He's black ... he's white ... come on!

Don’t you just hate it when you go out to eat and the radio station they pump through the speakers to break the silence plays music so bad, you wish – you beg – for the silence? Last night, I was amazed the music at Penn Station was really decent. Munchkin even thought so because she was dancing along with it. It. Was. Adorable.

Anyway, some old school Michael Jackson came on and she was really getting into it. We decided to pick up a cheap Michael Jackson CD for her while we were at Wal-Mart after dinner. We put the CD on at bedtime, which might have been a mistake because all she wanted to do was dance. Of course, it is dancing music. The best was when “Thriller” came on and she made the proclamation: “I wrote this song.”

Scott’s went all Cuba Gooding, Jr. on her. “Show me the money.” 

All three of us laid there listening to old school Michael Jackson lament about how “the boy is not his kid” and how you must “beat it,” when I looked up and said, “You know, it’s really weird to think he’s actually dead.” And has been so for quite awhile.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve taken my fair share of potshots at him in my lifetime. But I’ve also had a love for him deep down.

When I was little, I made the general announcement that, “Today I’m going to marry Michael Jackson and Mr. Rogers is going to be the flower girl. Tomorrow I’m going to marry Mr. Rogers and Michael Jackson is going to be the flower girl.” That’s true love there.

On the flip side, I also know I used to be scared to leave my closet door open at night, because Michael Jackson was hiding in there. It’s no more crazy than Munchkin jumping in my arms saying she was scared of robots. I don’t know where the insane fear of robots stemmed from, nor do I know where my fear of Michael Jackson coming out of the closet, my closet in particular, manifested.

Back to last night … the more I listened to that CD, the more I heard the voice of a kid. I realized just how sorry I felt for Michael Jackson.

Yes, he was weird. But it’s really not his fault he was weird. He wasn’t allowed to have a childhood (which fully explains the Peter Pan obsession, right down to the nose job), and his dad was more than a little pushy and psychotic. (Don’t even get me started on the fact he wants Michael’s kids to have a pop-singing career now.) Matter of fact, no one in that family is quite right, so there’s no way on God’s green Earth you can expect Michael to turn out normal.

Given the fact he was just a big kid, it makes sense why he didn’t know how to manage money. Why he had a chimp for a pet (ahhh, Bubbles). Why he had an amusement park in his backyard. Why his friends of choice were all considerably younger than him.

Did he make mistakes in his life? Absolutely, haven’t we all? I mean, have you *seen* Debbie Rowe? Does anyone else find it just the slightest bit strange that the “King of Pop” married the daughter of the “King of Rock and Roll?” Did he dangle his baby from a balcony in Germany and scare the world? Did he make surgical masks in public a fashion statement?

Yes.

Deep down, though, he’s just a kid whose body grew old, but he never did. He talked like a kid. He acted like a kid. It made him vulnerable to pressure, to lawsuits, to media pressures, and I think, ultimately, that is what killed him. Whether it was suicide because he couldn’t take the pressure anymore, or because his doctor was tired of listening to him whine, I can’t say. But honestly, I have a hard time swallowing the fact that sweet, eccentric Michael Jackson committed suicide. But that’s just me. (Yes, I’m well aware of the irony in the fact his latest tour was called “This Is It,” but I still can’t wrap my head around him actually leaving his kids like that. Not his style.)

There’s no denying he was talented. No denying he was tabloid fodder. No denying people were pushing him, perhaps beyond the limits to which is body was able to go. And there’s no denying he had an extremely weird relationship with MacCauly Culkin.

But there’s also no denying you can think of music in the 80s and not think of “Bad.” (There’s also no denying you think of Weird Al Yankovic when you think about “Bad” and “Beat It.”) There’s no denying you think of “Thriller” when you think of old-school MTV and the birth of music videos. There’s no denying when you think of sappy anthems, you think of “We Are The World.” There’s no denying when you think of strange music videos, you think of that freaky face-changing bit in “Black or White.” There’s no denying you actually sing along with “Black or White” regardless of how much you claim to hate that song. (Yep, guilty.)

There’s no denying Michael Jackson left his mark on music – and our hearts. No matter how strange he seemed. It’s impossible to downright hate everything about Michael Jackson.