"Fame is the mask that eats the face," wrote John Updike. Updike was not referring to Michael Jackson, though a more apt quote I cannot imagine.

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From fans and non-fans, the pleading question is already being asked: "Will there be no end to this?" "This" being the wall-to-wall coverage of every little Michael Jackson-related bit of "news."

The answer is no. Whatever Jackson’s oddities, he was a worldwide star, iconic figure and groundbreaking artist. He died suddenly and still mysteriously. He joins Marilyn and Elvis as a tragic figure whose life after death becomes endless fodder for the media. (Now, I’m asking: When do the conspiracy theories that he’s not really dead begin?!)

I’ll only say – again – leave the children out of it. No matter how they were conceived or by whom, Michael Jackson was their legal father, and so far we have no evidence that he wasn’t a loving parent, despite his strange ways in dealing with his fame, his own unsatisfactory youth and his issues about race.

Rake through his medicine cabinets, drag out every sordid detail of his intimate relations, publish his will. But leave those three beautiful children alone to now live a totally different and perhaps frightening life – they have been so shrouded and cosseted by Michael. I’d like to say that now they’ll live a "normal" life, but being any part of the Jackson family doesn’t seem to encourage stability. (I think the Diana Ross idea, if mom Katherine Jackson won’t or can’t raise them, is very smart. She has been an exemplary mother to her own family of five.)

Let the kids off the hook, and then Michael, Marilyn and Elvis can sit around up there laughing over our foolish obsessing. Fame is a circus and we, the media, not the stars, end up as its primary clowns

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Of course not everybody agrees that Michael will join the immortal pantheon. Filmmaker and author Charles Casillo, while giving due credit to Michael’s genius says: "I’m going to call this one, perhaps wrongly … but I don’t think Michael Jackson will be in the league of Elvis or Marilyn five years from now. No one can come close to the level of the stars that died before, say, 1990. When they went, they took tons of mystique and unanswered questions with them. Because they weren’t scrutinized and analyzed daily in such a way; 24 hours of talking heads … blog blasts … Twitter commentary. After this feasting frenzy of Michael, in six months – after the shocking revelations, the shocking books, the shocking documentaries – he will be laid quietly to rest along with his legacy. Not because he is any less stellar, but I think the 21st century burnout factor is – you should pardon the expression – an icon killer."

Hmm … I’m not sure I agree that Michael’s legend will be cast aside so swiftly. He was involvingly unique.

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So, how terrible was Michael Jackson’s childhood?

Well, to have heard him tell it, there was not one moment of happiness. He was an abused and overworked "golden child" – as he self-reverentially referred to himself.

But there are some who grew up in Encino, CA, where the Jacksons settled after fame hit, who remember a happy Michael Jackson, going to pizza and ice cream parlors with his four brothers, and acting just like any other kid. People even remember him stopping in at the local Sunshine Records Shop in Encino and thrilling over the Jackson Five albums.