Montrose - Daily Press

In seeing the coverage of Michael Jackson’s death from the perspective of someone who watched with fascination as the boy and his brothers arrived on the scene in the late 60s, many varying reactions have crossed my mind. My wife and I added vinyl LP albums of the Jackson 5 to our record collection, along with his first solo albums.

With a sort of awe, we watched the emerging talent and creativity of the young adult performer, and we watched in bewilderment as the changes in his physical appearance along with his bizarre behavior began to unfold.

There has been little else on the news, and I’ve been thinking about the parallels between Michael Jackson’s life and that of this country.

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The United States is a relative young nation and culture. America, like Jackson, is enormously talented, creative, energetic, vulnerable, often generous to a fault, and ultimately complex.

These qualities in both the man and his country seem born of conflict. The nation began with a revolution, a mix of idealistic search for freedom and opportunism. From the outset, the story of the United States has had the darker element of conquest and exploitation, taking the land at the expense of the native peoples.

We nearly self-destructed with a bloody civil war, in large measure over race and freedom, but somehow managed to listen to our better angels, preserving the nation and ending slavery, if not racial prejudice and hatred.

The coverage of Jackson’s death and life includes his ability to transcend race with a combination of sheer talent and a genuine element of humanitarian generosity. But the rewards of success, the adulation of millions, and the impossible expectations apparently imposed catastrophic pressures on the man.

The word genius is being used to describe Michael Jackson. I think the word applies collectively to the United States. Our genius has been in our energy, creativity, and competitive ability to bring about the most amazing economy, government, social fabric, and the most powerful nation in human history.

But like the tortured, brilliant young man who apparently turned to strange and excessive self-indulgence and medication to handle the pain and pressure, we have collectively turned to a variety of addictions and self-medications that seriously challenge our health, if not our very existence.

America, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, is now touted as the world’s sole superpower, and just as Jackson became the “King of Pop,” we have viewed ourselves as the single dominating culture on the planet.

Jackson earned an unprecedented amount of money as an entertainer, but reports tell of $400 million personal debt as a driving reason behind his recent and grueling efforts to put together a mega-tour. For all the wealth that America has generated, we seem to be caught in a downward spiral of deficit spending. We built our own Neverland, and it remains to be seen whether we will have to sell it to newer emerging economic powers in a hopeless effort to pay our growing debts. We have already started down that road.

For all his talent, he apparently lacked the guidance to back away from the pressure and self-indulgence. And in some ways, that seems to make him particularly American.

 

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