Oh Captain Eo, My Captain Eo

Reverend Al Sharpton spoke commandingly this afternoon at Michael Jackson's memorial service, saying "I want his children to know there was nothing strange about your daddy -- it was strange what your daddy had to deal with." I think naming a child Blanket is perhaps cute celebrity whimsy. But sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and hosting little boy slumber parties, is strange. Let's call a spade a spade.

I read Louise Palanker's moving post about Michael Jackson's culpability in child molestation. She very rightly points out how the public has turned a blind eye to his unorthodox behavior. But here's my dark and dirty secret: I'm unaffected by those allegations against him. Somehow -- and I admit I find this knack troubling -- I've gone merrily along all these years separating the man from the music.

Did Michael Jackson touch Jordan Chandler? I hope not, but my uncomfortable truth is that his supposed sexual deviancy doesn't lessen my love of "Off the Wall." Playdates at Neverland Ranch don't change the fact that my first grade class butchered a volin arrangement of "Beat It," or that I spent many an afternoon at Skate Town limboing to "Bad." I watched the network premiere of "Remember the Time" with my best friend -- each of us on a rotary phone. My childhood is infused with his melodies and movements. It wasn't Robert Frost who first taught me slant rhyme. It was Vincent Price in "Thriller":

Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'alls neighborhood

I know he was acquitted of sexual abuse. I know that Brooke Shields and Madonna trusted him with their children, and that his daughter Paris sobbed today on a dais before the solid gold coffin, "he was the best daddy!" The great shame is, I probably would have still gotten tipsy in my kitchen the day he died, dancing barefoot to "Human Nature," remembering with a fond tear the time I experienced Captain Eo in DisneyLand Paris -- all of this -- even if he had been found guilty.

Was Michael Jackson bad? To what extent is it immoral to celebrate a bad man's good art? Ezra Pound was an anti-semite. Does that rob The Cantos of their lyric beauty?

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.

Pound envisioned them as "a poem to include history." I feel it should matter to me that his version of history might be, well, a bit heavy on the Aryan, but to dismiss all of the language... can I? And am I supposed to shelve Michael Jackson's History, too?

Just now, as I was writing this, a young black boy -- fourth of fifth grade -- came to my door selling salt water taffy and peanut clusters to help fight the war on drugs. No, I didn't buy candy for $7 a box, but when he heard me playing "Billie Jean," and asked me to turn it up, I did. I brought him a bottled water. We stood together for a moment on the stoop, both of us tapping our feet, memorializing -- what exactly? The soundtrack to our childhoods.