Michael Jackson, American Idol

First he charmed us. Then he bored us. Then he wowed us. Then he sickened us. Finally, mercifully, he left us.

The Michael Jackson story has been told and retold ad nauseam since the once-and-future superstar died apparently of a drug overdose last week. Like the narrative of Elvis-like a train wreck-the rest of us look away and cannot. Our morbid fascination turns our heads as we gaze with horror at what the man, and we, had become. An American idol before there was such a term, Michael Jackson drank deeply from the well of stardom and came up parched.

The original MJ was the smiling, sparkling, diminuative centerpiece of a gifted musical group driven to stardom by an abusive father. Then he went away for a while as we looked to other entertainments.

When he grew up, Jackson no longer needed the Jackson Four and morphed into a pop icon that, if not quite rivaling Elvis and the Beatles in ground-breaking originality, grabbed U.S. celebrity culture by the throat and shook it for every loose nickel. Jackson had it all: the gravity-defying moves, the white glove, the shades, and, still, that piercing voice.

And talk about morphing. Jackson, whether from a desire to be a crossover figure to white audiences or out of a profound desire to escape his blackness, began to change before our ever-gazing eyes. The skin lost its pigment, the hair its kinks, the nose its shape. But the result was not a black man who now looked Caucasian. It was a man who had become something less, something disturbing.

Like the Joker emerging from a vat of acid, the new Michael Jackson was a horror to behold, a caricature of self-absorbed, out-of-control Hollywood celebrity. What Michael wanted, Michael got, no matter how awful. And there was no one to deny him.

And the ugliness spread. As Michael built his creepy Neverland home, stories of his unnatural affection for children who were not his own began to seep out. Mostly he was able to buy the silence of the victims and their parents, through money or his fading charm.

Then came his addictions and a desperate attempt to recapture his youth and stardom. What came instead was a premature death. His corpse was not yet cold and we heard reports of his enslavement to Oxycontin and Demarol in a futile effort to escape the pain. From self-loathing? Guilt? Too many workouts or plastic surgeries?

Then come the vultures. Race-huslers Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are sighted. Jamie Foxx says Jackson belongs to the black race. Like the case of Princess Di, coverage of the "event" is nonstop, as are the questions about his death. Everyone is represented in the celebrity mosh pit-except his victims.

Michael Jackson was an American original. Until the next one.