Michael Jackson. Dead at 50, with over 750 million albums sold. A genius, a freak, a trail blazer, a victim. Jackson's been called all that and more ? sometimes in a single piece of prose. People will be talking about Jackson?s music and the meaning of his life and work for years to come, but the most stunning quote I?ve read so far, circulating on the internet over the past few days, comes from James Baldwin. It?s not about him, James Baldwin wrote 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." "The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all,? he wrote. "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.? Refusing to be boxed-in, to be controlled, to remain the same, ?freaks? destabilize. They also release something. If we let them. Something, in many of us, that?s longing to be free, or just a bit freer than we feel right now. So thanks to Michael, and to freaks and transformers everywhere. Less