Sadly, It's Official

Michael Jackson has died at 50. Two icons from my childhood pass in one day! You were both crazy, but I’m still going to miss you.
From CNN

Entertainer Michael Jackson has died after being taken to a hospital on Thursday after suffering cardiac arrest, according to multiple reports including the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press. CNN has not confirmed his death.
Jackson, 50, had been in a coma at the hospital, sources told CNN.
Brian Oxman, a Jackson family attorney, said he was told by brother Randy Jackson that Michael Jackson collapsed at his home in west Los Angeles, California, Thursday morning.
Family members were told of the situation and were either at the hospital or en route, Oxman said.
Fire Capt. Steve Ruda told CNN a 911 call came in from a west Los Angeles residence at 12:21 p.m.
Ruda said Jackson was treated and transferred to the UCLA Medical Center.
Asked specifics of the patient’s condition, he said he could not discuss them because of federal privacy laws.
The music icon from Gary, Indiana, is known as the “King of Pop.” Jackson had many No. 1 hits and his “Thriller” is the best-selling album of all time. Video Jackson “as big as it gets” ¬ª
Jackson is the seventh of nine children in a well-known musical family. He has three children, Prince Michael I, Paris and Prince Michael II.
At the medical center, every entrance to the emergency room was blocked by security guards. Even hospital staffers were not permitted to enter. A few people stood inside the waiting area, some of them crying.
A large crowd was also gathering outside the hospital, according to video footage.
Outside Jackson’s Bel Air home, police arrived on motorcycles. The road in front of the home was closed in an attempt to hold traffic back, but several people were gathered outside the home.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan has a nice post that we’ve included in full after the jump. [via]

There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child. By abuse, I do not mean sexual abuse; I mean he was used brutally and callously for money, and clearly imprisoned by a tyrannical father. He had no real childhood and spent much of his later life struggling to get one. He was spiritually and psychologically raped at a very early age – and never recovered. Watching him change his race, his age, and almost his gender, you saw a tortured soul seeking what the rest of us take for granted: a normal life.
But he had no compass to find one; no real friends to support and advise him; and money and fame imprisoned him in the delusions of narcissism and self-indulgence. Of course, he bears responsibility for his bizarre life. But the damage done to him by his own family and then by all those motivated more by money and power than by faith and love was irreparable in the end. He died a while ago. He remained for so long a walking human shell.
I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy, tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time; and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.
I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours’ and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.
I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life. And I pray that such genius will not be so abused again.

Our friend Bryan of Hipster Foldables fame has a created a nice foldable homage too:

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