many other oddball celebrities, he was too fragile a human being to live in the spotlight, and the more he tried to escape it the more tenacious the media jackals became. He had to move to Bahrain to get out of the public eye, and even there he had individuals who took advantage of him.

I feel so sorry and sad for the man, the freaky recluse that he became.
Today I'm wondering if he somehow planned for this as a grand, graceful exit from the crazy circus of his life in the public eye.
He went out on top, or at least on a high note - as he was rehearsing for a comeback tour.

Thanks, Michael.
Thank you for making us sing, and dance, and smile.
Thank you for all the great pop culture memories that will forever be a part of our childhood.
I think you probably were a really good person, with a big heart, who deserved more kindness and privacy than you ever received.
I hope that you've found peace, and the love and comfort you seemed to crave.
The world will not forget you.