MJ

Can’t say I’ve ever seen social media explode around one topic like it just did when Michael Jackson died. It was the new media equivalent of my high school when Kurt Cobain blew his head off, or when OJ was found not guilty. It’s not hard to imagine everybody remembering forever that the answer to “Where were you when you learned Michael Jackson died?” will be: “sitting in front of my computer.” Twitter went into an instant lag, even freezing completely right when it happened and a few million people all assumed at the same time that they were one of the first to know and thus had to spread the word. It took another 45 minutes before I heard the first car drive by playing his music. I think I might have actually been the first person to tip off HuffPo, which was a little weird. (their front page lagged too around the same time Twitter did)

I was born in 1979, so Michael Jackson to a large extent was my childhood, and I respect him for that, and for all that great music – but it’s been hard to imagine MJ as a real person for a very long time, so him being dead doesn’t really impact me much at all. Andrew Sullivan just got it right, along these lines. I’m much more worried about my Dad’s 69-year-old heart; I’m much more worried about PersianKiwi.

The greatest thing about a great album, and Thriller is one of the best of all time, is that it is frozen in time forever as it is. No one can touch it, no one can bring it down or make it sound any different, better, or worse. And music comes with the memories of when you’ve heard it, the way the LP case unfolded or what sticker was on the mixtape, the time you made out to that track in that place with that somebody. Music can’t die, just ask the Voyager spacecraft.

Beyond any afterlife, culture owns Michael Jackson now, intact with every flaw and talent. I think I’d rather let my iTunes own him. I’m not going to care about the specials, retrospectives, the bullshat-out hyper-reporting. I’ll probably just be annoyed that the tragedies in Iran will feel less relevant to a few hundred million people while they think about a great music video. But that’s the way people are, the way celebrity deaths are, and I’m a hypocrite to try to suggest that when Heath Ledger died I was suddenly distracted from far more tragic deaths in Darfur or the slums of Rio. The bandwidth for tragedy is limited; it has to be.

But I stand by the joke I thought up about 3 minutes after MJ died:

IRANIAN STATE TV: CIA Killed Michael Jackson

and I actually have a friend named Michael Jackson and this was his FB status update a little later:

So as far as I’m concerned:
MICHAEL JACKSON LIVES.