Michael Jackson described himself as the “King of Pop.”  That’s like a writer declaring he’s the “King of Romance Novels.”  One shouldn’t want to be known as the “King of Pop,” nor the “King of Romance Novels,” for one should not want their work to be synonymous with “disposable” and “low-brow” and “trash.”

No one can deny that Michael Jackson had an influence on pop-music, and for this many of the top-paid popular musicians of today pay tribute.  But aside from “Thriller,” an album that was at once artistically and commercially successful, the rest of Michael Jackson’s career was mostly a game of chasing the dragon.  The territory on which he left his mark was, however, profound enough to inspire Usher-caliber acts, while invariably stinking up the pop landscape with ultimately more disposable acts (presently Lou Pearlman is sending out love letters to Lance Bass from federal prison), leaving a legacy that is not really a legacy at all.  Britney, Jessica et al. are like rotten wooden steps:  good luck going up.

Sad as it may be, Michael Jackson should be remembered for what he really was, an example of how ungodly amounts of money and public adulation (at first real, then sustained through the survival mechanism of imagination, which unfolds into delusions of grandeur, in this particular case) transmogrify a gifted yet fragile being into a gruesome self-indulgent side-show whose skewed perception registers out of sight from us in a parallel universe where it is acceptable—perhaps even an entitlement—to exploit the vulnerability of small children and sexually molest them after cultivating the illusion of trust.

There is of course a chance that Michael Jackson is not a pedophile, that he did not in fact molest any small children, as there is also a chance that OJ Simpson is not a murderer, and did not nearly decapitate the head of his former wife and stab to death her paramour.  Examine each of these cases closely—actually an additional one, in Jackson’s case—and I’ll be damned if the evidence does not indict these two men, at levels of absurdly high probability, as respective pedophile and murderer.  Jeffrey Reiman wrote a book that sums up the outcome of these cases, and it’s called The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison.

Nevertheless, Jackson did not get convicted and our cultural amnesia is so effective that the damning evidence of two ultimately bought-off cases have opened the floodgates for myriad companies to milk the Jackson cash cow in a way that surpasses the so-called zeitgeist of “Thriller” and in consequence the consumer is assaulted at every turn with Jackson memorabilia that will likely continue to be pressed and molded and shipped out of US owned companies that use the cheap hands of third world labor to turn an obscene profit in the same way these companies have been ejaculating this thing called Elvis all over the worldwide pop-culture landscape, still successfully spinning a bloated, sweaty addict who ripped off black music into a publicly traded commodity that is just about American as the apple pies our teenage sons stick their dicks into.

So there you have it, and “The King of Pop” is dead.

But wait, it’s not over quite yet, because even posthumously, it is an American right of passage to deny responsibility for one’s own actions.

Indeed reports have surfaced that some “reckless” doctor prescribed Jackson the powerful medication that killed him, implying that the doctor killed Jackson, that his weapon was lethal medication.  Yet this is always such a moronic vantage on which to hang your effort, for if the doctor—as this wobbly perspective presumes—inadvertently killed Jackson, then the same logic should be applied to the American behemoth known as Wal-Mart, a store that not only cashes in on pedophiles and musical frauds, but also at one time supplied guns to men and women and even teenagers who killed themselves and others because these men and women and teenagers were suddenly mesmerized by the gigantic new Wal-Mart in town, the largest structure in the town’s history, and the structure sprawls wide—so wide in fact that it is wider than the town elementary school and junior high and high school combined; and the structure is tall—so tall in fact that it casts a large shadow over the small town businesses that are offering the same products at higher prices; and under the cast of this intimidating shadow, the sunlight is unable to filter through and sustain the small town businesses that ultimately wilt away and collapse and die, and as the small town businesses continue to wilt away and collapse and die, the three acres of pavement that is Wal-Mart’s parking lot becomes emptier and emptier because the small businesses can no longer supply their employees with the amount of green a behemoth like Wal-Mart needs to survive and indeed thrive.

But in the end it’s not that big of a deal, and Wal-Mart will move on to the next town and do the same:  Michael Jackson memorabilia will be delivered in bulk and sold by demand, and maybe even some Elvis lunch boxes and action figures will tumble into the big non-biodegradable Wal-Mart plastic shopping bags, and suddenly the impact of Michael Jackson on our culture becomes clearer; and while it doesn’t have heart, and it doesn’t have soul—or even rock ‘n’ roll’—it does have the power to bring into sharp relief all that makes us fearful and cynical and indulgent, while also providing enough ammunition for Michael Moore to make at least one more film.