By the time this article sees print, Michael Jackson’s movie-concert entitled, “This Is It” would have earned around $150Million at the tills, in my conservative estimate.
I guess this only proves that everybody loves MJ. Well, almost. I know of this one guy who is not very fond of the late, great Michael Jackson. This guy is no other than – hold your breath — Joe Jackson. For the benefit of the uninitiated, Joe Jackson happens to be MJ’s own father.
Say that again — MJ’s own father didn’t love MJ?
Let’s get things straight. Joe Jackson didn’t exactly say he didn’t love his son. Rather, it was the late, great Michael Jackson who said – and felt – that his father didn’t love him. Or something to that effect.
I know a great many stories have been written and said thus far about MJ, his greatness and eccentricities included. But what particularly stands out, at least to me, is the CNN online report that gave me a peep into MJ’s inner soul.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the Orthodox Jewish rabbi who was a friend of Michael Jackson for several years, was interviewed by CNN’s Campbell Brown. Rabbi Shmuley and MJ worked together on the “Heal the Kids” charitable initiative and stayed in touch until the middle of the decade, when they drifted apart
Openly talking about his impressions of the late iconic entertainer, Rabbi Shmuley shared his thoughts about the real cause of MJ’s death. Here are pertinent portions of the interview, which I am quoting verbatim. Although it is a futile exercise, try your best not to cringe as I did.
Listen to what Rabbi Shmuley had to say:
“I think Michael lived with a profound fear of rejection. And Michael told me once… ‘everything I’ve done in pursuing fame, in honing my craft was an effort to be loved because I never felt loved.’ ”
“(One day) we went to give out books to parents of low-income families in Newark, New Jersey. And on the way back I could see Michael was angry at me, although he never had a temper so he wouldn’t show it… So, I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ So, his manager says to me, in front of him, ‘Shmuley, you want to make Michael accessible and normal. Don’t you understand he’s famous because he’s not normal.’ And then I understood the full tragedy of his existence. Michael was terrified that the moment he became average that the public would forget him.”
“…(T)his was a tortured, tortured soul, who from the earliest age did not know love because he felt that he had to perform to earn love. He lived in permanent insecurity. He was one of the most tortured souls I ever came across.”
“Michael really wanted his father’s approval. And he loved his father very deeply. I know that in many interviews he spoke about anger towards his father. But when he was with me he said that he lived for his father’s approval and he told this to his father on the phone when I was in the car with him… Michael wanted his father’s love more than anything else. His father meant the world to him. And I think that one of the things he lived with more than anything else — the pain he lived with — was this constant feeling that he never quite earned his father’s affection.”
There are a lot of speculations about the proximate cause of MJ’s death. Whatever the autopsy reports revealed, MJ seemed to have lived a life full of ironies.
He earned the approval of adoring fans, but nursed a profound fear of rejection.
He tried to live a normal life, away from public glare, but deep inside he wanted to be noticed, to be loved, so he purposely lived a life beyond the normal.
He had everything money could buy, but the one thing he so desperately wanted more than anything else in the world – his father’s love – his money could not buy.
He won the affection of the multitude, but failed to earn that of the one person he most yearned affection from.
I am pretty much convinced on a more profound level that, despite nasty loose talks linking MJ’s death to drugs, it was not really drugs that did MJ in.
It was love… or rather the lack of it.
Quote for the week:
What a man desires is unfailing love…
(Proverbs 19: 22)
I guess this only proves that everybody loves MJ. Well, almost. I know of this one guy who is not very fond of the late, great Michael Jackson. This guy is no other than – hold your breath — Joe Jackson. For the benefit of the uninitiated, Joe Jackson happens to be MJ’s own father.
Say that again — MJ’s own father didn’t love MJ?
Let’s get things straight. Joe Jackson didn’t exactly say he didn’t love his son. Rather, it was the late, great Michael Jackson who said – and felt – that his father didn’t love him. Or something to that effect.
I know a great many stories have been written and said thus far about MJ, his greatness and eccentricities included. But what particularly stands out, at least to me, is the CNN online report that gave me a peep into MJ’s inner soul.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the Orthodox Jewish rabbi who was a friend of Michael Jackson for several years, was interviewed by CNN’s Campbell Brown. Rabbi Shmuley and MJ worked together on the “Heal the Kids” charitable initiative and stayed in touch until the middle of the decade, when they drifted apart
Openly talking about his impressions of the late iconic entertainer, Rabbi Shmuley shared his thoughts about the real cause of MJ’s death. Here are pertinent portions of the interview, which I am quoting verbatim. Although it is a futile exercise, try your best not to cringe as I did.
Listen to what Rabbi Shmuley had to say:
“I think Michael lived with a profound fear of rejection. And Michael told me once… ‘everything I’ve done in pursuing fame, in honing my craft was an effort to be loved because I never felt loved.’ ”
“(One day) we went to give out books to parents of low-income families in Newark, New Jersey. And on the way back I could see Michael was angry at me, although he never had a temper so he wouldn’t show it… So, I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ So, his manager says to me, in front of him, ‘Shmuley, you want to make Michael accessible and normal. Don’t you understand he’s famous because he’s not normal.’ And then I understood the full tragedy of his existence. Michael was terrified that the moment he became average that the public would forget him.”
“…(T)his was a tortured, tortured soul, who from the earliest age did not know love because he felt that he had to perform to earn love. He lived in permanent insecurity. He was one of the most tortured souls I ever came across.”
“Michael really wanted his father’s approval. And he loved his father very deeply. I know that in many interviews he spoke about anger towards his father. But when he was with me he said that he lived for his father’s approval and he told this to his father on the phone when I was in the car with him… Michael wanted his father’s love more than anything else. His father meant the world to him. And I think that one of the things he lived with more than anything else — the pain he lived with — was this constant feeling that he never quite earned his father’s affection.”
There are a lot of speculations about the proximate cause of MJ’s death. Whatever the autopsy reports revealed, MJ seemed to have lived a life full of ironies.
He earned the approval of adoring fans, but nursed a profound fear of rejection.
He tried to live a normal life, away from public glare, but deep inside he wanted to be noticed, to be loved, so he purposely lived a life beyond the normal.
He had everything money could buy, but the one thing he so desperately wanted more than anything else in the world – his father’s love – his money could not buy.
He won the affection of the multitude, but failed to earn that of the one person he most yearned affection from.
I am pretty much convinced on a more profound level that, despite nasty loose talks linking MJ’s death to drugs, it was not really drugs that did MJ in.
It was love… or rather the lack of it.
Quote for the week:
What a man desires is unfailing love…
(Proverbs 19: 22)
