Legacy
The media distraction machine has been drowning its target audience in the dazzling bathos of the illustrious “freak,” Michael Jackson, a cynosure and epitome of modern genius and disease. A constructed person whose identity was a mélange of sentiment, desire, toxic trends and, perhaps, serious fiddling he was an avatar of postmodernism, an “idol of the theatre” in Bacon’s sense as well as literally.
When the unstable West raises the banners for its spectacular last stand, already in play, it ought to feature his Frankenstein visage on it, haloed by that large white zero.
With the Reverend Jesse Run Jackson bellying into the picture muttering ominously about an evil doctor, law suits hover like vultures above the stage. In the glare of the cold light and stunning music perhaps Reverend Sharpton too may descend with props and media flacks chirping in tow. Given that the point is distraction, and dolors, one expects the denouement to be both funereal and greatly prolonged.
Be that as it may, some who retain their senses, and sense, despite all, will never forget the immortal verse that will remain as the Star’s legacy, a verse that ensured his entrée into polite and important society from assorted Emirates to palaces of diplomacy and art:
“Kick me, kike me; Jew me, screw me…” As noted, it was an avatar of an insane and late stage in a corrupted world’s disordered dream. As mad imperial arrogance and barbarism play ring-around-a- rosy, this idol was the thing in the middle.
Now if they’d only get the remains off TV: but that would negate its function as dispenser of dazzling, morbid and fascinating images and bad faith. It’s ugly and sad; very a la mode.