The Lost Child

There is something about his tortured soul that touches a part of my own pain. It was easy to dismiss him or laugh at him because of his strange behavior, but no one ever really cared enough to understand him and why he isolated himself. He was born a genius and I can't think of a single song he has ever written or performed that I don't love. Every song is attached to as memory of my life. They are happy songs, messages from his heart; they inspire us all to move, to love each other and to take action to right the wrongs of our society. So the irony of it all is how much he was loved and yet he trusted almost no one. He seemed to live in a prison of our culture's creation. Look at all the people who gather to celebrate his life and incredible talent. I wonder if he ever really knew how much he was loved in a meaningful way. It all makes me so sad.
I feel for his children; and I have deep gratitude for his generosity and philanthropy to children. I think in many ways, he remained a child himself.
It is a tremendous loss. I know it is affecting me in a profound way on many levels; I grieve for him and believe he has been released from the chains that bound him to his painful and lonely life. He will remain the most talented and gifted musician of my generation. Hands down.

The Daily Dish - Andrew Sullivan
The Thing about Michael
There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child. By abuse, I do not mean sexual abuse. I mean he was used brutally and callously for money, and clearly imprisoned by a tyrannical father. He had no real childhood and spent most of his later life struggling to get one. He was spiritually and psychologically raped at a very early age - and never recovered. Watching him change his race, his age, and almost his gender, you saw a tortured soul seeking what the rest of us take for granted: a normal life. But he had no compass to find one; no real friends to support and advise him; and money and fame imprisoned him in the delusions of narcissism and self-indulgence. Of course, he bears responsibility for his bizarre life. But the damage done to him by his own family and then by all those motivated more by money and power than faith and love was irreparable in the end. He died a while ago. He remained for so long a walking human shell.
I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time, and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone. I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out. I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life. And I pray that such genius will not be so abused again.