For anyone who's watched the MJ saga over the past few years as he seemed to degenerate into greater and deeper maddness, it's hard to say that they didn't see this pathetic end coming. I had no doubt that sooner or later, we'd see Jackson die before his time because this was a man who did not exist in reality. Sooner or later, the abuse that he had put his body through was going to take it's toll.

While I wasn't a fan of Jackson's work, I could admire his very obvious talent. He was a great singer, song writer and performer and you don't have to be a fan to acknowlege his enormous and long lasting influence in music and dance. But something happened along the way and something went very badly wrong with Jackson. Perhaps it was between Thriller and Bad that he bought into the hype that he was indeed the most important performer that ever lived. And that he was no bound by the same rules that the rest of us mere mortals were.

His behavior became increasingly disturbing as time progressed. His facination with the affectations of a childhood that he claimed never to have enjoyed were charming in a young man just barely out of his teens. It became troubling to see in a man in his thirties. It became deeply disturbing in a man pushing fifty. We knew that it was not healthy for a man to be so uncomfortable with most adults and most at home in the company of prepubesent boys (not that there weren't girls at Neverland, but boys were clearly his chosen company). He had few relationships with adult women and whenever pressed into uncomfortable situations, reverted to a childlike singsong voice that he used as a shield against the unpleasentness of the adult world.

What Jackson needed very badly and seemed never to have was someone who was able to tell him "No". Someone who would be able to get him to see reason about things and put the breaks on his more outlandish actions. What he had instead was a bunch of facilitors who catered to his every whim, no matter how destructive. Whether it was plastic surgeons who turned him into a freak, friends who never told him the hard truth he needed to hear so badly, or family members who depended on him for financial success, he had no one who was either capable or willing to burst the artificial bubble he built around himself. He didn't need Elizabeth Taylor or Emmanuel Lewis; what he needed most of a was a good shrink to help him cut through the bullshit.

The greatest victims in all this was not Jackson himself (who I do think died from either medications or from anorexia-related cardiac failure given his astonishingly underweight frame). There are children out there who could very well have been molested by a man who in his own mind could see nothing wrong with his behavior.

And then there are the three children that Jackson raised in his articial bubble who are now going to be brutally thrust out of the fantasy world they have lived in for so long. The only parent they really know is dead, the money is gone and their father left an estate deeply in debt. Depending on who is named their guardian, they will have a very difficult period of adjustment ahead of them.

Jackson was right that the children were the most important thing, but I feel nothing but pity for the ones who now must pick themselves up from the wreakage that his life had left behind.