A12

Max Wolfe

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Michael Jackson? Outside of his close fans, friends and family, who really cares? No matter how you slice it, he is no glittering star in the firmament.

Enlarge Photo

AP

A fan touches Michael Jackson's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles.

This pathetic figure has filled the nation's print pages and the TV news for a week with promise of more to come. I have yet to work out why. Certainly it has given the media types something to write about, but at the end of the day even "Beetle Bailey" and "Peanuts" have more worth and meaning in our lives. They even make us smile frequently, which no one would ever accuse Michael Jackson of doing.

We are truly a perverse species. Mind you, we made the same fuss over Elvis Presley, and he had even less going for him. Maybe we have a collective soft spot for the aberrant.

We were treated some time ago to TV shots of Michael Jackson dangling his baby over a balcony. Mercifully he did not let go, but who in their right mind would ever think of doing that sort of thing? Either he was drunk, high on drugs or deranged.

The English violinist, Sir Yehudi Menuhin once described rock music as noise, and that was how I too felt. I shuddered at the prospect of endless pages of fawning praise and worship of the man. Surely there has to be more to him than that. And more to us too. Our hero-worship of Michael Jackson says a whole lot more about all of us than it does about Jackson, and none of it too flattering.

The thought haunts. "Surely we wouldn't go ga ga over someone like that?" Unfortunately, we do it all the time. We did it over Elvis for no other reason than his apparent facility for gyrating his hips. A whole industry has evolved out of that. Surely, not again.

As luck would have it, my son descended on us for a family event the weekend after Jackson's death. I knew I could depend on him for a rational explanation. I was confident he would say something to offset my very jaundiced view of Jackson, and he did.

"Dad, I was a teenager when he appeared on the scene and he was a genius! For one thing he was a brilliant performer. Given the things he did in the musical world when he was just an infant he was like a latter day Mozart. Look at some of the videos of the Jackson 5." I did and, sure enough, Michael J. stood out like a sore thumb, with more personality and ability than the other four of his siblings combined. His dancing was nothing short of incredible. As I watched the early videos it wasn't hard to see how he would have been - and still would be - a sensation.

The art of the video took a leap forward with Michael Jackson. Up to that point there was, for the most part, no story line to music videos. My son told me that changed with and thanks to Jackson. Having watched a few of them, I have to say there isn't much of a story line, but it is there.

"It amounted to a new music form, Dad."

His voice was not bad. His stage presence was magical, from the youngest age. Actually, he impressed me as being a superlative performer. Whether that is enough to offset his habit of holding the hands of little boys and sharing his bed with them, I think not. "It is sweet, not sexual," he claimed, but I rather doubt it.

There is an aura of the debauched about Jackson that is hard to ignore. The reaction to him may well be a generational thing, and to some extent it clearly is. But for my money, the odd-ball and the pathetic outweigh the musical and superb performing ability. He was very good but not that good. He was not, and is not, worth all the fuss.

My son remains impressed by the man, but didn't say if he was still a Jackson fan. I think he is.

Max Wolfe is a freelance writer who resides at St. Andrews.