In watching a lot of the coverage of Michael Jackson’s death, there has been a blind reverence to the man. Granted, there’s nothing that can take away his talent, but in the remembrances being given a few want to gloss over the humanity of the man. It reminds me of my relatives when my sister died; they gave testimonials and stories from a time when they knew her for a few moments, not the day to day sister I knew. In effect, they gave stories as facts from incidents that were fleeting.

The people not wanting to talk about the drugs and criminal charges are understandable. In this time of grief you might not want to talk about the obvious problems Jackson had. There has been one story reported about how when Jackson first did the moonwalk he didn’t think he nailed it. According to the story, it wasn’t until he saw a young boy backstage who gave him a look of wonderment did he think he hit the moonwalk.

Here’s the thing, if you look at the moonwalk he did on Motown 25 and subsequent moonwalks, he actually did a lot better after Motown 25 on the moonwalk. There was one appearance, I’m not sure when it was done, but they used that as a comparison to the Motown 25 moonwalk and there’s no comparison. In retrospect the moonwalk on Motown 25 looked like an amateur doing it. Impressive but not like the Jackson move people admired.

See, from the public point of view it was the first time they had seen anything like it. I remember seeing that move and it was impressive. I have to be honest, when I saw the Motown 25 a few weeks ago (I was getting some footage for the video portion of the site) I was a little unimpressed in seeing the move, because I had seen Jackson do it many times since and he had done it a lot better. It didn’t take away from the spectacle of it, but I have to say I agree with Jackson when he said he wasn’t sure if he nailed it. As far as the audience, they got excited when he threw his hat offstage, so anything he did that night they would have cheered, but he was right that he hadn’t gotten that move exactly right that night.

Now I’m not pointing this out to disparage the man. It’s just that when we honor someone who dies, we tend to remember the good to a degree we forget the bad. We bring sainthood to someone who doesn’t deserve it not because they are a bad person but because we’re so eager to show the good side we forget this was a person. Flaws help to shape us as well as virtues and both sides should be taken into account.