Jackson memorial: both affirmation and denial

Gabriel Bouys / AFP / EPA



(From left) Janet Jackson, Paris Katherine Jackson, LaToya Jackson, Jermaine Jackson and Prince Michael Jackson during the public memorial service for Michael Jackson held at Staples Center.

With no practical reason for so much coverage, we see the power of pop culture that a broadcaster ignores at its own peril. Death, for a moment, wipes a slate clean.

By ROBERT LLOYD, Television Critic
July 8, 2009

The protracted departure of Michael Jackson from this world formally ended Tuesday morning with a private funeral at Forest Lawn and a public memorial at Staples Center. The first event was seen from afar, on television and so by the world, primarily as a sequence of arriving and departing black cars. The latter was planned from the start as a television event and carried live by all the major broadcast and cable news networks. The stars of the evening news were all on site, blinking in the sun outside the very arena where Jackson had been rehearsing his upcoming return to the stage.

Like the gold-plated casket in which he was laid to rest, and which sat before the stage at Staples Center, the day provided the brighter coda to the darker days that preceded it. The memorial service, often referred to by reporters or commentators as a "show," seemed staged as if in partial recompense -- to Jackson himself, even more than his audience -- for the 50 London shows he'll never play. As does most any memorial service, it mixed mourning with celebration, laughter with tears. But in the way that it was universally reported on, from before its beginning until after its end, it also seemed a kind of apology for prior doubting or nasty press. Death, for a moment, wipes a slate clean.

You can say that the world has been divided in recent days into people who wondered what the fuss was about and people offended by the thought that anyone would wonder what the fuss was about. Practically speaking, there was no call for that much coverage -- one network's was very much like another's, and once the memorial itself began, the feed was identical. But there is a power to pop culture that a broadcaster ignores at its own peril, and once one network had signed on for the full run, it was inevitable that others would. In the end, everyone came.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-jacksontv8-2009jul08,0,3762196.story

(Continues from above)

"Circus" was a word often used in expectation of the event. You had to wonder, said Shepard Smith of Fox News Channel, "what sort of crazy something-or-other is going to happen, because Michael Jackson is in the house, and when Michael Jackson is in the house, crazy things happen." But pandemonium never erupted, and to the extent that a circus atmosphere reigned, it was one created and embodied by the media themselves.

"It's got to be chilling for the family to have 20 helicopters overhead as you're trying to mourn the passing of a relative," KTLA's Asha Blake said as her station filmed the mourners from a helicopter.

Overall, the early-morning coverage was tedious, trivial and trivializing, the natural result of talking heads required to keep talking when there is nothing much happening and little idea of what's about to. ("And up next," said Meredith Vieira on NBC's "Today," "a visit with the King of Pop's onetime best friend -- Bubbles the chimp."

The tone improved once the memorial began. Perhaps because of the speed with which it was assembled, it was surprisingly straightforward -- in its dignified modesty as far as could be imagined from the experience of a Michael Jackson concert, or of the sort of tribute that a television network might have assembled. The songs, performed by artists including Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder, Usher, Jennifer Hudson and Lionel Richie, embraced the gospel and inspirational.

And together with testimonials from Queen Latifah, Magic Johnson (he "made me a better point guard", Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas), the Rev. Al Sharpton and others, they created a story of roots and continuity that argued for Jackson -- his pale alien mien and crossover appeal notwithstanding -- as a fundamentally black artist and a specifically black American role model.

Every memorial is both an affirmation and a denial; we are all darker than the words that will attend our passing. Far from the good being interred with his bones, Jackson's better self was sprinkled over the stage and to the watching world like fairy dust from Neverland.

Even as childhood friend Brooke Shields described him in a way more than one observer later called "humanizing," his memory was garlanded with superlatives. He was pictured as saintly, not just in his charitable good works and love for the world, but in his public martyrdom.

"We will never understand what he endured," said brother Marlon, as the Jackson family, including Michael's 11-year-old daughter, Paris, took the stage at the memorial's end, "not being able to walk across a street without a crowd gathering around him, being judged, ridiculed."

But for Motown founder Berry Gordy's allusion to "some bad times and maybe some questionable decisions on his part," the judgment here was all reflected outward. Addressing himself to the Jackson children in the front row, Sharpton said, "There wasn't nothing strange about your daddy. It was strange what he had to deal with."

There were, of course, many strange things about Michael Jackson; he was only human.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com


Source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-jacksontv8-2009jul08,0,3762196.story

Michael Jackson was more like an evil 'genius'

Monday, July 6th 2009, 11:46 PM

If not for his money and fame, Michael Jackson would probably have died in prison.

I was thinking this last week in a park in Queens with a bunch of parents watching our kids, Little League boys - you know, the same age as the kids Michael Jackson used to invite over for slumber parties.

I was reminded of a skin-crawling 2003 interview by British journalist Martin Bashir, in which Jackson admitted he often invited kids to his Neverland lair, feeding them cookies and milk before sleeping in the same bed with them.
The whole creepy Peter Pan theme of Neverland - petting zoo, amusement park, video game arcade, soda fountains - was like a pedophile's paradise.

Meanwhile, in the real world in a public park in Queens, I was watching these kids who just came from a 10th birthday party, running the bases in a pickup baseball game. And I was watching for predators. Because, as a father, I'm always aware that these are the innocents that pedophiles like to use as their personal party favors. Kids that look up to those giants called adults like they are superheroes. Searching for praise, attention, protection.

Sometimes, they look up to bad grownups. Dangerous grownups. Grownups that sexually exploit them. I believe that Michael Jackson was one of those bad grownups.

When Jackson sang, "I'm bad, I'm bad..." it was probably a tortured inner demon screaming.

But since his death, it's been wall-to-wall "Michael Jackson was a genius" coverage on American TV. I needed the fresh park air because I was feeling nauseated from another day of this endless canonization. Music legends like Berry Gordy, Smoky Robinson, Justin Timberlake and Madonna painting halos over this self-loathing freak who butchered his own naturally handsome face, bleached his noble dark skin white and then paid other human beings to walk two steps behind him carrying umbrellas over his head in the California sunshine.

It was downright laughable to watch Al Sharpton, the man who has yet to apologize for perpetuating the Tawana Brawley hoax, going on 'Good Morning America' to say he was advising the Jackson family on how to protect Michael Jackson's legacy.

Excuse me, Rev, but a HUGE part of that legacy is that Michael Jackson had a disturbing fixation on prepubescent boys.

Jesse Jackson also shoveled the adulation. As did President Obama, although he carefully tempered his praise. All of these men were fathers whose primary job in life is to protect their kids from predators.

And yet, here they were, deifying a man who once paid $22 million to privately quash a pedophile civil suit involving a boy named Jordan Chandler...........continued on page 2

(Page 2 of 2)

I wondered, as I watched my kid play in the park, how many of these Michael Jackson legacy protectors would have let this wacko baby-sit for their kids at Neverland.

Yes, Jackson was acquitted in a terribly prosecuted child molestation criminal trial in California. They don't like convicting celebrities out there. Bad for business. O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder in L.A. and I still believe he murdered his wife. Robert Blake was also acquitted of murder. I think he was dirty, too. It took two trials in California to convict a cold-blooded killer mutant like Phil Spector.

Any of them would have gone down in flames in Queens Supreme.

In 1977, Roman Polanski fed a 13-year-old girl Champagne and Quaaludes, and was charged by Los Angeles prosecutors with rape and sodomy. Polanski fled to Europe, never to return. How did a jury of his Hollywood peers judge him in absentia? With a Best Director Oscar in 2002.

Now, I think Polanski's "Chinatown" is the best private eye movie ever made. "Rosemary's Baby" was a great horror flick. "The Pianist" was a terrific Holocaust film.

But get it straight: His talent doesn't erase his sexually exploiting a kid. And so, the first sentence of every story ever written about him should read something like this: "The noted pedophile and film director Roman Polanski..."

Same with Michael Jackson. He wrote some catchy songs. He was a brilliant hoofer. He sold a zillion records. But the lead in any story ever written about him should include the pervasive allegations of child molestation.

On the streets of Area Code 718, where I raised my kids, anyone who inappropriately touched a kid automatically had his membership card to the human race revoked. If he didn't wind up in a cemetery or on Rikers, he was run out of the neighborhood on a third rail.

It wouldn't have mattered if he was a master carpenter, revered clergyman, teacher of the year, Grammy-winning singer or Oscar-winning director: If you messed with kids, that was all anyone needed to know about you.

You were a bad guy.

And I believe that if not for his celebrity in California, Michael Jackson would have died in jail.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny

the STUPIDEST moment one can witness on television, which replays after every single media craze;

when without even a hint of irony the anchors for the various news-entertainment channel come on air and do a segment wondering if the media is overdoing it

I remember an anchor asking this as he himself stood on the floor of a political convention, while his channel's graphics were plastered with flags and party symbols

the low ethical and intellectual bar for journalism is unbelievable.

Hatero you got that right ...It was banality to end all banality in particular the best line from yesterdays coverage and I quote ........................." . ("And up next," said Meredith Vieira on NBC's "Today," "a visit with the King of Pop's onetime best friend -- Bubbles the chimp.".............the banality of this whole thing is beyond belief

Michaels' gone now the kids don't have to play act like they're bandits with the bandanas on their faces or the funny masks. Now, everyone can see they look just like Michael, after, not before.

Overstatement is the coin of the commercial realm and plenty has been spread around since the death of Michael Jackson. A perfect example was the memorial for the fallen entertainer today.

It is good and expected that each generation should have its own teenage heroes and do the best that it can with them until growing up and moving beyond the lightweight (but substantial weight) of its adolescence. It is obvious that Michael Jackson’s value to our contemporary world is the result of the technological repetition that has helped to protract adolescence into old age. Our history as the most important nation of the modern age has much to do with how well we have done holding back the dehumanization that comes with the technology that has had an ever more dominant position in our lives, from how and when we communicate to how, when, and where we store knowledge.

Early on, we made a deal in which commercial fluff was rebutted by quality whenever it could be squeezed into programming schedules. Michael Jackson became bigger as big business swelled forward, having discovered that the most lucrative market was young people who thought that they were the ones earning expendable income, not their parents.

Soon kids had their asses kissed with such regularity that they began to believe that they actually had a worldview equal to, if not superior to, those held by their parents and other adults.

Michael Jackson was a good rhythm and blues singer, not a great one—if we compare his skills to those of Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Al Green. No contest. He was a first-class rhythm and blues dancer, but was not even close to the level of dancing skill shown by Sammy Davis, Jr. Even less of a contest.

What he actually happened to be was mostly a product, a flesh and blood special effect only as human as needed to move units and thrill audiences.

As a special effect—a moving picture of a moving image—Jackson helped far too many of us become even more comfortable with counterfeit than we might have had we not had his example. But then we might have ended up in the same place had we only been led to perpetual adolescence by Prince and Madonna. Both made the most of fraudulence and whatever ultimately vulgar product they could produce.

Michael Jackson was not a vulgarian. He chose to have plastic surgeons make him look like Peter Pan and was a philanthropist along the lines that Pan might have been if he was an entertainer with millions to donate to good causes.

Jackson was—most importantly to many who judge all by commercial success—the most successful enertainer to come out of rhythm and blues, rock, and their derivatives. A hundred million units of Thriller should be enough to guarantee him ongoing fame, but his global fans have been programmed to overstate the value of their teenage taste and to live in terms of it. Someday they may all moonwalk with MJ in the great big Neverland in the sky. That would be cosmic justice, if nothing else.

"The whole creepy Peter Pan theme of Neverland - petting zoo, amusement park, video game arcade, soda fountains - was like a pedophile's paradise."

I go to Brooklyn College often to pick up my wife who is finishing up her degree in Psychology over there. I had an interesting discussion with one of her professors who I ran into in downtown Brooklyn the day after MJ's death, a Harvard educated psychiatrist.. Her opinion was, and this was in given in casual conversation, is that all the hoopla involving the Neverland ranch doesn't match the profile of a pedophile for true pedophiles prefer to lurk in the shadows and works damn hard to seem as innocuous as possible. That's not an exonaration of anything MJ might or might not have done but it is food for thought.

Most pedophiles aren't famous enough to have parents bring their children to them....they have to hide and as MJ case proves they don't have the legal and societal protections he had.

Something is seriously wrong with modern culture when a freak of nature is adored!