They're Out of Our Lives

I have mixed feelings about the death of Michael Jackson. I appreciated his showmanship and his obvious musical talent, but his life and his public persona in recent years always perplexed me, as it did others. In that same time, he seemed to keep putting out the same musically cliched pop songs that sounded more banal and tired with repeated listening. And I don't even want to start about his history with children.

In truth, the Michael Jackson I remember fondly died several years ago. I liked the Michael Jackson who sang and danced with his four (later five) brothers, the Michael Jackson who recorded Off The Wall, the Michael Jackson who sang "She's Out of My Life" and "Rock With You" (from that same LP). The Michael Jackson I watched for the past twenty-five years or so was someone I never knew. That Michael - the Michael who tried to buy the Elephant Man's bones and made elaborate but empty promotional videos that were more important than the singles they supposedly promoted - freaked me out.

I guess I feel about Michael Jackson the way John Lennon did about Elvis Presley. Lennon contended, upon learning that Elvis had died, that Elvis died the day he was drafted into the Army.

Meanwhile, Farrah Fawcett also died of cancer. I found the media coverage of her in her last months in infuriatingly bad taste. I'm not talking about the NBC documentary on her battle with her disease. I'm talking about how they wrote about her as if she were already dead while she was still alive. In fact, I think some commentators were already referring to her in the past tense. For Pete's sake, I wanted to shout, she's not dead yet!

Special attention should go to Ryan O'Neal, Fawcett's love for the last several years, who was her caregiver for so long and went beyond meeting his responsibilities by always being there for her. It's sadly ironic that O'Neal lived out in real life the ordeal of his most famous character, Oliver Barrett IV, in Love Story. Those who remember the 1970 movie recall that Oliver had to endure the death of his love Jenny (played by Ali McGraw) of . . . cancer.