The Thing about Hate

Today I am really tired after being up all night struggling with a death that was so unexpected. Yesterday was a day that I thought I would start anew. I have been going through a lot emotionally and struggling to keep my focus trained on what it needs to stay directed towards and the day before yesterday I just said enough. So I planned a movie excursion for yesterday, in the morning, and figured I would just start taking care of myself in that way. After the movie I bought a few items of clothing and had lunch with my sister: a good day. Once I got home and checked email and whatnot I found the TMZ report that Michael was dead and it shocked me so much I was dizzy. It took hours for the major news outlets to report that he was dead; though they made it clear he was going to die. But I know you know all this.

After the “is he or isn’t he” debate that lasted those hours and the subsequent time spent trying to figure out if he died when TMZ said he was dead of after being in a coma like other outlets said I settled down to watch the coverage and try to come to grips with it – and to be honest it still hasn’t sunk it. Anyway, I was struck by the negative tone. So much was discussed about the charges and cases against him but not nearly as much about his musical and humanitarian/charitable legacy, the two things that stand out in mind about him. There was so much gossip, innuendo, conjecture, and speculation with very little fact additionally.

That hurt pretty bad, but later that night after a dance-off to various songs by him and the Jackson 5, my sister had the thought to log into Facebook and check out what “real people” had to say….and it went downhill from there. One of my cousins, like many other people on FB, put his mini-eulogy as a post to his wall and some female made the most hateful and unexpected comment. He responded and the two of them had a back-and-forth that took about ten or eleven comments to that point. My sister added her own comments to the fray and the woman responded and so forth. And that woman’s hate-filled diatribe made me think about hate.

Her first post stated he wasn’t going to heaven and his “character was horrible” and it struck me that hate always makes you cast the first stone, judge without remembering that you are opening yourself up to the same sort of judgment, and pushing your opinions on others. She also spoke of how awful it was that he was getting the attention Farrah Fawcett deserved as she had been an “angel” in life and deserved the praise.

Another thing about hate is that it will camouflage itself and convince even you that is something else entirely, and hate is often used to pretend like there is love for someone else. Another good example of that sort of hate is Ann Coulter claiming the doctor who was shot and killed was not murdered but “terminated” which disgusted me when I heard it, but didn’t shock me coming from her hateful mouth.

Though the woman initially said she disliked him so strongly because of the child molestation charges, she made several hateful comments which included whether his autopsy would say black or white and male or female. She continually attacked his race and never really said anything direct about the charges. I wondered then how many –isms and phobias she expressed with the black/white male/female comments and it made me think of another thing about hate. Hate is so often based on fear. Fear of what you don’t know, don’t understand, find strange, and makes you uncomfortable. Hate is birthed and nurtured in a fearful atmosphere.

She compared him, in a matter of minutes, to OJ Simpson and Saddam Hussein. No surprise with the first one, I’ve heard that many, many times, but the second one was a shock. I realized then, however, that hate blinds you to your common sense, makes you see patterns where none exist, and simply feeds itself by finding something else to drain more hate from. She used those names in order to illicit some extra support from someone and she was probably shocked when no one took the bait.

But when I looked at the whole situation, I ended up being mad at myself for taking the bait she originally dangled in front of my face. She brought up the First Amendment and the fact that she has black friends as reasons why she could say whatever she wanted and why her words couldn’t be mistaken for racism. Of course, racists holler the “I know black people” line as much as people who use words to spew hate and incite violence hide behind the Amendment and make a mockery of a right created in order to allow everyone to voice their opinion, not abuse it.

I also found it interesting that just days after Perez Hilton got punched for his hateful words (and went on crying and still saying the same hateful stuff, staying true to himself, I guess) that people would still claim ignorance that words HURT and can escalate a situation, incite violence, and any number of negative things. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have learned that lesson.

One way that I knew I was mature was when I learned when not to speak a word. Of course I was a really quiet child but as a teen I was under the misguided belief that people gave a crap about my convictions and opinions. And while I still have both convictions and opinions on damn near everything (as my one of two readers – and I flatter myself – undoubtedly know) but I realize most of the time no one cares to hear any of them so I keep them to myself.

At the end of the day, hate can never win. Like a Ponzi scheme it requires something. Like a fire it needs at least two things to feed it. Hate is so easy to extinguish. Perhaps later than we should have, my sister and I decided to let her continue talking without the benefit of someone actually listening. We gave her that present in the spirit of Michael Jackson and the sort of person he appeared to be in my, however and openly, biased opinion.

The thing about Michael Jackson, to me, was that he showed that a very flawed person can still make a positive impact on the world at large. I remember how corny but beautiful We are the World, Black or White, and Heal the World were. I remember that environmentalism wasn’t cool when he made Heal and Earth Song. I remember how deeply Man in the Mirror touched my spirit and how his songs could heal and invigorate. I also remember his humanitarian and charitable works. I remember how much he donated and did for children all across the world. I remember that he tried. When I think of Michael Jackson, these things will overshadow the negative, and I hope one day the same will be done for me. RIP.