Will Anyone Be Punished for the Death of Michael Jackson
by 01/07/2011
By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
The preliminary hearing of Dr. Conrad Murray on charges of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson is an astonishing spectacle. Here is a doctor who essentially acted as a pusher now denying any and all responsibility for dispensing to Michael a truckload of prescription drugs that eventually killed him. Sources are even reporting that Murray will claim as the lynchpin of his defense that Michael injected and killed himself with Propofol, a contention with little to no evidence that in any event utterly skirts the issue of where Michael got all these drugs in the first place. Bodyguards have already testified that as emergency workers came to try and save Michael’s life, Murray was gathering bottles of pills and removing them from the scene of the tragedy.
Every man is innocent until proven guilty but when a human being dies of a drug overdose at the age of 50 under the close supervision of a physician then unless there is something incredible that we don’t know, someone’s got to go to jail. And Murray isn’t the only one. I am still amazed that a year-and-a-half after Michael’s death we have still heard nothing about anyone else in his retinue who facilitated his self-destruction.
To be sure, much as he liked to say he was Peter Pan, Michael was an adult and was responsible for his actions. The decision to dull deep emotional pain with destructive pills rather than addressing their root cause was Michael’s most tragic mistake. But that doesn’t change the fact that professionals who were on his payroll had a responsibility to protect him from harm, both from others and from himself. Instead they pursued the opposite, content to allow Michael to indulge his growing dependency on piles of prescription drugs. Why? Because if they gave him what he wanted they could stay on the inside, continue to get their big salaries, and remain in the retinue of the world’s biggest star. So they fed the self-destruction and put their greed ahead of basic humanity and morality to at the very least deny Michael the tools of personal destruction.
When witnessing a human being drive his life off a cliff we all have a responsibility to first, try and stop them, second, deny them the tools by which to pursue the destructive patterns, and third, to risk our very relationship in an effort to get them to stop. If they end up hating you and never speaking to you again, so be it. But what we dare not do is clap while they drive off. But giving them a loaded gun to put to their head is downright criminal. And somebody’s got to pay.
Life isn’t a popularity contest and making money off someone who is in full disintegration mode is pretty low anyway. But in Michael’s case the leeches and sycophants held on to the very end until the golden goose was no longer able to lay any eggs. Then they ran to the hills each saying it was someone else’s fault.
If no one goes to jail in the death of Michael Jackson, there will G-d willing be other celebrities who die at a young and tragic age. Others leeches and hangers-on will give more broken Hollywood souls the tools for self-annihilation just so as to participate in the red carpet lifestyle no one today can seem to live without.
