“I don’t know, I just don’t really care,” I told Amanda when she called me to tell me Michael Jackson died.  This was the exact same reaction I had but a few hours prior upon hearing Farrah Fawcett died.  Of course it’s sad when people die, but I guess I’m just missing the investment.

“That’s surprising,” she said, “given your love of ‘80s pop.”

“I mean, I like his music, but I don’t particularly care for him one way or another.”

The Michael Jackson I really love is actually not of the Thriller variety, but of the Jackson 5 variety.  An extra special glimpse into my life: “I Want You Back” is one of my top five turn up loudly and dance around the apartment like a moron songs.

But the Michael Jackson of Jackson 5 fame has been gone for quite some time.  (So has the Michael Jackson of Thriller fame for that matter.)

What continues to baffle me is the very public mourning surrounding celebrity death.  I mean, on some kind of intellectual level, I get it.  If we follow celebrities’ lives, their every step, every sip of coffee, to the point where we can probably describe their likes and dislikes better than that of our coworkers, then there would be an equal sense of knowing in grief.

There is also, of course, idolization on a role model level, in this case a man with a tremendously successful music career.  Successful enough to obtain status as the king of pop.  That’s some pretty serious stuff.  But what’s the statute of limitations on that?  My Facebook feed is filled with a whole bunch of tragic and devastated.  Really?  I’d like to think I’d reserve words like devastated for my grandmother, but there’s also a chance that I’m a cold-hearted, ultra-distanced bitch.

“I’ll see how I feel when Dar dies,” I told Amanda.

“Oh, when Manson dies, I’m calling out for a week.”

Because this is how my world works, I ran through a similar conversation with Matt.

“I was sad when Robert Altman died because it meant there would be no more movies by him,” he said, “but I wasn’t in mourning.”

When Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty died, I did the same thing for both of them: I got a pint of cheesecake ice cream, watched a few episodes of Golden Girls and celebrate the entertainment they had brought to my life.  No tears, no real grief.  Just some good laughs, as Golden Girls episodes always bring, an appreciative nod to that part of my life, and then that was that.

Am I wrong in this?  (It’s okay if I am.  And, if I am, I would like to know the other side of the story.  Why so much pain for someone you don’t actually know?)

A story: travel back with me to Mrs. Parker’s second grade class, circa the 1990-1991 school year, wherein she showed us a video – I have no idea what – and said, “Michael Jackson’s in this” in order to garner our attention.  We watched as a boy and a girl rode on a carousel.  Blank-faced, we waited.  “There he is,” she said when we didn’t react, pointing to the screen.

“Michael Jackson is white,” we said.  “That boy is black,” which led to a substantially awkward discussion.

At no other point could I possibly have learned a more potent lesson in not only race, but that celebrity is an in-the-moment public persona that, try as we may, we don’t ever get to crack.