Josh Visser, over at CTV takes a perceptive look at the media attention surrounding Michael Jacksons death and The false narrative phenomenon
The media in particular, and society at large, seemed to develop a mass amnesia — the last 18 years of lacklustre musical output, the criminal allegations and civil judgments, and the just plain weirdness was forgotten.
History today tends to favor the dead. Sad stories are written, passed about, virally media builds a momentum and creates a reality.
Why do we rewrite our histories in death? We do it for our gone-too-young celebrities and politicians, but we also do it for the regular people in our lives — choosing to remember only the good — rather than an accurate portrait of a person.
There was only one Michael Jackson — there wasn’t a brilliant entertainer who existed until 1987 and then his freakish clone who dabbled in plastic surgery, and spent some his time showing, at best, incredibly poor judgment around children.
