Oh, stop it! MJ attracts the latest in the line of Grief Tourists

I have no problem with Michael Jackson, believe me. Off The Wall is a great album despite some of the soppy love song nonsense.

But surely, SURELY this story is done with now?

Here is a concept - if you were all big fans of MJ already, why the hell didn't you already own Man In The Mirror? Or Billie Jean? or Thriller for that matter?

The answer to this question is of course what I call, rather obviously, "grief tourists".

These people who have no personal interest in the deceased Nor indeed did many of them care enough to follow him closely nor even more bravely took the financial and credibility hit that would be buying the woeful "invincible" album.

All of a sudden these zero relations are crying in the streets, contributing messages of loss to phone ins, shocked and stunned at their loss and spend hours a day bemoaning the unfairness of the world that costs famous people their lives at regular intervals.

Then they buy his records.

I OWN two of his records and I haven't felt the desire to listen to them since his death. First of all, his death has not changed how good they are - and at their best they remain undeniable classics. Secondly, I know them pretty much back to front anyway, since I listened to them while he was STILL ALIVE!

My only idea here is that the record buying public are either buying these records out of guilt or some kind of feeling of grievers' minimum knowledge obligation

ie: "I'm saying his death has really affected me, but I can't hum the bridge to Man In The Mirror, I know - I'll download it and pretend I knew it all along"

Everyone who was alive and sentient in 1997 recognises the parallel with Princess Diana here - she was a desperately unhappy celebrity, though almost certainly less damaged mentally than Jacko was, and her death seemed equally as sudden and unexpected. I recall, despite only being 16 at the time, the sheer ludicrous snowballing of grief from people who probably wouldn't even have recognised "the people's princess" if she bought a bag of Quavers from their corner shop.

They'd probably have mistaken her for Jill Dando or something.

But they saw others on the news crying and laying flowers, and suddenly everyone had to do it. Seriously - you weren't properly grieving if you didn't go down to the Queen's house and littering.

So why does humanity do this?

When I attended the funeral several years ago of a distant relative, I felt like a fraud for standing there since I knew virtually nothing about the deceased, and in perpetual terror that someone would ask me what she was like or something. Sure I was sad that many people I knew were sad and had lost someone, but just how involved could I feel in the death of that one person?

It seems that these "grief tourists" have no such reticence. Urged on by a media now obsessed with lionising a man they tried to destroy a couple of years ago they are force fed the concept that public displays of grief for a man you didn't know are not only OK, but expected of you.

And what do they get out of it? The core of many human aims - in-group acceptance. Suddenly, it's very fashionable or "normal" to love Michael Jackson and everything he did. Suddenly rather than the weirdo loner who has been repeatedly accused of being a highly disturbed child molester he becomes instead The King Of Pop - an icon of the modern age and a hero for a generation.

If even half the people who claim to have thought of him in such a way actually did, he would probably have been a lot more secure and perhaps his death would have been avoided, and can you really look me in the eye and say it was unexpected?

Even so, these grief tourists are less annoying than those on Twitter who were kicking out Jacko death jokes within moments of the announcement that he had died, perhaps even before his body had cooled. These people really do need a kick up the backside. At least wait until he's had a post mortem!

I sum up those first few hours after his death like so:

"Miserable, deeply disturbed abused child dies. World laughs."

This was not our finest hour.

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