Who Killed Michael Jackson?

There's a better than even chance that Dr. Conrad Murray may go to prison for the death of Michael Jackson. He was the physician in attendance at the time of death of the pop icon, and admitted injecting Jackson with the powerful anesthetic propofol in the hours before his death. But does that mean Murray is responsible for the superstar's demise? Somehow I doubt there will be a groundswell of public or prosecutorial sentiment to pin what is now being called a homicide on Murray... and for good reason.

Like Anna Nicole Smith and Elvis before her, the combination of wealth and celebrity proved Jackson’s undoing. Both fame and fortune were heaped on them — as we continue to do to others — by an adoring and uncritical public in amounts they were ill-equipped to handle. In the end, no one could just say “no” to their unrelenting demands as they attempted to simply escape their brutal realities … if only for eight hours at a time.

More than a homicide, Jackson’s death — along with those of Jimi and Janis — is another case of celebrity “accidental suicide.”

No one was ever able to stop poor Michael from going too far. Family members (or others with influence in his life) should have tried harder to restrain him from additional face-altering surgeries and skin lightening treatments 20 years ago, but who could tell him “stop, enough” and enforce it? It certainly wasn’t going to be his dermatologist, who seemingly was getting filthy rich off of just one client, nor, obviously, any of the other members of his ever-changing entourage of sycophants.

The more Jackson attempted to look like a white person, the more white persons loved and adored him for the effort. How could he stop in the face of such validation? His tortured contortions to be someone else confirmed some whites’ secret sense of superiority and entitlement: White is right.

Skin cream companies make small fortunes selling bleaching creams to the world’s darker populations, and Michael Jackson was living proof of the rightness — actually it’s a sickness — of the quest by some to inhabit a fairer skin than the one they were born with. It isn’t a mere coincidence that every indigenous group of people anywhere in the world who pray to a God of another skin color is either poor or enslaved … and oftentimes both. Trapped in the living hell of the bubble that those we confer superstardom on have to inhabit, Jackson, like others before him, sought relief via the wonderful, magical, and seemingly easy world of pharmacology. If you, gentle reader, sleep well at night … thank your lucky stars; blissful, untroubled sleep is just one of the tradeoffs celebrity demands. As more is reveled regarding our so-called “war on terror” we’re learning that sleep deprivation is tantamount to (alas, a form of) torture.

We erect human idols so that we can vicariously feed off of them. They satisfy a hunger within us to, on the one hand to be like them, while at the same instance wanting to devour them alive. If Jackson had ever dared to leap into the crowd at one of his live performances he would have quite literally been torn limb from limb.

Tormented by a burden too heavy for any mortal to carry, Jackson’s life devolved into a world of drugs on top of other drugs. Yes, the pain he was experiencing (caused by a years ago performance accident) was real — but others have had to learn how to successfully manage and live with pain; it sometimes goes with being human.

But Jackson, empowered by his wealth, and the slavish desire of everyone around him to fulfill his every god-like demand, couldn’t take “no” for an answer. If Dr. Murray had declined Jackson’s insistence for more and more medication he would have simply been replaced by a doctor who would willingly acquiesce to such demands. That’s what man-child gods come to expect: Obsequence.

So, who really killed Michael Jackson? With our fawning worship of the cult of celebrity, our ever-lowering of the standards of what we deem as acceptable behavior, and our childlike embracing of spectacle over substance in our daily lives … we all did. And the sickest part is … the culture we’ve erected and so mindlessly embrace makes us serial killers: We will strike again when given the opportunity …whenever the next superstar weakens just a bit and begins to fall from orbit, or from grace. Just watch.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com

Frazier's From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.

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