Even though I’m in the journalism business, I can get frustrated like the rest of you with the news media. But every now and then they make up for their past sins when they heroically go out of their way to cover events as monumental as Elvis Presley’s fall off a toilet 25 years ago. I enjoy the many shameless one-sided stories portraying all of his fans as being overweight, greasy side-burned ninnies who make just enough money to keep their trailer homes parked within a day’s drive from Graceland. Stories like these reaffirm how great it was to be born in the ’80s when Michael Jackson was king and his black fedora the crown.

My computer science professor last year described Michael as a “triple threat”- he could dance, sing and write. We started classes with what I think has been the best use ever of a video projector in a classroom setting, by playing us Michael Jackson videos. We’d only watch pre-Dangerous videos, because as my professor would point out, “Michael was more talented when he was black.”

Now you don’t have to be one of us computer engineers whose cultural taste is two or three decades out of sync to be wowed by the King of Pop’s dazzling moves and showmanship. I just weep for the kids of today whose pop idols can’t be counted on to do a moonwalk with giving $20 million to the Russian space program.

No, Jacko made his mark because he had real talent. Which is a good thing because he didn’t have much else going for him. In a decade where spiked dog collars and see-through green spandex could pass for business wear, Jacko still could manage to look completely abnormal. These days, stars like J-Lo can make a fortune selling clothing lines to six- to twelve-year-old girls that take less cloth to produce than it took to make my left sock. I don’t think Michael would’ve had the same success with marketing his sequined white gloves or junior-high-bandleader-who-ran-through-a-glitter-factory outfits, since most kids that age don’t want their faces sequined by bullies to the playground blacktop.

And ever since Elvis’ hips on the Ed Sullivan Show bumped America out of the Victorian Age, it seems that an artist can’t be a star unless they’re a sex symbol. Call me a prude, but I’m glad this wasn’t (and definitely isn’t) the case with Michael, who flaunted his sex appeal as awkwardly as a Supreme Court Justice flaunts hemorrhoids. If Shakira thrusted and gyrated her hips as much as Michael did in his day, her fans would leave her concerts excited enough to mate with the first thing they ran into, including drywall. But when you see Michael do something sexual like grab his crotch, you might think to yourself “Those are nice shoes he has” before your brain would immediately shut down in self-defense to prevent any further thoughts about what goes on in Michael’s lower regions.

Michael hasn’t died yet, but for now I think we can consider the early ’90s to be his falling off of the “toilet.” This time period includes his many face-a-dectomies and Black-B-Gon operations and of course, the world broadcast shot of him holding a mature boy in his lap, and then later the world broadcasts of him handing over $20 million in a settlement suit. I figured that reality would someday invade and crush Michael’s private world, especially when it mainly consisted of “Bubbles” the monkey and Macaulay Culkin the “actor.”

What annoys me, though, is how the media is now patting itself on the back for writing clever headlines like, “Is Jacko Wacko?” because he joined forces with Jonnie Cochrane and Al Sharpton to declare Sony as the next white devil. Hey, I’ve known Michael Jackson was off in the deep end since the very beginning, and I’m thankful for that. With him, the dangers of idolizing pop stars was as clear as black and white (har har). Elvis worshippers are soon going to have to live with the guilt of knowing that they thought white polyester was sexy. John Lennon fans are soon going to wake up from their LSD-induced haze. Eminem fans are soon going to have to deal with the fact that they were once Eminem fans.

But Michael Jackson was the perfect pop star. He had that certain magical quality that made you thankful that you were a normal human being and even though you could never dance or sing like him, you at least had the important things in life, like a nose. In other words, I’m never going to have to hear my doctor tell me that I can’t have children because I pulled myself too hard one too many times trying to be like Mike.

Dan Nguyen is a senior in computer engineering and journalism and mass communication

from Iowa City.