Not Another Michael Jackson Article

Slow celebrity news week(s) as all the best rags – Us, People, TMZ – continue to provide “breaking news” on Michael Jackson, even though the poor guy has been dead for two weeks. Despite the seemingly countless hours devoted to pouring over every aspect of Michael’s story, it is  impossible to get clarity on some of the  rumors still swirling. Was he tricked into 50 concerts? Was he addicted to Demerol? Is Debbie Rowe the biological mother of Prince Michael and Paris? Did Michael have Vitiligo or did he dye his skin white? Are there really 200 unrecorded songs hidden in a vault for the benefit of his children? Your guesses are as good as mine.

Arguably the most baffling question that has emerged in all of this is, how did Michael manage to surround himself with such a coterie of loons?  The characters that have come forward to opine on all things Michael are candidates for the cast of Surreal Life: Deepak Chopra, Mallika Chopra, Uri Geller, Liza Minelli, Corey Feldman, Miko Brando, Debbie Rowe, Liz Taylor and even Bubbles the Chimp’s caretaker. And depending on which “Friend of Michael” you listen to, MJ was either healthy or drug addled, misguided or naive, sincere or manipulative, a great entertainer or the greatest one.

Their dizzying statements leave the public more confused than ever, but I suppose that the insanity surrounding MJ’s death gives us a little taste of what the chaos that raged within  him and about him felt like. We may never get answers to all our Michael-related questions, and that may be in part because Michael himself may not have known them.