St. Michael of Santa Maria

Very soon Michael Jackson will be nominated for a Nobel Prize. But why stop there? Tell the Pope to make Michael a saint. Afterall, Rev. Al Sharpton has already called for a "National Day of Mourning." Did you just lose your Cheerios? Sorry. It can't be avoided. The canonization of Michael Jackson is continual and over the top.
This "whitewashing of Michael Jackson" ironically seems to be most avid in (but is not limited to) black communities. I marvel at the forgiving nature of African-Americans who overlook the singer's blatent rejection of his ethnicity in order to celebrate him.
Let's look at the facts. He began life as a precociously talented and very adorable black boy. Once he had the freedom and money he began a lifetime of recreating his once-handsome looks into a white caricature: Katherine Hepburn's cheeks, Cary Grant's chin, Peter Pan's nose and Jackie O's hair. And skin bleached to match Casper the Friendly Ghost.
He married twice. Both to white women and neither believably. And he purchased three white babies.
None of his "special friends" were black, except for Emmanuel Lewis who Michael notoriously carried around like a teddy bear. (Emmanuel's mother put the kibosh on that relationship when she discovered that Michael tried to check into a hotel with Emmanuel as father and son. See Michael Jackson's Secret Childhood VH1 documentary by Dave Greene, aired 29 Jan. 2005.)
The singer also set his sights on another young black icon of the 70s: Rodney Allen Rippy, the cute as a bug spokeskid for Jack In The Box burgers. The teenaged "Michael used to call my house every single Saturday afternoon and talk to me on the phone," says Rodney in the Greene film. "My mom wondered why he didn't have any friends his own age."
Just a series of special friends, all boys, all white, all prepubescent. We watched them parade through his life, photographed on his lap, by his side, all the time, over and over. And if he hadn't been so rich and famous, he would have been stopped a long time ago.