Pervert dies, America mourns

Michael Jackson, who wrote and performed some shit songs, is dead.

One feels sorry for his offspring (assuming they are actually his), only some of whom he has held off three storey balconies.

However, they live and their putative father is dead. And one should speak well of the dead, except of course for the small issue of child abuse.

Jackson shared his bed with little boys. That's neither normal nor right, but in keeping with the way of justice on this planet, being rich meant he never faced charges relating to his admissions of sharing beds with small boys.

In one sense, I have sympathy. He had no privacy, no normality, no childhood, no life. Not in a fit would I swap with his existence, no matter how large his fortune. That can't have led to a normal life.

But in another I do not. He put himself in a position whereby he settled a court case about child abuse and was faced with other cases. And there's no excuse for that.

One can have sympathy with Jackson over his childhood and his background without ever endorsing the situation in which he found himself among kids.

But in the long run, I suspect the main legacy will be the fact that he was black and turned his skin white.

What better condemnation of the modern world is there than the fact that "the most talented musician in the planet" (according to Sky News) sought to spend his lifetime changing his skin colour?