"Speak no evil of the dead,"has been a proverb for thousands of years

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum."

Michael Jackson certainly challenges us in this, considering his two trials for child sexual abuse, his plastic surgery disfigurements, his tens of millions of debt and wasted money, long-term drug abuse, that time he dangling his child over a balcony, general weirdness, etc.

Of course, too, there are lots of dead people we speak ill of: Hitler, Stalin, serial killers, relatives who borrowed money and never paid it back -- but when I heard a songwriter complain, the day after Michael's death, that Jackson had stolen one of his songs, I thought, "enough is enough."

He was certainly a superstar as measured by record sales, worldwide fan popularity, an trail-blazing creative music videos and persona: an icon in many ways.

Perhaps now an icon for human frailty, an icon for our ambitions and good will failing short of moral ideals.

"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."

But despite what looks like obvious flaws, Michael Jackson did some good things, raised money for good causes, put out ideas of races and nations getting along rather than fighting. Ideas that almost seem naive and quaint in today's hard-boiled world.

Yet, step-by-step we move forward. Step-by-step we fail. Step-by-step we have to pick ourselves up and keep on moving on.

Maybe we'll all just character's in a minstrel show - but the show goes on.

The show goes on. History keeps happening. Maybe neither ourselves or our nation is going to become the great ideal and ultimate success we hoped for.

Maybe both ourselves and our nation are more like the iconic images of Michael Jackson than we'd ever like to admit.

We ain't no smiling Uncle Sam. Everytime we find the truth we find a few more major lies and a few more "friends and allies," who are doing some ugly things.

We may be more like Wacko Jacko than we'd like to admit.