OH NO: What if Michael Jackson Was Gay?

I ran two stories yesterday that were pretty much about the same subject but from two different perspectives. Michael Eric Dyson, in a video talked about the black community, Civil Rights and Gays and Teddy Riley defended Michael Jackson as a ladies man who women threw themselves at.

At first glance, I didn’t quite get Dyson’s video statement then I watched it again and realized he was dead on. The black community will only accept what it deems acceptable and then we stake claim and ownership to it and we will refute or reject what we don’t want and deem it non existent, not valid and not acceptable. Problem is…we don’t have that much power and most of what we claim is ours was actually borrowed. As Dyson points out the Civil Rights concept is one of those things. The concept of Civil Rights was not created and is not owned by the Black community Martin Luther King BORROWED the concept from past religious leaders and added his twist to it. In addition, Dyson pointed out that the Black community does not want to claim or take ownership of gay people but what the Black community fails to realize is that there are many gay people who also happen to be Black and there was no pass given during the Civil Rights movement because they were gay. They were still black and treated like other black people. Perhaps the greatest problem with gay rights and civil rights is that the message or the comparison is coming from the wrong people which is white gay people. Which actually does make what Black people say about being insulted by the comparison… valid at least from that perspective. But what if the message came from Black gay people?

Teddy Riley defended Michael’s sexuality but I watched Living with Michael Jackson where he admitted when Tatum O’Neil tried to have sex with him he covered his face and was so nervous and scared, she got turned off. Lisa Marie Presley admitted she only married him because she felt sorry for him and Debbie Rowe looks like Dog the Bounty Hunter. We all know that was an arrangement. Is any of this to say Michael was gay? No, but it doesn’t say he was straight either. We can’t make someone into who we want them to be to please our elitist need to give something validation as a community. We don’t have that luxury. Michael Jackson was, as Berry Gordy put it, the World’s greatest entertainer” and that simply cannot be denied, I don’t care if he had a house full of rats and rabbits. Who he was in his personal life will not give his musical genius more or less validation. He was who he was. That was the greatest dilemma in Michael’s life, he had no identity off stage and he had to develop one and people didn’t understand it so they attacked him, then we kicked him out of the community when he started acting TOO crazy for our taste with the monkeys and carrying children around and we blamed HIM for leaving us and not being Black enough, he was no longer “valid” or “acceptable.” Who in the hell wants to be around people who criticize, abuse them and tell them who they are supposed to be? Teddy Riley doesn’t know shit about Michael Jackson or who he was having sex with, if he was having sex with anyone at all, unless he was in the room. In my tenure in the industry, I have seen women throw themselves at Luther Vandross too. You would be amazed at what people will do to get next to someone famous.

Michael should only be celebrated for his musical genius and his generosity. All the hoopla, allegations, assumptions and theories go out the window because there is not one single person reading this who has any idea of what it was like to live that kind of bizarre life and to be who he was… not even Teddy Riley during his short tenure in the industry.