"It Was A Thriller...And It's No Surprise..."

For what seems like a long time now, I’ve been sharing with friends a personal philosophy that has come from my own life experiences.

You can shock me.

You can stun, even appall me.

But you can’t surprise me.

If that sounds a little self-absorbed, it’s not intended.

It’s really a simple matter of having lived long enough on this earth to realize that anything, and everything, is possible.

In that spirit, I was shocked this afternoon to hear that Michael Jackson was dead.

But I wasn’t surprised.

And not so much because of the crap about poor health and skin diseases and all the other voodoo that the tabloids do so well.

It was because I somehow have always known that there would never be an old Michael Jackson.

Just as I knew, so many years ago, that there would never be an old Elvis Presley.

Or an old JFK.

Having worked in and around the famous and near in my own life, I’ve struggled from time to time with the whole paradox of celebrity in our culture.

Because I know, from having known some of the famous and near, that they are, in the broadest human sense, no better than you or me or anyone else.

But that’s not to say that they aren’t sometimes special.

JFK was special.
Elvis was special.
Michael was special.

Sparing you the usual hyperbole in the form of “the brightest stars burn the hottest and fastest”, suffice to say that special souls that are put into our lives for a time are destined to be there for only the briefest of times.

There is, after all, only so much high wattage light one can absorb before they are blinded.

The old saying is, of course, only the good die young.

I can’t speak to the goodness, or lack, in those who come and go so brightly and quickly.

And I hold fast to the belief that, on the whole, they are no better, or worse, that you and I.

But damned if they aren’t special.