Tuesday, July 07, 2009

bittersweet rediscovery

I watched the memorial service for Michael Jackson and pretty much cried for 2 hours straight.

It was a beautiful tribute to a beautiful and talented, entertainer, father, son, brother, humanitarian.

And I love this song:

Hold My Hand.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought for sure you would have been there! We should have gone since we are so familiar with the area :)

C said...

i watched it too and also cried like a baby. it was very well done,


c

Anonymous said...

The world has lost a great man. What a pity. :-(

Sarah said...

Crying over the death of a drug-addicted pedophile. What has the world come to?

Me said...

Sarah, show some respect. The man is dead, and there are people who believe and will always believe he was a good person. Not everyone is brain washed by media hype.

Najia said...

Speaking ill of a deceased man, especially one you do not know in person, as well as one with so many mysterious facets, does not bode well for what people will say upon your death.

If you are unable to appreciate another's depth of empathy, then I imagine you will one day soon feel the sting of a person's insensitive comment to an emotion of yours. Or maybe you already have, and rather than vowing not pay something like that forward, you took the disrespectful and spiteful route of lashing out at another.

It's too bad you didn't feel brave enough to leave your comment with a link.

Amber said...

i was never a huge mj fan, but i cried the whole time also. im annoyed that people are criticizing the fact that his children appeared on stage and that his daughter spoke. it was a celebration of their dad's life and im sure they were so proud to be a part of it. as for his daughter, i would also want to say to the world how much i loved my father.

Anonymous said...

Talk about media hype--his whole funeral is a media spectacle.

Yes, he was probably a decent father, but the truth is that he also slept with teenage boys! That is something he never denied. Even if he is innocent of the sex abuse charges (which I doubt he was innocent), he was breaching some very serious boundaries by sleeping with these children in his bed. No doubt that his selfish conduct had a very serious and long-lasting negative impact on many innocent boys. Where is the outpuring of concern for them?? For someone who had endured abuse himself as a child, he should have known better.

No name for me--I don't have a blog. But you must realize that a post about MJ is a volatile issue and some of your readers (and blog fans!) are going to see things differently than you do.

Me said...

Anon, it's ok to have and voice different viewpoints/opinions, etc. as long as it is respectful. I'm not here to change anyone's opinions that is theirs to have. But I don't appreciate someone calling him a pedophile. That's where a level of disrespect comes in, both to him as a deceased person and to his supporters.

It's true he did make some questionable choices in his life and sharing a bed with children (who are not your own) is one of those big red flags that exploded and marked his fate.

Growing up he had no childhood and in an interview when he was 22 years old he was asked who his friends are, and he could barely answer the question saying friendship is something new to him. He was stunted socially since he never had a normal interaction with people his own age which I think led to a lot of the questionable choices he made later in life. It's just sad that no matter what he did, he was always scrutinized. He led a very lonely existence since people always wanted something from him, except for children who saw him without dollar signs in their eyes. I'm not spouting this off for people to disagree, or agree, this is just how I feel. Anyone is free to say what they want, I'm just asking them to do so with respect.

And I agree the funeral was in fact a HUGE media frenzy but it was really the ONE time the media was able to portray him as a human being, a father, a son, rather than the freakshow that 90% of the reporting world have shown in the past. Probably because aside from cameras, the media was left out, no editorializing or judgements, at least not for the 2 hours of the service. That was a pleasant surprise for once.

Anonymous said...

Very good points, Smileygirl. And yes, the media did a nice job (most of the time) of focusing on him as a father and a talented singer/dancer. And I think that people had not thought about the non-freakshow side of him in quite some time.

He was a complex man and he certainly enriched lives through his entertaining. Perhaps that is why I was so disappointed in his other actions.

Anyhow--your blog rocks!

Anonymous again :)

Me said...

Thanks anon. Glad you enjoy the blog (which I need to update more regularly come to think of it!)

And I appreciate the respect and tone of your comments, even though we may share a difference of opinion. :)

Me said...

Nope, no fire. Sorry to disappoint. Like I said, I'm not here to change opinions. It's just sad that people believe what the media spoon feeds them.

And I would suggest having a healthy debate on this but typing out that "michael jackson is a pedophile" 30 some times does not warrant a mature discussion so I won't waste our time. But, if you really thought he was a pedophile, why would only TWO people come forward in a span of 30+ years when literally hundreds of thousands of children have interacted with this man? Don't you think there would have been more than 2 people?!?