The saddest picture I have ever seen

Michael Jackson

I'm sitting here in the passenger seat of my car, headed to Galveston
for vacation, in tears. I'm reading an article in Rolling Stone's
special commemorative issue about Michael Jackson. It's just so sad.
People broke him down from beginning to end. His father, the media,
the public. According to his dad, his nose was too big. According to
the media, he was too strange. According to the public early on, he
was too black, or too narcissistic. To me, who has never known a life
without "Michael Jackson", he was phenomenal. Albeit, not normal. But
with the life he had been dealt, who among us would be?
I feel terribly sad for him. So sad for him because he was a person
who had fears. I am a person who has fears. And because I know how
those fears, when they take hold, cause unbelievable darkness. You
feel alone. And though he was the biggest star the world has ever
known, he was very alone. Though he surrounded himself with teams of
people, he was essentially alone. He had no one to really trust with
his deepest troubles. Those people around him would only tell him what
he wanted to hear, not what he needed to hear. And he knew that. But
when you're in the place he was in, he needed those soul searching
moments that a true friend can provide. How do you have that when you
are a megastar? When you, by choice, I guess, have isolated yourself
from your family? Or they from you? How do you deal? With drugs or
alcohol or other self-medicating behavior. It's torture to be in your
own head with your own fears. I know, I've been there. As have many of
you. So, just feel for him. As the Reverend Al Sharpton put it at
Michael Jackson's memorial service, (and believe me, I don't usually
put much stock into anything that comes out of that man's mouth), as
he spoke to Michael's kids, saying " I want his three kids to know,
you're daddy wasn't strange- what was strange was what he had to put
up with." Amen to that, Reverend.

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