Vitiligo? You mean you actually believed that story? The only disorder Mike had was excessive skin-bleaching, and I won't even start on the completely disgusting end result of his (approximately) 237 nose jobs.
Of course I believe the story, what evidence is there to the contrary? Michael Jackson was a vitiligo sufferer, as is a girl I actually know in real life. She also claims that he is a classic case. It's a real condition. Allow me to prove it to you. Up until the day Michael died, he still had some dark skin, it was just that throughout his life he needed to wear huge ammounts of make up to balance out the ever growing pale patches of skin that started to appear in the early 1980's. Here are some images to show you Michael candid, without the makeup, where the vitiligo is evident. The last pic is actually a recently captured image of MJ's eldest son, which shows that the disease is genetic, as you can see that Prince has Vitiligo starting to appear under his arm.
The funny thing is though, it takes this to prove to people that he has Vitiligo. MJ tried to educate people on numerous occasions throughout his life about it, but was ignored. You know why? Because people prefer ridiculous stories the press make up. The press sells more. The bigger the star, the bigger the target. I really love learning about Michael Jackson, especially when taking into account the issue of race. What pisses me off is that even if he DIDN'T have vitiligo, even if he DID bleach his skin, why would that be an issue? Would that make him less of a black man? Is a white man who sits out in the sun all day to tan his skin not wanting to be what he is? Why is it weird for Michael Jackson to progressively appear to have lighter skin over the course of his life? I'd say the problem doesn't lie with him, but more the racist idiots who believe he would rather not have been a proud black man (which he was until the day he died).
As for the nose jobs (which there were probably only about three or four maximum), sure, it wasn't liked by many. But who cares? It's HIS nose, who cares what the hell he does with it? I personally think MJ was looking awesome in the last year of his life, fashion wise, look wise, nose wise, whatever wise, he was smokin'!
And don't tell me 90's MJ didn't have the same hysterical influence he always did...
Michael Jackson died after releasing the 'Thriller' album. It was a slow decline which is why 'Bad' didn't suck 100%, but nevertheless he'd been gone quite a while when his body passed away.
Along with the racist, ignorant flavour of some of the posts in this thread, I also hate how some people are belittling what MJ accomplished after Bad. Simply because they think he was 'weird' then. Dangerous sold more albums than Bad, nearly 30 million something. HIStory is the largest double disc album in well, history. Blood on the Dancefloor is the largest selling remix album in history as well, and Invincible has sold upwards of 10 million copies world wide, people called it a flop, sure it was by MJ's standards, and I agree that it was artistically, much less valuable. But the fact is, that album sold more than the Rihannas, Justin Timberlakes and Lady Gagas of the world, can't be bad, especially considering he released during the whole Napster frenzy. And don't even get me started on how groundbreaking his live shows and music videos were in the 90's. I agree he peaked in the 80's, but he certainly didn't decline into oblivion, he kept innovating and making creating awesome music right up until about 2001.
At the end of the day, the guy had been one of the worlds most famous people since he was 11 years old, give him a break! Was it OK with YOU that he stopped working so much in the last 10 years of his life, to raise a family? Is that justification to say that he was 'dead' and a 'shell of his former self'? Pathetic comments, with racist and press manipulated undertones. Go watch This Is It and see how on the ball he was WHEN he died, make no mistake, Michael Jackson was mere days away from unveiling his masterpiece when he died.
See those visualisations behind MJ and the dancers? That is actually the largest 3D LED LCD ever constructed and was the backdrop for Michaels This Is It stage. He wasn't just on the cutting edge of live performance again, he was about to put it on its head and revolutionise what a live concert performance IS. In London at the This Is It shows (of which all 50 sold out in a matter of hours btw, world records central), he was going to intersperse his songs with newly filmed 3D footage which would have mixed in with the live performances, his new show was a story, end to end, with incredible 3D visual effects. It's as if the audience would have been a part of whatever was happening on stage. It wasn't just any old 3D either, it was the patented James Cameron Avatar 3D technology (stereoscopic?). Cameron actually went TO Michael before filming Avatar and asked if the film content for his new shows would be the test subject for his new technology. Michael jokingly called his new show 4D before he died. Sigh.