Michael Jackson

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Ellen Mrja

Note: The YouTube video originally posted here is no longer available so I’ve deleted the link. But please continue to read and comment below.

Filed under: Communications

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25 Responses

  1. PM, on June 26th, 2009 at 9:04 am Said:

    did he really deserve that much space on the front page of the Strib? or is this coverage as much a marketing deal?

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    • Dennis Lang, on June 26th, 2009 at 9:41 am Said:

      Good question PM. I haven’t figured it out but there is something ineffable, chilling, in the way people we don’t ever know except as celebrities at a great distance can impact us so deeply, how we intersect with them, the arc of their lives. And this life, certainly a tragic one beneath the surface, had become a part of the culture.

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    • Mike Keliher, on June 26th, 2009 at 5:45 pm Said:

      One-off sales. To the max.

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  2. Analyst, on June 26th, 2009 at 10:36 am Said:

    Screw Jacko. I miss Farrah.

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    • Dennis Lang, on June 26th, 2009 at 10:49 am Said:

      Sure, Farrah also. A vivid, very public reminder of our vulnerabilty maybe? For that in moment in time–thirty years ago– no one could have been more radiant.

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  3. Bruce Benidt, on June 26th, 2009 at 11:02 am Said:

    Michael Jackson is the first human to ever be embalmed before he died.

    The zillions of words being driveled out on cable and packing the newsprint don’t include the one word that best describes Jackson — freak.

    Our star culture is showing its rot. It rotted Michael, now it’s rotting us.

    Yo Yo Ma, Winton Marsalis — these are artists of global fame. Have they gone Elvis? The star magazines and drooling entertainment TV shows haven’t turned these men into fools. Michael was talented, no doubt. But the insane slavering famemongers turned him into a caricature of an artist, and Michael let them. Who among us could handle billions of dollars and the adulation of millions and millions of people and not have our souls and our character turn to slime? It’s a hard test. Elvis failed it. So did Michael.

    In an earlier interview with Geraldo replayed last night, Jackson called all the rumors about him “science fiction.” A perfect description of Jackson himself. His self-tortured face looked like a kid’s poor attempt at a jack-o-lantern. His smile was already rictus. His pedophilia was more than just an OJ moment — it was criminal and pathetic.

    Our voracious star culture, in which emptiness in fans hooks magnetically to emptiness in stars, claimed Michael long ago. It’s now claiming millions and millions more.

    Let what will last of Jackson’s music and his astonishing dancing last. Let his long-rotted corpse sink out of sight.

    Turn off the TV. Listen to Winton.

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  5. Ellen Mrja, on June 27th, 2009 at 6:29 pm Said:

    PM: According to the (London) Sun, here’s the entire smorgasbord of what Jackson was consuming: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2504175/Michael-Jacksons-daily-drugs-cocktail.html

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  6. Ellen Mrja, on June 27th, 2009 at 10:21 pm Said:

    Bruce: Much as I hate to, I’ve got to disagree with your assessment of what the public should want (YoYo Ma or Winton Marsalis) versus what the public has already decided it does want.

    At the time of Jackson’s rumored death, major news outlets from ABC to Reuters, AOL, MSNBC and more were jammed with Internet searches for information. Google News was so overwhelmed that 50 of the top 100 searches were about Jackson, an unheard of phenomenon that caused the system to incorrectly read it as an automated attack. (For 25 minutes, some people searching Google News got only a “We’re Sorry” page in response.) The Yahoo News story on Jackson being rushed to the hospital was hit 800,000 times in 10 minutes.

    http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20090627/tc_pcworld/newssitesfalterastrafficspikesafterjacksonsdeath

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  7. Charlie Quimby, on June 28th, 2009 at 3:34 pm Said:

    He was an exploited kid who grew into a very troubled adult, but he was also genius. And just listen to that voice.

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  8. Ellen Mrja, on June 29th, 2009 at 6:31 pm Said:

    You know, when i first posted this video I did not write any comments because I didn’t know how I felt about MJ’s passing.

    I believe he was abused as a child — mentally, physically and perhaps sexually. I believe the trauma of it all caused him to become stuck at the psychological development of a 10-year-old. He may have become an abuser himself because of it.

    But watching the endless clips of his work over the past four decades show his brilliance. He might not have been a Mozart but he was close in his own terms. He could compose, sing, perform AND dance. Elvis couldn’t do two of those; the Beatles couldn’t do one.

    Dick Clark said of the thousands of entertainers he’s worked with throughout his career, Michael Jackson was the best.

    I find this music video very sad.

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  9. Citizen Joe, on June 30th, 2009 at 9:19 am Said:

    I confess I’m shallow enough that I’d much rather listen to (early) Michael than Yo Yo, Winton or anyone else who plays at the Kennedy Center. Sue me. But even a commoner like me doesn’t begin to get why people are so hungry for every little detail about Mike’s life, and why the speculation about his death moves the masses to such extreme grief, anger, and judgement. The fact that there is media and consumer interest doesn’t surprise or concern me. The fact that there is utter obsession does. The masses in Iran are obsessed about Neda and justice, and the masses in America are obsessed about Jacko and autopsy details. Really, I’m embarrassed for us.

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  10. Dennis Lang, on July 12th, 2009 at 11:03 am Said:

    Still thinking about this. I wonder if it raises the question of “relevance”. Clearly tens of millions were captivated by this story. Heck, CBS felt the need to send Katie herself, and every media outlet imaginable was on it. But might this be what is becoming of journalism in the age of the internet–relevance defined by what is “hot”, the buzz, a celebrity-driven focus, what will sell? Has it led journalists, editors, news producers to gravitate primarily only to the most contemporary, surface phenomena–the “sneeze” of the moment?

    In the one journalism class I ever took, I recall our lanky, white-haired professor taking a somewhat different approach to relevance. These are the stories that establish their own relevance he encouraged; and the reader says I never knew that before…and now I’m learning about it.

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  11. Mike Keliher, on July 12th, 2009 at 7:39 pm Said:

    If the sort of pack mentality Dennis describes above is really what we’re dealing with, why bother with four networks and dozens of major newspapers and such? Let’s just have Rupert or Ted or General Electric decide what we’re all already interested in and tell us shit we already know about a guy we thought was a pervert till he died too young.

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    • Dennis Lang, on July 13th, 2009 at 9:16 am Said:

      MK–Now I’m not sure what it is I’ve “described”. Maybe I’m thinking magazine journalism as an example. I wonder where marketing begins to take precedent. Editors perhaps more interested in what will be hot in thirty days or two months or tomorrow (not entirely unlike comments on the commercial success of “Transformers”–different post) rather than: This is an exciting story, we should learn more about this, and we should be the ones to tell it.

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  12. Ellen Mrja, on July 13th, 2009 at 11:15 am Said:

    What I’ve been thinking about is this: With the splintering of the mass media (think the Big Three TV Networks, the “establishment” press and mass magazines) will any artist ever again be able to achieve the level of fame MJ did? I don’t think so.

    We are all too fractured now in terms of which media channels we prefer, in controlling how we consume them, even in deciding whether or not we’ll pay for them.

    Very different from the Beatles or MJ who were introduced to America on The Ed Sullivan Show..promoted by major record labels who controlled production and pricing of albums..written up in all the mags like Teen Beat that fans faithfully purchased. They appeared in the NEWS columns when they got busted for pot (John Lennon) or burned during filming of a TV commercial (MJ).

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    • Dennis Lang, on July 13th, 2009 at 11:23 am Said:

      Yeah, good question. But then there’s the Susan Boyle phenomenon. Tens of millions with instantaneous access….. What– I think 70 milliion Internet subscribers in U.S. alone

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  13. Ellen Mrja, on July 13th, 2009 at 12:04 pm Said:

    Dennis: But Boyle was just the flavor of the month. We’re done with her now. How many people do you really think know who she is, even now?

    Try this: when it was reported on Twitter that Elizabeth Taylor (DameElizabeth) was not going to attend MJ’s send-off at the Staples Center, many young types asked “Who’s Elizabeth Taylor?”

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    • Dennis Lang, on July 13th, 2009 at 12:48 pm Said:

      Right–Susan Boyle’s fifteen minutes of fame isn’t it? Elizabeth Taylor, part of the cultural landscape for almost seventy years (“National Velvet” around 1940) and there are those who never heard of her! Who are these people dropped in our midst lacking any sense of history? Sad.

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  14. Ellen Mrja, on July 13th, 2009 at 1:48 pm Said:

    I don’t know how to tell you this but they are the new voters of America…

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  15. Mike Keliher, on July 14th, 2009 at 9:03 am Said:

    On the Media’s BOB GARFIELD: Never mind that he apparently missed the tears of Geraldo. But was Sharpton, the ringleader of many a media circus built on scurrilous allegations made before rooms full of camera crews, actually objecting to basic reporting on the bizarro world that was Jackson’s life?

    But never mind that either, because even that was not the event’s thickest slice of irony. That honor goes to a moment in the memorial service for a man whose tragic story began as a child forced onstage for an audience of millions, abusively exposed to pressures few children are equipped to bear.

    So who goes before the crowds and the cameras to eulogize him? His 11-year-old daughter, Paris.

    PARIS JACKSON: I – just want to say –

    JANET JACKSON: Speak up, sweetheart, speak up.

    PARIS JACKSON: Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine. [CRYING] And I just wanted to say I love him – so much. [CRYING]

    [APPLAUSE]

    BOB GARFIELD: USA Today put a giant photo of Paris on its front page. The L.A. Times called her halting words “the signature moment” of the service. And the cycle begins anew.

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  16. Ellen Mrja, on July 14th, 2009 at 12:36 pm Said:

    Ouch.

    Reply

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