I, too, am sorry for your loss, Pam.

Like others here, I couldn't relate to MJ after all his plastic surgery made him look so freakish. At the same time I could relate to the tragedy of his situation. He became a big star at what age, seven? He got all that attention and all that praise when he was a kid not only because he was a star, but because he was a child star. No wonder he would try to stay that cute and innocent forever.

But precisely because he was a child star and a hugely important bread winner for his family, MJ wasn't allowed to have a normal childhood. So not only did he learn to want to stay a child forever, he also started fantasizing about a much better childhood than the one he had really had. So he tried to give himself that kind of childhood once he had grown up and gained control of his own career and money. He tried to be a happy child when he should have been a man.

Michael Jackson grew up in an age when the United States was a lot more race-conscious than it is today. He must have grown up thinking that he was a cute kid, since everybody said so, but even so he must have thought that he would have been a lot cuter if he had been white. So he tried to become white through the aid of plastic surgery, but he only ended up looking weird and sick that way.

It's fun to watch child stars, but you have to wonder about the price they pay for their careers. Judy Garland, one of the first child stars, was certainly troubled and died too young. River Phoenix died at 23. Heather O'Rourke, child star of the Poltergeist movies, died at twelve. Macaulay Culkin of the Home Alone movies is troubled. And we all know about Britney Spears.

Becoming a great star before you have had time to grow up and and grow into yourself must be a punishing and possibly stunting or even fatal experience.

Even though Shirley Temple did well all her life.

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Ann