The King is Dead - Michael Jackson Rocks the World One More Time

It's pretty hard to not want to blog today, yesterday really was one of those 'where were you' moments. It was a night when it was OK to phone and text people in the middle of the night, because it was one of those things that everyone would want to know.

I normally start work at 5am so would usually be in bed by the time the news broke here in the UK (on Twitter which beat the main news sites by some 5/10 minutes), but as I'm off today I'd stayed up beyond my bedtime. And then I couldn't switch of the TV, total shock TV, something that happens only a handful of times in a lifetime. The world was in collective shock. Diana and 9/11 are the only other comparisons I have in my lifetime.

As much as any death is a sad event, I couldn't help but think of the thousands who dies each day, many of whom suffer extremely violent deaths, none of which could even come close to generating the frenzy which accompanied the news that the King of Pop was dead. A sad indictment of our society? A measure of the impact of one man? Probably a bit of both. And I'm just as responsible, on here blogging about Jacko, not Darfur?iran/Afghanistan/Irag/Insert as necessary.

So many times, on Sky News, on BBC, online, the phrase 'you could separate the man from the music' was used, but can you? Didn't the man make the music? If it wasn't for the man would there have been such hype over his music? Do I just not get it?

And how did Uri Geller get on so many TV stations with the same crap? He refused to answer when he last spoke/saw Jackson, preferring to talk more about himself. Bandwagon anyone?

The news people are harping on about how he will be missed, but will he be missed anymore than if he had continued to life his hermetic life? He hadn't produced anything meaningful in a musical sense since 1995 and hardly stepped out in public since that last round of molestation charges in 2005. Am I being too harsh? Yes it's shocking, yes he was a fabulous musician and entertainer, but that can't gloss over the other stuff. We can't let it.

Before his death had even been confirmed the internet was buzzing with the news that it was a suicide/overdose, with even the number 24 being touted as the number of pills he swallowed. This morning I see the story has moved on and it was heroin/speed in his system, the same cocktail that did for River Phoenix or an OD of painkillers depending on what you read. I doubt we'll ever know anything beyond 'stress-induced cardiac arrest' and thus the conspiracy theories will abound a la Elvis.

For now there is a world in grief, united for once, but it will pass and life will return to normal. Just for the next few days, I'm going to watch how the world reacts to the death of a single man, no matter how great, at the expense of all other news. Who the hell knows what is going on in other countries that we'll never know about.