zaph8000.com

The famous can’t just die it seems, because they have an army of fans & attract the intense attention of the media as they live out their lives in public mere death is somehow beneath them. Not for them the humdrum deathbed or the quiet heart attack in the supermarket car-park, there must be intrigue & doubt or else they weren’t really famous. In deference to the principle that speculation about a famous death must begin at the point the body hits the floor Jackson ticks all the boxes & everyone wants to play. Sooner or later the mystical burger joint where Elvis cooks is going to get a new waiter, conspiracies are way better for many people since without them all you’ve got is a middle aged bloke over-exerting himself. It may be fun to remember Elvis as he was in the fifties but that’s not what he looked like by ’77 & by the same token the Jackson that made “Thriller” wasn’t the guy who was about to perform at the O2 arena, that guy was long gone. As soon as for most of us at least the concept of an actual death has been accepted the logical upshot of way too many people is that he must have been murdered, real stars live forever? Maybe they do, but their bodies don’t go the distance with them, if any other 50 year old drug addict collapsed & died after spending weeks dancing the only surprise would have been that it took weeks for it to happen.

It has been a year though since Jackson died & traditionally the time for another great outpouring of grief by those who maybe didn’t feel enough was made of it at the time, sure the doctor may end up in one court or another but what do you expect? Even if he’s convicted of causing Jacksons’ death it still wont follow that Jackson was murdered, it may only mean that he wanted more drugs than the doc would give him so he got himself some more or it may be that he could no longer handle the amount of crap in his system. Even more likely is that pushing himself back into shape & undergoing a punishing set of rehearsals did a lot more damage than supposed, there’s no great mystery as to why middle aged joggers drop like may-flies. The world today doesn’t have to accept any reality that it doesn’t like though & nowhere does this apply more than with the lives & times of the famous, ever since James Dean & Monroe we’ve been fascinated by their deaths almost as much as we’re fascinated by their love-lives. The fans assume a propriety interest & never question their right to regard people they don’t know from Adam as close personal friends & to react to their trials & tribulations as if they were close friends, just because this is utter rubbish has little effect on their feelings. That Jackson in death has transformed both his image & fortunes in a spectacular fashion is of no importance to them aside from using it to prove that there was a motive to murder him as he was worth more dead than alive, then again if you’ve got a life insurance policy this is probably also true of you.

Anyway, it doesn’t really matter whether Jackson was murdered or not, okay it possibly matters to the Law & all that but to the legions of fans it’s immaterial, it’s only pretty important to those people who’ve got books to sell to the fans & maybe Jackson himself, I think every murder victim has the right to be a bit miffed so if he was then he was. The truth is that once we got into the habit of elevating the famous onto ever higher pedestals we ceased to regard them as mere humans which meant that they could no longer live or die as mere humans, those who say that we no longer hold religion dear are so wrong, they just misunderstand the religions we choose. As far as the famous is concerned investigating their deaths as we would an ordinary member of the public is just silly, the boundaries are not the same & once an ego hits the point of no return & has the resources to do anything then anything is possible. Drugs overdose, liver failure, choking on vomit, crazed fan & driving too bloody fast should all be listed as natural causes for famous people, there’s very little point arguing that people shouldn’t do these things when we’re used to reading about all of these things being done all the time. If a mountain climber gets caught & killed in a rock-slide then we’re sorry but we’re not shocked, why we’re shocked when a drug addict dies of drugs is a mystery, then again Jackson killed Jackson isn’t half the story we have right now.

© 2010, zaph. All rights reserved.