This echo in the mirror it follows me inside

It was a haunting echo of what destroyed her father. Janet Jackson, before the girl could get a few words out, told Paris to вЂњspeak up.вЂќ As the child broke down, the adults around her adjusted the microphone so we could hear the sobs. And it concluded with JacksonвЂ™s daughter, Paris, being prodded to stand in front of a microphone to speak about her father. It was the final episode of the long-running Michael Jackson series. The ceremony, which featured performances or tributes from Stevie Wonder, Brooke Shields and other celebrities, was carried live on 19 networks, including the major broadcast and cable news outlets. His memorial service - a variety show with a coffin - had an estimated 31.1 million television viewers. He was a reflection of us in the extreme. And his fantasies of eternal youth, delusions of majesty, and desperate, disfiguring quests for physical transformation were expressions of our own yearning. He was infected by the moral nihilism and personal disintegration that are at the core of our corporate culture. He became a commodity, a product, one to be sold, used and manipulated. He could not disentangle his public and his private self. Jackson, robbed of his childhood and surrounded by vultures that preyed on his fears and weaknesses, was so consumed by self-loathing he carved his African-American face into an ever-changing Caucasian death mask and hid his apparent pedophilia behind a Peter Pan illusion of eternal childhood. The commercial exploitation of Michael JacksonвЂ™s death was orchestrated by the corporate forces that rendered Jackson insane. In celebrity culture we destroy what we worship.

This echo in the mirror it follows me inside