Many of his videos through the '80s and early '90s showed him to be a master of theatrical performance to rival Queen, Elvis or Hitler; but while these three acted with the voices of cynicism and experience, Jackson's imagination produced a curiously child-like combination of yearning for adoration and positively channeled tantrum. His resounding message was the celebration of platonic love and honest expression of pain, a polar opposite to the choking hypocritical attrition of more subtle artists such as Lennon(*).
He lived and died more talented, more loved, and more rich than all his detractors, joining a very small group of artists to have enjoyed such a span of continued popularity. He attracts bitter invective because he was the performer who would not, and perhaps could not, adapt to the world. All such men are hated by those who cannot bear to accept that admitting an alternative outlook might reveal their own weaknesses.
(*) Lennon was also a great artist, but I perceive no honesty in his performance.
