I don’t know why he is important enough to interrupt serious news. Sorry for his family, but I won’t miss him, and I don’t want to hear about his condition. The Congress is about to pass the biggest tax increase in history tomorrow, but the cable channels are talking about this circus freak.
[Update Friday morning]
Michael Jackson. Oh, I don’t know. Some of the songs were nifty little pop classics; “Thriller” really had it all as a work of Pop in the Warhol sense – Vincent Price narrating, a long-form video that made that brought that new art form up to a dee-luxe level, and a great deadly beat. But after that the videos got bigger, the hooks got smaller, and the idea that each new song / video was somehow a cultural event overshadowed the shrinking ideas and insular, off-putting persona. I had to watch a few tonight to put together a bit for tomorrow’s NewsBreak at startribune.com, and saw “Scream” – MJ and his sister in a white spacecraft, walking around and looking angry. So angry. Rich successful people snarling and sneering and kicking the camera and breaking things.
Charming. Apparently her previously cheerful persona was insufficiently REAL, and REAL is the thing that WE MUST BE KEEPING IT. I actually remember when the video premiered, back when they had premiers, and we all looked at each other and thought: more good hooks in a Nerf tackle box.
Then came the scandal years – the lawsuits, the hideous surgeries. It was almost like watching the Joker carve up his face in the mirror, without the Joker’s delight in his own depravity. He thought he was sculpting something supremely beautiful, but to the outsider who watched his face change as the stories of his personal life came out, it was like watching Dorian Grey walk around holding the picture from the attic before him, convinced it was lovely.
I debated his influence on the Hugh Hewitt show with Jude Thursday night, and I wondered how influential he was – no one else could do a moonwalk, after all, and while a few artists grabbed their crotches after he did (something that never seemed convincing; more than anything, he seemed to be reassuring himself that there was something there) I can’t say he influenced Dance. Don’t know enough to say, to be honest. But musically? As I said, Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam had a far greater influence, and Prince a greater talent. Yes, he’s odd – a smaller, more agreeable set of demons, though, and he has an inexhaustible desire to create without freeze-drying every note into a crystalline framework, with every manufactured Yelp and Yip dropped in at the expected perfect moment.
I wouldn’t have felt any of this if the event wasn’t being treated as a near-fatal blow to Western Culture in some quarters. He called himself the King of Pop – after which fame and sales ebbed. Of the many lessons in his life, that may be the oldest.
Of course, I didn’t think it was a big deal when Elvis died, either.
[Update an hour or so later]
More thoughts from Jonah Goldberg, with which I agree:
I know that Michael Jackson wasn’t convicted of the despicable crimes he was accused of. And that’s why he never went to jail. Three cheers for the majesty of the American legal system. But in my own personal view he wasn’t exonerated either. Nor was he absolved of his crimes because he could sing, moonwalk or sell 10 million records. (Though many of us suspect the money and fame he made from those things is precisely what kept him out of jail).
And, while I merely think he was a pedophile, I know he was not someone responsible parents should applaud, healthy children emulate nor society celebrate.
And while we’re at it, his relatively early death wasn’t “tragic.” He was one of the richest people in the world. He spent his money on perpetual childhood and he was perpetually with children not his own.
Meanwhile, in the last ten days, we’ve seen or heard of remarkable people who’ve given their lives for freedom in Iran. We’ve heard of innocents killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the last decade, America has lost thousands of heroes in noble causes and thousands of innocent bystanders who were denied the simple joys of life through no fault of their own. Those deaths are tragic, and we’re hard pressed to think of more than a handful of names to put with the long line of the dead.
If anything, Michael Jackson’s life, not his death, was tragic.
Every year at the Oscars they show a montage of people who died over the previous year. Invariably, the audience only applauds for the really famous people. This has always offended me. Not necessarily because the famous people don’t deserve praise but because it’s so clear that the audience is clapping for the fame. Michael Jackson had many accomplishments. But the press is sanctifying him because he was famous, deservedly so to be sure, but not because he was good. So much of the coverage seems to miss this fundamental point, as if being famous made him good.
I feel sympathy for Jackson’s family and friends who understandably mourn him. But I can’t bring myself to mourn him any more than I mourn the random dead I read about in the paper everyday. Indeed, I confess to mourning him less.
I confess to not mourning him at all.