Post by dadgoneitbaby on Dec 28, 2009 22:37:12 GMT -5
I’ve been guest-visiting this board off and on since mid-October, feeling a strong connection, but not sure if I belong here. Not really a fan of Michael’s during his career, I was nonetheless disgusted over the years by all the negative talk about him and the one-sided press and comedic joking about the alleged molestations, his pets, dress, changes in appearance, etc. (The evils of gossip, backbiting, rumor-mongering, slander, and the responsibility of the press to tell the truth have always been big issues with me.)
After Michael’s death, it increasingly irritated me that people were so maliciously unkind to him. In early August, one of my dearest old friends and I watched a news update about the delayed funeral. My friend sneered, “People forget what he DID!”
That just flipped my circuits of righteous indignation! I became obsessed with Michael Jackson. For the next few months almost every leisure hour was spent reading print and internet articles, trying to find what I must have missed that had convinced my friend, a former journalist, that Michael had been guilty. In the words of the recently released FBI files describing the search of Michael’s various computers, “Nothing.”
Except that in the process, I grew to love Michael for his generosity and purity of spirit, the good that he did in the world and his amazing talent as a performer. He awes me and is teaching me new lessons about what it means to be a loving person. Oddly, every once in a while, I feel as if he is close behind me, saying, “Look over your shoulder, honey!”
And now I’m working to re-channel the anger I have about his mistreatment into a positive direction.
Smiling through the tears begins the path through them.
- dgib
After Michael’s death, it increasingly irritated me that people were so maliciously unkind to him. In early August, one of my dearest old friends and I watched a news update about the delayed funeral. My friend sneered, “People forget what he DID!”
That just flipped my circuits of righteous indignation! I became obsessed with Michael Jackson. For the next few months almost every leisure hour was spent reading print and internet articles, trying to find what I must have missed that had convinced my friend, a former journalist, that Michael had been guilty. In the words of the recently released FBI files describing the search of Michael’s various computers, “Nothing.”
Except that in the process, I grew to love Michael for his generosity and purity of spirit, the good that he did in the world and his amazing talent as a performer. He awes me and is teaching me new lessons about what it means to be a loving person. Oddly, every once in a while, I feel as if he is close behind me, saying, “Look over your shoulder, honey!”
And now I’m working to re-channel the anger I have about his mistreatment into a positive direction.
Smiling through the tears begins the path through them.
- dgib