Right now I’m watching the coverage of Michael Jackson’s memorial on CNN, and the facebook updates on the righthand side of the screen are updating so quickly that all I can do is read one or two before another dozen pop up.  Reading what I can makes me wonder if the commentators – including many I respect a lot – aren’t letting Jackson off too easily for focusing on the music, particularly the Jackson 5 years through Thriller and ignoring the later years of his life including his personal life.

At ESPN Radio, one host talking about the married Steve McNair’s death in a room with his girlfriend said his gauge for how to react was the context he knew McNair in, and that was as a quarterback in the NFL. Because of his performance as a quarterback, he didn’t deal with the personal life issues, and that seems very fair to McNair and to Jackson.

But the Facebook updates beside the video of Jackson’s hearse on the L.A. freeway tell a different story. Many people are making no such distinction. Few “I love his music” or “Michael was the greatest dancer.” Instead, we get “I love you Michael,” “Always in my heart” and “a loyal fan will never have judged him.” They’re choosing to deny not only the weirdness, the freakish personal life we could see, the alleged child molestation, but a decade of less than stellar music that wasn’t compelling enough to push the unsavory parts of his life to the margins of any Jackson narrative. They’re embracing a version of him of their own construction, one that made the music they liked, stopped making music at the point when they stopped listening, and didn’t do the things they didn’t like – a version of Michael that suits them. I wonder if the critics and commentators who focused on his impact and significance weren’t doing a more sophisticated version of that.

We all deserve as much kindness as we can get when we die, but I’m not sure the press is doing anyone but Jackson any favors by pretending that the years between Bad and two weeks ago didn’t exist.