Note to Reader: This blog post has been put “under review” as we have had growing pains in developing the technology we use to identify twins, replicas and zombies. The eyes behind the technology are getting better, so as you read this piece note that if you are troubled by its conclusions that we will be looking at it in more depth and with better eyes. For the time being, it is speculation.

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Michael Jackson retired from public life around 2001, and was replaced by a body double.

Body doubles are very common in intelligence, celebrity culture, business and politics. They work easily because most of us are just glancing without skeptical eye. For sake of security, body doubles are essential. High profile people need time alone. Powerful people have security concerns, so that body doubles can draw attention away from their real activities.

Below I wrote about Stephen Hawking being replaced by a body double. People have long contended that Paul McCartney was replaced in 1966 – I tend to agree with that, but now see that the Beatles were a project involving many people to promote them, write their music, script their appearances, so that the original McCartney might have merely stepped aside. Replacement would be unusual for a real phenomenon, but not so much for a PSYOP.

But then, the whole of the music business is fraught with impostors who only survive by power of suggestion. I remember recently listening to Crosby, Stills and Nash in a reunion appearance on the Tonight Show, and thought “Wow, these guys suck.” But their recordings were different, better instrumentation and sound effects, perhaps even some better voices added to make them sound less like the high school band. Bob Dylan has a mystique about him that allows him to survive inability to sing. There’s a joke about what a Deadhead says when he runs out of pot: “Man, this music sucks!”

But there is talent about us, some of it remarkable. The McCartney replacement is a very talented performer, as was John Denver. These are my generation – younger people can rattle off names of other truly talented performers for me.

And perhaps one of the most talented men I have ever seen in my lifetime was Michael Jackson.

I watched as MJ changed before my eyes from a black man to a white man. I did not question it. His heavily made-up face was creepy, and his dabbling with young boys turned me off. I reverted to Thriller Mike – that was the guy I wanted to remember. That album, like the work of the Beatles, was the effort of a group of talented behind-the-scenes people, but like the Beatles, the man who fronted for the whole effort was a talented performer.

I never occurred to me until I recently slapped my forehead with Hawking that the man to the left here is a different person than the one to the right, a body double, and not even a good one. Look at the nose! And, fer Chrissakes, he’s white.

I do not know what happened or why, but apparently the real Michael Jackson left the scene around 2001. Maybe he’d had enough of fame. He is probably still alive somewhere – if he is dead, it makes me sad. The fake MJ was scheduled to go on a world tour before his “death” in 2009, and I speculate that perhaps he just didn’t have enough talent to pull it off, so they pulled the plug on him. I don’t suggest for a second that they killed him, but did retire him permanently, faking his death. That too, I am learning thanks to Mr. Mathis, is not uncommon.

Of course it is disturbing that I did not suspect that replacement MJ was being foisted upon us due to our gullibility. But then again, power of suggestion is highly effective when we are not paying close and critical attention. If there is a motorcade going down the streets of Denver and I am told on the news that it is the president, no matter who is in that limousine, I will think it is the president. I have no reason to suspect otherwise.

So I’ve been had again. And will be in the future, again. But the celebrity culture is a huge cash machine, so there is great need to maintain the images of the celebrities. It was a mistake for Crosby, Stills and Nash to appear on Fallon and remind us just how much they suck at music. The handlers of fake Michael Jackson decided not to make that mistake, and I tend to think it was the right call. They drowned their replacement baby in the bathtub.

Smart move.