Michael Jackson: 1958-2009

I’m not a fan of the man’s music, but there’s no denying he had talent. He released the highest-selling record in history. I doubt there is a person alive who doesn’t know who he was.

Nor will I speak for his mistakes and possible misdeeds. For a time, he deliberately fostered a surreal public image, and though he stopped doing so in the 1990’s, his eccentric persona would continue to haunt him through the rest of his life. There’s no doubting he made some poor choices.

But that’s not the point. We all watched this terrified, lonely, shell-shocked man disintegrate over the last two decades, and we were entertained. We should all be ashamed of ourselves.

Michael Jackson was mentally ill. The proof is abundant and irrefutable. Yet nobody in his coterie of hangers-on ever got him the help he so obviously needed. Did he not have one friend among the sycophants? Was he really surrounded with status-seeking vultures and nothing more? This man had millions of dollars. He could have afforded the best psychiatric care on Earth. There are plenty of doctors who would’ve loved the opportunity to have such a case on their resume.

But it never happened. We all enjoyed watching the King of Pop disintegrate in slow motion. It’s something the human race has always done. We love to elevate our celebrities to idol status, then we gleefully tear them apart. It’s not enough to have their human failings exposed. The fall apparently has to be proportional to their lofty status, and Jackson ended up on the world’s tallest pedestal.

We live in a culture that takes one of two approaches to mental illness. The first is to stigmatize it. Up until thirty years ago, we simply locked folks away, so as not to embarrass or disturb us. Nowadays, we’re more progressive, and the mentally ill are free to wander through a maze of substance abuse and poverty, punctuated only by periods of incarceration when they break the law. Either way, we punish the symptoms while ignoring the disease.

It’s easier that way, since we can absolve ourselves of any responsibility.

“So what if that guy on the sidewalk lost a leg fighting in Vietnam? He mumbles and smells bad, and we certainly don’t want him scaring off the breakfast crowd, so we’ll call the cops and they’ll just make him go away. I don’t care what happens to him; just get him out of my face. Can’t you see he’s screwing up the ambiance?”

Of course, that only happens if they’re poor (or unattractive). Pretty, famous people with mental illnesses become an obsession for us.

In fact, it’s vitally important that we not let wacky celebrities get treatment, because then they just wouldn’t be as much fun, would they?

“Look at ‘im! He’s doing that thing with the punch bowl! Somebody get a picture of me with him! Maybe he’ll throw a TV out the window! Wait ’til the folks back home see this!”

For the celebrity, any symptom is treated with an unsavory combination of punishment and encouragement. Sure, the press pounces on every tic and misstep, but each time, the the person under the glass gains exposure and fame. It’s an ugly and pathetic cycle, and one we seem to relish as a culture.

I can speak from experience. I’ve known hundreds of musicians in my life, and while most are as normal as you and I, there are more than a few who have deep-seated problems. Some turn to art as a way of getting something out that they can’t otherwise articulate. Others do it for the hope that fame will somehow dispel (or worse, validate) some sort of self-loathing or lack of esteem. Some are fine, until substance abuse rears its ugly head.

Throughout history, genius has walked hand-in-hand with insanity. Seneca knew it. Mozart felt it. Dali painted it, and Van Gogh lived it. It unraveled the lives of John Coltrane and Charlie Parker and left them to destitution, misery, and death.

Through all of this, we never cared, so long as they were producing. Heck, there have always been those who claim that insanity was responsible for the genius of these men. While that’s patently untrue, the perception remains.

Everyone loves the goofy oddball, but would that they had to spend a day with his demons.

Our whole perception of mental illness is utterly shameful and inexcusably lacking in compassion. Spend an hour in an AA meeting. Sit at a hospital bed with someone who took a Brillo pad to his fingers, then swallowed it, because the music he meant to play “just wasn’t there.”

I have. Shuffling these people out of view because they’re not convenient isn’t the answer. Nor is fueling the fire through a warped combination of derision and encouragement. If we treat any human being that way, just how sane are we?