The Big Lie

It was the summer the Michael Jackson video retrospective History was released: 1995. We were visiting friends in Berkeley when Ben, Naneen's teenage son, turned my daughter, then six years old, onto Michael Jackson. MTV was playing every Michael Jackson video ever made and Ben and my daughter sat, danced, sang, well, they became Michael Jackson.

That's when her obsession began. It lasted not quite as long as her obsession with Star Wars.

After several hundred viewings of History, her favorite was Black or White, mine was Billie Jean, my daughter asked this question based upon the quite obvious observation that his looks had changed radically: "If Michael Jackson is a boy, how come he looks like a girl? And if he is Black, how come he looks white now?"

Sensible questions from a six year old. That's when I told the big lie: Maybe he is trying to tell us that gender and race shouldn't be that important.

As deeply disturbed as Michael Jackson might have been, one thing we know for sure: he was extraordinarily talented and gave the world a new era of pop music, changed the world of music videos, and ended the overt racism at MTV, which up to that point would not air music videos by African American performers. Michael Jackson was the break through artist.

Of course, the circus around his death is off the charts. It's been the reason why I haven't turned on a television for the week except to muse along with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The interview NPR did with Spike Lee who worked with Jackson on the 1996 video "They Don't Care About Us," was perhaps the one I want to remember. Remember his talent, his work ethic, his enormous creativity, his gift.