Poor Dr. Conrad Murray. He got nailed for what thousands, maybe tens of thousands of M.D.'s do daily — overprescribe, overindulge, and overlook the habits and failings of their patients.
Hell, I thought this guy would walk.
Michael Jackson was the John Belushi of pop. A celebrity in ruin that was felled by the demands and rigors of his comeback. It's ironic that the promise of a comeback was offered on a mirror and held under Michael's nose like a line of Oxy, and it was this very notion of re-birth that did him in. Conrad Murray was only the conduit.
Jackson's penchant for drugs took a toll on everyone who was within his orbit. His kids, his creditors, his associates, his fans, and his handlers. Anyone who has or had problems with addiction is nodding their head right now. Everyone in an addict's sphere is affected. Drugs are insidious kids.
If you try something once, chalk it up to a growing experience. However, if you take that hit of Ecstacy again, or down another Adderal to keep you upright during finals — now you're using.
We're often warned to stay away from gateway drugs. For example, smoking pot might lead to habitual coke use, or taking that summer's night hit of LSD. The occasional beer might lead to full blown alcoholism, and the handful of painkillers prescribed for your lower back can buy you a one-way ticket to hell on the Percocet/Dilaudid train.
Michael Jackson's gateway drug was Adulation. It's a powerful narcotic and almost instantly addicting.
Through the use of Adulation, reality is blurred. You hallucinate that you have taken on God-like attributes that are fawned upon by nymphs and sycophants who cater to your every whim. A smile in their direction or a phone call to their mother is the drug that you dispense in kind to the Pilot Fish that swim around you.
It's a sick circular symbiosis that sets up a classic enabling relationship. It only gets worse from there. You are transported, fed, coddled and dressed by those who feed upon your addictions. It's a cottage industry for attention fiends — the addict creates other addicts.
So on that fateful morning when Michael Jackson was jonesing for sleep, he put the pressure on the one man who AGI had entrusted to guarantee that Michael would show up for rehearsals, and hopefully perform. And if he was too strung out to perform, I'd be interested to know what the insurance payout would be to AGI, especially if he didn't survive the series of concerts.
The man that prosecutors painted as a greedy "employee of Michael Jackson" acted exactly as an employee should. He was instructed by his employer to dose him to sleep. Unfortunately, Murray was to medicine as Dustin Hoffman was to the legal profession in "Sleepers." At some point the handwriting had to be on the wall. There was no way that Michael would be able to meet the commitments of another tour.
Michael was probably worth more to AIG dead, than he was alive. And if you remember the movie Sleepers, where Dustin Hoffman, a derelict and addicted attorney, was hired for the sole purpose to make it seem like he was part of a hopeless case, thereby taking the attention away from those who were out to manipulate the justice system, you may see a connection and the role that Dr. Murray ultimately played.
Murray was already an Adulation enabler. His handlers most likely knew that he would not stand in the way when the time for 'the fatal dose' was determined. No matter if Michael Jackson asked Conrad Murray to hop in the car and get him a McRib Sandwich, or inject Propofil — it was the same thing to Murray.
When God asked Moses to climb the mountain, Moses climbed the mountain. Had God asked Moses to bring 25cc of Propofil with him and a syringe, Moses would have done it without hesitation.
Murray would do it without hesitation. Clogged arteries from McRib ingestion or arrested breathing via Propofil can both get you in Valhalla. Poor Conrad was unable to say no to his higher power, and when it came for him to prove his medical mettle, he failed at that too.
So it seems as if justice is served. A dead pop star, a dead medical career. Murray's comeuppance ended with a perp walk through L.A. County's overcrowded and gang-iinfested incarceration system. He'll be out in a few months. Justice has no more vacancies, and his release will be carried out early, along with the other effluence that mark the pages of TMZ.
Had Michael Jackson been Rush Limbaugh, he might have been more mobile in his quest for doctor shopping. Unfortunately, the drugs were brought to Michael in quantities befitting an addict of Jackson's proportions, administered by a quack who had a penchant for one-handed chest compression on a mattress.
It was in the purple haze of Adulation that enabled Jackson to finally kiss the sky. Murray's simply unplugged the Stratocaster and ushered Michael into the next realm. Symptomatic and not surprising.
Michael Jackson killed Michael Jackson. His downward slide was evident to everyone but those wearing the blinders of Adulation. One man was chosen to take one for the team. Drugs kill.
