The news hit me like a slap in the face with a wet sponge laced with charred glass! I have to say I wasn’t’ expecting that one. Michael Jackson dead at 50...wow. This is truly the death of an icon. A trendsetter. A pioneer. A multi-generational musical genius. A cultural giant. I’m still in shock.

What Jackson brought to the American pop culture scene was complex. On one hand, you have the impact of his music on mainstream America. I mean, what person over the age of 25 doesn’t know at least one of Jackson’s songs? His style was unique and imitated in so many ways it is almost silly. Jackson was able to transcend genre-stylized music and really put his thumbprint on his music. Hence, you have a very original beat, tone, and melody that lasted—and will last—for ages.

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I hadn’t thought about Michael Jackson much in the past few years. Every now and then, a reporter with a penchant for circus-freak journalism captured his comings and goings. Like others with a low grade investment in his brand of pop music, I remembered his art as the soundtrack of my ‘80s youth, when even the sheltered girls in my Christian college dorm would dance to PYT or mouth the undecipherable lyrics to Billie Jean. My children today only identify him as a tabloid ghost, a deformed face, an iconic moonwalker.

Today his death quaked across Facebook, Twitter, and cable news with an unexpected force. We pay his death a strange respect. Other men died today, too—simple men in Cambodia, in Kentucky, in your local emergency room—yet no public Richter scale registered the motion.

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