Grieving celebrity natural response to contribution

Two days after Michael Jackson's death was announced, I saw a news clip in which a weeping woman said, "This is the saddest day of my life!" She went on to explain that although she had never met him, she doesn't know how she will cope now that Michael Jackson is gone.

I was astonished and, I admit, annoyed. Her response seems totally unrealistic at a time when so many are struggling with foreclosures, debt, disappearing jobs and other miseries. How can the death of a remote celebrity be the occasion of the saddest day of her life? We saw this same kind of response with the deaths of Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Princess Di.

-- J.

Las Vegas

It's true that some people so lack a core of self that they get kind of lost over-identifying with a celebrity's life. But ...

Howard Cosell told me that John Lennon was dead. Somehow, that always has "stuck in my craw" as a strange and bitter irony.

Monday, Dec. 8, 1980. I was watching "Monday Night Football" in my graduate dorm in Dallas. New England Patriots at the Orange Bowl against the Miami Dolphins. Three seconds left. The New England kicker lining up, hoping to tie the game.

And then, Howard: "Remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City. John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the west side of New York City, the most famous perhaps of all of the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that news flash, which in duty, bound, we had to tell you."

No, I don't have that good a memory. I just watched that clip on YouTube and typed it verbatim. Just now. It's like stepping into a time machine. The very smells and sounds of the dormitory. The faces. The shock of it. And J.? It filled my eyes with tears, just shy of 29 years later. Again, tears. Still.

Back then, I stepped across the hall to my room. My phone was already ringing. It was Paul, "me mate" since the third grade. In the car, he always sang John, while I sang Paul. Our conversation was brief and bitter, because he threw his phone across the room.

Then Harry and I ran across campus to Fondren Library to bear the news to our friend, John, working that evening. We approached the desk. John smiled, and cracked some stupid joke. "Want me to ruin your evening?" was my response.

No, it wasn't "the saddest day of my life." But it was awful, and, somewhere inside of me, it still is awful. It can still make me cry.

So, maybe you're thinking, "Yikes, did I ever ask the wrong columnist this question!" Give me a chance ...

J., I think celebrities -- true celebrities, now, not those media-invented idiots -- help us celebrate. Celebrities, and especially artists, provide us a deep mirror into the celebration of being human. Some celebrities become iconic. That is, the mirror they wield reaches into the collective human experience of a culture and sometimes across cultures.

The weeping woman's loss in Michael Jackson's death is not interpersonal; it's iconic. And the death of an icon is felt painfully and powerfully in a human psyche. The loss is real and meaningful. And so is the grief.

The loss becomes even more powerful when the particular icon also carries your personal projections. That is, the celebrity's life mirrors important pieces of your own psychic journey. Your own life dramas. John did this for me with his transparency. His naive nakedness. He was the first Beatle to recognize Beatlemania as insanity, to rightly despise it, and to loathe himself in it. Yet, he couldn't stop seeking it.

Until the late '70s. He withdrew. He grew up. Got sober. He loved his wife. Raised Sean. Reconciled with Paul McCartney and his son Julian. Came to peace with his life as a Beatle. The John Lennon whom Mark David Butthead murdered was probably the happiest and most peaceful version of John Lennon that ever had lived and breathed.

J., you say the weeping woman's grief is "unrealistic (and therefore annoying) at a time when so many are struggling with foreclosures, debt, disappearing jobs and other miseries." I would say quite the opposite -- that the sting of this grief is made more acute during these hard times, because we will miss the beauty, the passion, the inspiration and hope that pours through artists and into our lives especially during times of social misery.

For then is when we need our artists most.

Originally published in View News on Aug.18, 2009.