In Praise of Freaks

"The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all.”

"All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; the blacks, especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair…”

“Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated–in the main, abominably–because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.”

James Baldwin wrote this in an essay on Jackson, originally titled Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood, originally published in Playboy in 1965 and later retitled Here Be Dragons, and I think it is one of the truest things that has been said on the subject.
(Via. Laura Flanders)