I don’t know about your household, but ever since Michael Jackson passed away Reuben has been playing Michael nonstop on our living room iPod. 

My favorite song so far from the rotation has been Ben, a song from a very young Michael when he still sang with the Jackson 5.  If you’ve never heard this song before, click on the link and check it out.  This song was completely new to me, and I was at once struck by the unaffected and straightforward delivery of Michael as a child performer.  At 13 years old, he had a crystalline pitch, a mastery of stylistic execution, and a graceful ease on stage that belied his age.  The song reminded me of the best of Karen Carpenter in its simplicity and elegance.

Then came his breakout success as a solo artist with Off the Wall, followed by the phenomenal and unparalleled worldwide success of Thriller.  His Moonwalk took him to stratospheric heights of fame and fortune.  He had his pulse on the zeitgeist.  He was the zeitgeist: adored by millions, elevated to legendary status while in his 20′s, and self-labeled the King of Pop.  Could you imagine having that much success at such an early age?  Unlike Britney, who is completely manufactured and doesn’t seem to be in on the joke, Michael was a truly talented visionary.  Michael was special.  Unique.  One of a kind.

Except the zeitgeist moves on.  Kings are dethroned to make way for up and coming Princes.  The brilliance of the spotlight fades.  And it cruelly, mercilessly, shines upon someone else.   

Contrast Ben with his later hits.  You can sense Michael fighting against the tide of diminishing influence.  Rap, and later, gangster rap, emerged to claim a hefty piece of pop culture.   Against this foreign backdrop, Michael was no longer sure of his delivery.  He misread his relation to the new zeitgeist.  Even back in grade school, I remember Bad being cheesy. 

Because I’m bad!

I’m bad!

Ve-ry bad! 

And the Black and White music video that ended with Michael vandalizing a car?  A skinny, slightly effeminate black man with his hair in a ponytail, grabbing his crotch, whistling, dancing, breaking car windows.  Michael trying to be a thug is like me trying to be a straight unionized ironworker.  NOT convincing.

Some pop psychology suggest that a celebrity’s emotional-psychological state is often frozen at the age at which they became famous.  For child stars like Michael, fame and success overwhelmed their young egos before they had a chance to experience failures, and, in turn, gain a grip on reality.  Instead, they live in a fantasyland where fame and success became their natural birthright.  It’s all they’ve ever known, and they are ill prepared when that bubble bursts.

Not unlike a bulimic or an anorexic’s tortured relationship with food, Michael’s addiction to plastic surgery gave him a sense of control.  Unable to accept that his moment in the spotlight has passed, and unsure of how to reclaim his mantle, Michael was paralyzed.  Too frightened to adapt to reality, he clung on to the safety of his fantasyland, continuing to spend money as if he was raking it in at the height of his success.  He isolated himself from adult company,  preferring the company of children who, too, lived in fantasyland with him.  Day in and day out, he looked at himself in the mirror and thought, if I can just change this nose, and this chin, and my hair, and my skin color, and my voice…  maybe things can go back to the way they were. 

Celebrity, for Michael, was a mask that literally ate into his face — John Updike.

Let’s be honest here.  Michael was an undisputed pop music genius.   A humanitarian.  A good father to his children.  But his life ended as a freak.  FREAK.  His face was intentionally disfigured beyond recognition.  He weighed a mere 112 pounds at the time of death.  His skin color was bleached to an eery shade of albino (Vitiligo causes depigmentation in patches — it don’t turn you white).  He wouldn’t father his own kids (you look at his kids and tell me they’re his DNA).  And he had inappropriate sexual contact with children.

No one stays on top forever.  But Michael’s fall was particularly tragic.  He turned on himself.

As I celebrated this past Fourth of July with a small barbecue at my pad and Michael playing in the background, I couldn’t help but make the connection between Michael and the United States.

We are a relatively young nation.  We were even younger when we achieved superpower status.  For generations of Americans, it’s all we’ve ever known.  Being Number ONE is our birthright. 

Is it possible that we’ve entered our own fantasyland, where we live in a bubble and are ill prepared as reality shifts beyond our control? 

We entered two wars while we cut taxes and resisted a draft.  Our environment is in shambles yet Americans say, Drill, baby, drill!  Millions of Americans have no health insurance.  We borrow and spend beyond our means.  Too many Americans worship the idiocy of frauds like Sarah Palin over intellectual knowledge and wisdom.

I pray to Jesus for the day when we’re done with this God-Is-On-Our-Side religious NONSENSE.

9/11 shattered our sense of security.  But the ensuing fear far surpassed any boundary of rationality.   We took a scalpel to our face and slashed it beyond recognition.  We did away with due process — the rule of law – for people suspected of being terrorists.  We gave up wholesale civil liberties by allowing for warrant less wiretapping of our phones and ease of intrusion into our private email, medical and financial records.  When we got done disfiguring ourselves we disfigured others through torture. 

What happened to America, the land of the free?

In our fear of challenges to our supremacy (and make no mistake, we are still Number One), we make drastic and insanely STUPID decisions that actually hasten our demise. 

The world looks at us in amazement:  Why do you keep cutting yourself, America? 

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Tags: America, Ben, civil liberties, culture, fear, Fourth of July, Michael Jackson, Off The Wall, pop psychology, Thriller, torture