If you're talking about my Michael, you can't see him in just black or white.

An editorial in today’s Chicago Tribune astutely observes the notion that Michael Jackson’s death and yesterday’s memorial service has divided most people into two distinct groups. To paraphrase, the article said that you either don’t understand what all of the hoopla is about, or you don’t understand how someone couldn’t understand the hoopla. One might further interpret this to say that one camp says “why are we focusing so much praise an attention on this child molesting freak?” while the other is saying “why can you not show your respect to a genius entertainer and great humanitarian?”

I would like to think I’m an intelligent guy. Consequently, I’m well aware of the mess, the conundrum. When Al Sharpton said to Jackson’s three children at the yesterday’s service: “Wasn’t nothing strange about your daddy,” I threw up in my mouth a little bit. What a great thing to say to those kids in an attempt to comfort them. And what a lie!

In my last note, I wrote about how the eccentricities and strange behaviors and mysteries of Michael Jackson were part of what made him so endlessly fascinating and watchable. If you read that and interpreted it as my condoning Jackson’s mistakes and inappropriate behaviors, you did not interpret my words as I had intended them. Tribune columnist John Kass said this morning that people like me are not really mourning the loss of MJ so much as the loss of our childhood. I think he meant this as an insult in the context in which he wrote it, but I am also quite certain that I was up front about the fact that this was such a large part of my personal sadness about Jackson’s death.

I watched the whole memorial service yesterday and cried my eyes out. I’m neither proud nor embarrassed by it. A funeral should render one human, remind us that we are all on this Earth for a short while but for the grace of God. The things that moved me yesterday—I would argue—should move anyone who is in touch with his or her own humanity! There are probably few funerals occurring in this world in which 100% of the attendees hold no anger or shame, disgust or disappointment about the person who has passed on. The dead was a human being, one who by definition falls short of glory. It reminds me of the old adage that if you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. Such is life.

Remembering the joy given to me as a kid by listening to Michael Jackson and watching his videos and performances does not render me morally unaware or spiritually bereft. Honoring his gifts to the world of entertainment does not mean that I forgive or ignore the man’s inappropriate actions and wayward decisions. Loving and missing Michael Jackson does not make me a member of any particular political party, nor does it make me a sympathizer to any particular race or social class or religion. To put it another way, I am not perfect and nor is my family. But guys like Michael sure make me "more normal"!

The growing hostility over our judgments about MJ as a good or evil force sent me back to the Bible, looking for wisdom on the idea of judgment. “Judge not others, lest you be judged” was sticking in my head, and I was ready to throw that out at all of my friends who were on the MJ attack. But I was smart to dig in a little further, because the Bible also talks about the need to make righteous judgments between what is good and what is evil (John 7:24) and even goes so far as to say that we should remove ourselves from those who “walk disorderly,” which requires us to, essentially, sit in judgment of them (2 Thes 3:6). But then there’s the whole danger of hypocritical judging, and that threat probably scares me more than anything else. And it got me to thinking about Michael Jackson. Should I be concerned that my praise of Michael Jackson’s contributions to entertainment means that I forgive the bad things? So I did a little digging. And here’s what I found. And I’m not even going to go there with the whole “glass houses” saying, because you know it already. They always say that genius and madness walk hand in hand, so dig this:

Some of Michelangelo’s great works as an older gentleman were inspired by his love of boys. Is an appreciation of his art an endorsement of homosexual pedophelia?
Thomas Jefferson, as we all know, was one of the first in a long line of politicians to harbor a mistress. Do you look at the Declaration of Independence differently because of it?
Thomas Edison was a de facto atheist, believing not in God, but “nature.” To boycott all of the stuff he invented in protest would literally leave us, well, in the dark.
Walt Disney was a high school drop out. Not a very good example for kids.
President Obama struggles to refrain from smoking cigarettes. Does supporting him demonstrate the support of cancer-inducing tobacco products?

You get the point. I don’t want to be smug or get ridiculous, so I’ll stop there. Clearly, there are thousands of examples of people who have made great contributions to society, politics and culture who made questionable, even reprehensible choices as human beings.

I’ll end this note with something I know for sure. I believe that my appreciation for Michael Jackson, even though I’m a Christian, fairly conservative, middle class suburban white guy, is neither hypocritical nor invalidating nor misled. It’s the same thing, I think, as anyone who watches “The Batchelor,” a show that I think makes a mockery of the institution of marriage and turns it into a game show. Or anyone who watches “Jon and Kate Plus 8,” a repulsive exploitation of a fragile family. Or any of three dozen other reality shows on television that lavish misguided attention on the unimpressive and unworthy.

And yet, I can see why some of us watch that stuff. I can see what draws you in. This stuff is life’s gapers’ delay. It’s none of your business but you can't not watch. Why? “Tell ‘em that it’s human nature.”