Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Myth that Michael Jackson was Happy and Healthy

There is a destructive myth taking hold about Michael Jackson, 
originated by some of his devotees, perpetuated by many in his
entourage, and articulated outright by the Rev. Al Sharpton in his
eulogy at the Staples Center last July. As Rev. Sharpton put it, 
looking directly at Michael’s orphaned children, “There was nothing
strange about your daddy. It was strange what he had to deal with it.” 
The myth is that Michael was living a healthy and balanced life at the
time of his death and expired only because some careless doctor
accidentally murdered him in his sleep with a drug overdose. I have
heard more and more people in the media making the same claim, 
particularly after having seen the ‘This is It’ documentary which is
now being released. As one radio host put it to me recently, “Michael
looks amazing in the documentary. It’s clear that he was in excellent
physical health and couldn’t wait to go out and do his concerts.”

The reason this misrepresentation is so destructive is that it would
have us believe there is nothing to be learned from Michael’s tragic
death. It was all a mishap. Michael was loving life, ready for his big
comeback, but a capricious mistake cut his life short. This myth
demeans the tragedy of Michael’s life by robbing him of a redemptive
moment. It would have us believe there is nothing that we the living
can learn from his untimely death, nothing that a celebrity-obsessed
culture can extract from the painful life of one of America’s greatest
icons. And if this myth is allowed to continue then, dare I say it, 
Michael died in vain.

Of course nothing could be further from the truth. Health is not
determined by the physical alone. There is also mental, emotional, and
spiritual health. In all these departments Michael was suffering
severely. It’s not normal to have to take hospital-grade anesthetics
to fall asleep, and even this after downing a small trove of anti-
anxiety medication and sleeping pills. Toward the end of his life
Michael was an isolated and lonely figure who had squandered his
wealth and was forced to agree to a staggeringly large number of
concerts in order to rescue himself from a fate he repeatedly told me
he feared, namely, becoming like Sammy Davis Jr., who was forced to
degrade himself on late-night talk shows in order to pay his bills.

 

Michael always believed in the power of mystery. He stated repeatedly
that while other stars had destroyed their careers through
ubiquitousness, he had remained in the public imagination through
scarcity. He highlighted the fact that other artists produced an album
a year while he did so only once every few years. He also told me he
never agreed to ever be a presenter at an awards show because it would
make him too available. There is no way on earth Michael would have
agreed to do 50 concerts unless he was absolutely forced to by
insurmountable financial pressure.

 

In The Michael Jackson Tapes, we encounter, for one of the first
times, not Michael Jackson the performer but Michael Jackson the man. 
Michael recorded these tapes for the express purpose of making it
available in a book because he was tired of the myth. The book, which
contrary to the speculation of some was published for an extremely
modest advance and will benefit the “Turn Friday Night into Family
Night” initiative, reveals a performer who understood that his heart
was not known to a public who judged him very harshly for what they
saw as his unethical excess. They did not know the extreme pain he had
endured as a child, the loneliness with which he lived as an adult, 
and how much it hurt him that people thought he had improper motives
in his relationship with children. While Michael’s entourage now say
that Michael was positive and happy, Michael himself reveals that he
was regularly walking around Encino, California, begging people to
simply talk to him. While some of Michael’s fans want us to believe
that Michael had a lust for life, Michael himself says that he wished
to ‘disappear’ and that his greatest fear was growing old and
beginning to forget. Michael rued the day when he would be seen as
past his prime and therefore unable to command the admiration of the
public through his talent.

 

All this, as well as a broken and lost childhood, is part of the price
that Michael paid for fame. He wanted to share with the public the
utter emptiness of fame and the importance of family and love. Michael
loved being around ordinary families and he dreamed of a life of
simple pleasures.

 

So why are we so afraid to hear his voice?

 

I suspect it has to do with a culture that is mostly fuelled by fame. 
In a world where nearly every teenager wants to be famous, in a
country where reality TV dominates the airwaves and where celebrity
magazines rule the newsstands, we simply don’t want to hear that it’s
all one big lie. That the unbridled lust for fame is killing people
and that the emperor has no clothes. Fame will never be a proper
substitute for love and talent will never be an acceptable alternative
for virtue.

 

How sad, therefore, that so many who claim to love him now want to
rewrite his story to tell us that Michael was so shallow that fortune
and fame alone were enough to make him happy. This was never the case.

 

My book The Michael Jackson Tapes has been greeted with apprehension
by some who would like to perpetuate the lie that our celebrities are
for the most part healthy. They are not. Very few flourish in fame and
a great many do not even survive its effects. Those who do prosper in
the limelight do so only if they hold on to what I call the three
essentials of fame:

 

1.    A strong religious faith, reminding you at all times that, 
amidst the public’s hero worship, you are not a deity and are a
servant of the one, true G-d.

2.    A loving spouse who makes you take out the garbage and
otherwise keeps you humble.

3.    A cause larger than oneself to which one can consecrate one’s
celebrity.

 

Bono is an important case in point. A devout Christian, married to the
same wife for 27 years, he has consecrated his fame to the cause of
Africa and third-world relief and has not only survived celebrity but
has become, deservedly, one of the most admired humans on earth.

 

Michael aspired to the same. But when he abandoned the Jehovah’s
Witnesses Church to which he was once exceptionally devoted, went
through two divorces, and, most importantly, was prevented from
serving his beloved cause of helping the world’s children because of
multiple allegations against him, he lost much of the anchor in life
that kept him grounded.

 

Those who loved Michael should be true to his memory not by creating a
myth of a happy man cut down by a tragic error, but rather as a noble
soul who aspired to great humanitarian achievement but whose
superstardom served to impede, rather than heal, a desperate and
painful loneliness.

 

 

 

 

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of This World: The Values
Network. The Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals his Soul in
Intimate Conversation was published in September. http://www.shmuley.com