The Angel and the King

"I know I'm getting old not because I feel old," one of my coworkers said yesterday, "but because the icons of my youth are dying."

He was speaking specifically about actress Farrah Fawcett, who passed away yesterday morning at the age of 62. Her death was hardly unexpected--she'd battled colorectal cancer for the past three years, and the tone of her friends and family in recent days suggested that they were steeling themselves to say goodbye.

I knew what he was saying. Just this week, Ed McMahon, sidekick to Johnny Carson when he hosted the Tonight Show (as he did throughout my entire childhood and well into my adulthood) passed away, as did local TV journalism legend John Callaway.

Farrah was a much larger cultural touchstone, though--not only because of her sudden superstardom as an original cast member of Charlie's Angels, but because of The Poster.

The electric smile. The endlessly curling blonde hair. The nipples hard enough to cut glass. If you were alive in the '70s--and most especially if you were a straight male alive during that decade--you either owned a copy of The Poster or openly envied anyone who did.

As I said, Farrah's premature passing was sad, but expected. The news that started snaking out around the end of the workday, however, was much more of a shock.

It started popping up on news sites under "breaking news" banners: Michael Jackson had been taken to the hospital. His condition was unknown. Maybe he'd had a heart attack. Maybe he wasn't breathing. Only TMZ was reporting he was dead.

On my way home, I stopped by a neighborhood liquor store to pick up a couple of 2-liter bottles of RC Cola for a workplace birthday celebration the following morning. They had a radio station on their PA system, and the radio station was playing "Thriller." That's when I knew that he was gone.

All the news channels provided continuous coverage throughout the night of the swelling crowds outside the hospital where Jackson had been taken, outside the house he'd been renting in Bel Air as he prepared for a 50-concert comeback, outside the Apollo Theater in Harlem. People who knew him and reporters who'd covered him over the years speculated about causes of death and contemplated his legacy, which is torn between the extremes of musical genius--Off the Wall and Thriller are undeniable all-time classic albums--and personal madness--allegations of child molestation (even though he was acquitted of charges in court, the stories never went away), rumors of bizarre behavior (sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber, buying the Elephant Man's bones, etc.) and a clear, disturbing addiction to plastic surgery (publicly, he only admitted to one such surgery, even though his whole facial structure and skin tone changed and his nose deteriorated to the point that it looked like it had been designed by Lon Chaney).

At least one commentator noted that the balance was already shifting, that his music would be cherished long after the weird behavior faded into memory. That commentator had a point--when Elvis died in 1977 (locally, WGN broke into the Cubs telecast to report the news), media and social critics immediately began focusing more on his musical legacy than his love life, his drug use or his eating habits. They forgot the corpulent weirdo in the white jumpsuit, stumbling around stage in Vegas. They embraced the handsome young man with the angelic voice and swiveling hips.

So it will be with Michael Jackson, and even with Farrah--her rambling talk-show appearances and bizarre reality show will be set aside, and we'll all remember the smiling young woman in the red one-piece. And pop culture will soldier on.