Michael Jackson is Dead

[Brant Gaede]

Michael,

You should write an article on Michael Jackson.

One way to boil it down might be that the Jackson 5 didn't need MTV, but Michael Jackson the solo act did.

Robert Campbell

Except for two or three specialty songs, MTV kept black performers off in its early days. After months of pressure in the spring of 1984, I believe, MTV started showing the Jackson video "Billie Jean," still one of the best music videos ever. Eventually MTV music videos became as black relative to white as the NBA, then moved away from the videos to original programing. The quality of videos precipitously declined as they became less and less effective as marketing tools for new groups and music. You can still see them on YouTube, of course, but many of those have been stripped out of YouTube recently for legal reasons. Over 20 years ago I spent a lot of time copying scores of these on video tape and still have them in storage.

--Brant

Edited June 29, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Jonathan]

Did he write most of his own music?-- for instance, for the second clip Kat posted, "Say, Say, Say," which I liked very much.

Jackson wrote a lot of his own music, but also sang songs written by others, including Quincy Jones, James Ingram and Berry Gordy. Jackson co-wrote "Say, Say, Say" with Paul McCartney.

J

Edited June 29, 2009 by Jonathan

[Xray]

Michael Jackson is a heartbreaking, tragic example of what can happen when a person tries to live up to the standards of others. His merciless father never gave him the feeling of being appreciated for what he was, robbing him and his siblings of their childhood to perform on stage.

Despite being so gifted, MJ never had the feeling to measure up to imagined standards, resulting in his countless plastic surgeries. Even he had had a hundred more, he still would not have accepted himself.

The hurt child MJ later as an adult built Neverland - what an apt name that was for a desperate attempt to create something he never had as a child - and which he was never to have.

[Selene]

Wow! You knew Michael Jackson's father personally! :no:

"His merciless father..."

So your statement was subjective correct?

Adam

[Xray]

"His merciless father..."

You knew Michael Jackson's father personally!

Adam

If personal acquaintance were a criterion for coming to conclusions about something, one's knowledge about the world would be pretty reduced, don't you think so?

So your statement was subjective correct?

Yes, it was subjective. Value judgements can't be anything but subjective.

Edited July 9, 2009 by Xray

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Yes, it was subjective. Value judgements can't be anything but subjective.

That's a strange statement coming from someone who does not have a meaning for objective.

[Brant Gaede]

Yes, it was subjective. Value judgements can't be anything but subjective.

That's a strange statement coming from someone who does not have a meaning for objective.

She doesn't because for her it doesn't exist. She swims in a subjective sea whose waves crash on the beaches of an objective reality a fish cannot comprehend. Whales, of course, sometimes beach themselves and die.

--Brant

[ginny]

Oh, Brant, that's a metaphor overload. Still, I like it.

Ginny

[Barbara Branden]

I saw part of the service for Michael Jackson yesterday, and I thought much of it was grotesque. I listened to some of the speakers -- political hacks like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and a woman politician whose name I didn't catch -- jockeying for position with the fans as Michael's greatest friends and admirers, and making themselves and Michael ridiculous by the preposterous extravagance of their praise: "the greatest entertainer who ever lived," "the heroic defender of civil rights," "the man who brought the whole world together," etc. I heard a speaker talk of Michael's "heartbroken father." Heartbroken? Michael's body was not yet cold when his father -- said by Michael to be a tyrannical child-beater, to whom Michael left not one penny -- called a press conference to announce not his heartbreak over his son's death, but that he was about to form a new business. I saw the the bankrupt city forced to spend millions of dollars to guard the service and its gold-plated casket.

Some of the family members partly saved the day, especially Michael's brother Germaine, whose grief and love seemed wholly authentic, and Michael's weeping small daughter. But the little girl never should have been brought up to the stage; her appearance made her just another prop in the deification of a a tragic, unhappy, talented man whose whole life seemed a slow msrch to its drug-soaked end.

Barbara

[ginny]

I agree, Barbara, especially the children. I feel heartsick at the thought of any child losing a parent. But these poor kids were so obviously being used as props. When the little girl wanted to speak (and I guess I believe it was spontaneous), there must have been five surrounding adults reaching out to give her mike. Even during a time of grief, they knew the value of a good photo op.

Ginny

[Philip Coates]

> I saw part of the service for Michael Jackson yesterday

Barbara, why watch these "train wreck" sorts of things? Can distract one from other pursuits. Rand used to get upset and have to write an article on so many of the latest forms of cultural detritus. Maybe she shouldn't have followed the news so closely.

Why not avoid reading the front page or watching the evening news more than once a month? When you channel flip past the chair throwing on Jerry Springer, just keep going.

Don't you have a book to finish? :-) I counsel either evasion - a willful blanking out of most of what is going on in the world on a daily basis -- or a firm, principled resolution to always turn to the sports page. Tour de France, baby!!!

(( Caution: this post is only partly humorous. Maybe I should stop drinking when I read the sports page.... ))

[Barbara Branden]

> I saw part of the service for Michael Jackson yesterday

Barbara, why watch these "train wreck" sorts of things? Can distract one from other pursuits. Rand used to get upset and have to write an article on so many of the latest forms of cultural detritus. Maybe she shouldn't have followed the news so closely.

Why not avoid reading the front page or watching the evening news more than once a month? When you channel flip past the chair throwing on Jerry Springer, just keep going.

Don't you have a book to finish? :-) I counsel either evasion - a willful blanking out of most of what is going on in the world on a daily basis -- or a firm, principled resolution to always turn to the sports page. Tour de France, baby!!!

(( Caution: this post is only partly humorous. Maybe I should stop drinking when I read the sports page.... ))

Phil, I want to know what's going on in the world. I live here.

Years ago, when Edith Efron was writing a book, she decided to stop reading the newspapers or any equivalent. She said the only thing she really must know was if war were declared, and she assumed that if that happened, someone would surely tell her... The war in Vietnam had been raging for a year before she learned of it.

Pour a drink for me.

Barbara

[Selene]

Barbara is correct Phil, here is a perfect example as to how watching the news causes you to be able to keep your eye on the goal to achieve global happiness...

O'Biwan and Sarkosy understand it...

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/rids/20090709/i/r3356552547.jpg?x=400&y=340&q=85&sig=_dbUibuGcHSmlg8QoaQV7A--

Adam

[Philip Coates]

> when Edith Efron was writing a book, she decided to stop reading the newspapers or any equivalent... [barbara]

Now that I'm stone cold sober, I realize that I may have been unclear: The -daily- (or sometimes even weekly)news tends to be highly repetitious as well as depressing and full of journalistic disasters one doesn't need to know about. If one informs oneself, say, once a week for an hour [by reading, not by watching the execrable television news] one will be aware of everything of importance.

> The war in Vietnam had been raging for a year before she learned of it.

That's plenty of time given the length (and repetitiousness) of the war and the lack of a need to know about every single battle and the ability to read a book on it years later.

> Pour a drink for me.

Having written the above (150 seconds)and spent 70 seconds glancing at the front page of the New York Times and 27 seconds looking at Selene's 'photo essay', I'm ready for a good stiff orange juice.