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Reflections on Michael: Articles, Blogs & Stories

Lessons from Michael – The Power of Passion

Whether you were a fan of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, or one who saw only his idiosyncrasies, there are many lessons for all of us in his trials and tribulations, turbulence, yet triumph. As a teacher and healer at heart, I was in awe with the connectedness he had with millions of people from all over the world. I have been obsessed observing and studying the magnetism of this man who had been somewhat in hiding in recent years. The tragedies of such a talent can be explained another time, but it is often the price paid for fame and fortune by creative, sensitive people living in an insensitive world.

As the author of a book on influence and persuasion, Forget Selling, I see Michael Jackson as the icon of influence. His charm and charisma was mesmerizing. But what was the magic? What are the secrets to his success so we can all optimize our potential for a future of unlimited possibilities. In fact, Michael disputed that the sky was the limit, as he saw NO limits. That is secret # 1.

Lessons from Michael


1. Possibility Thinking Only. There are no limits to what you may accomplish, except those self-imposed by limitations of the mind. All of the champions I had interviewed in my book,
Winning! had a flash of their greatness at an early age.

2. Be an Imitator. It was reported that Michael could watch the movement and maneuvers of the most accomplished and imitate their work. Whether it was singing, dancing, or even marketing, he would observe, integrate, and implement.

3. Be an Innovator. After he mastered imitating “the greats,” he would take it up a notch and become even greater. That kind of creation and innovation is what sets us apart from the masses as we transcend from being just good to great!

4. Be Different and Dimensional. Whether it was wearing just one glove when the rest of the world was wearing two, if you want to rise above you must stand out and be the purple cow.

5. Make Change a Habit. Change and change again, and again. Once people have you figured out, you become boring and they become disinterested. Change and newness renews excitement and keeps people engaged. This is true for personal relationships as well as a business strategy.

6. The Element of Surprise. Kids like to play peek-a-boo, but we never lose our love for the seduction of the surprise. Michael sang songs that if with your eyes closed, you would think the angels had descended upon you. But then he portrayed the “bad guy” with equal conviction of character. Be diverse in your thinking and be willing to risk new roles to avoid the ruts and routines that steal our excitement and passion for life.

7. God Is in the Details. Like his flawless memorial service, Michael always performed to perfection and made a personal commitment to always “top” himself in the next performance. He was perfection in motion. He studied, researched, and rehearsed endlessly. As a child it was reported that he always had a pencil and paper in hand to write down quotes and words of wisdom, but he also wrote down new words and concepts as a personal assignment.

8. Be Curious.The desire to learn more with an undying inquisitiveness propels us to explore, discover, and grow. It is the spark of all innovation and fans the fires of brilliance.

9. Love Is the Way. Come always from a loving place within. Everyone who intimately knew the person, not just the personality, referred to his love and kindness. Love is the most positive, powerful force in the universe. If Emmet Fox is right, “If only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world.” Try it!

10. Commit to Never Quit. Know who you are (your unique gift), what you want (your vision), and have a plan or strategy of how to get there. Be the “come-back” kid. At age 50, Michael was about to come back one last time. In the words of Sir Winston Churchill, “Never, never, never quit.” It is also wise to know what you don’t want or to have a “NOT To Do” list as well. Eliminate the distractions in your life that derail you from your purpose, passion, and mission. That may include activities and people who are no longer contributing to your ultimate success, happiness, and joy.

11. Dare to Dream…and Dream BIG. Michael grew up in Gary, Indiana, from very humble beginnings, but he dreamed big and was driven to manifest his desire to be the very best which is without dispute. Mission accomplished. He referred to Michelangelo’s wisdom in stating that the creator must die but his works will live on. What belief do you have that moves you in the direction of your dreams? In my first motivational keynote, I also referred to Michelangelo. “In every rock of marble I see a statue, I merely chisel away so that others may see what I already know. How can your dream come true, if you have not first dreamed the dream?” Your journey to greatness begins with a dream.

12. Be True to Yourself. March to your own drummer. A singer must sing, a dancer must dance, and a writer must write. Know your God-given, unique gift and don’t die with the music in you. YOU’VE GOT TO SING YOUR SONG.

As I reflect on his life, it reminds me of the magnetism, influence, connectedness, and generosity of my own father. He only had thousands at his funeral, not millions, but he lived in a small town of just 3,000 in rural Wisconsin. He was much older, 80 at the time of his passing on, and he was not a celebrity. But, like Michael Jackson, he was a person of passion. When you have passion and purpose you do become a person of power and influence. It is simple math and cannot be denied. He also loved music and danced as if he were a spirit without a body. Music is the universal language of love and thus breaks down all barriers and boundaries. It unifies people of all creeds, color, and cadences. It gives soul to the universe wings to the mind. If Emmet Fox was right, “A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all…If only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world.”

http://michaelerz.tumblr.com/post/51...l-the-power-of



Excellent article!!, important one, must read! the original source can't be found or have an error...http://raether.com/articles/?p=90

The author is Edie Raether, MS, CSP, a change strategist, international speaker and author. She is an authority on optimizing potential and the Other IQ – Innovation, Influence and Intuitive Intelligence. Visit Edie at Motivational Sales Training & Keynote Speaker, Business Leadership, Negotiation Skills Training, Retreat Facilitation and Wings For Wishes or email her at edie@raether.com

SPREAD MJFAM♥
 
Lessons from Michael – The Power of Passion

Whether you were a fan of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, or one who saw only his idiosyncrasies, there are many lessons for all of us in his trials and tribulations, turbulence, yet triumph. As a teacher and healer at heart, I was in awe with the connectedness he had with millions of people from all over the world. I have been obsessed observing and studying the magnetism of this man who had been somewhat in hiding in recent years. The tragedies of such a talent can be explained another time, but it is often the price paid for fame and fortune by creative, sensitive people living in an insensitive world.

As the author of a book on influence and persuasion, Forget Selling, I see Michael Jackson as the icon of influence. His charm and charisma was mesmerizing. But what was the magic? What are the secrets to his success so we can all optimize our potential for a future of unlimited possibilities. In fact, Michael disputed that the sky was the limit, as he saw NO limits. That is secret # 1.

Lessons from Michael


1. Possibility Thinking Only. There are no limits to what you may accomplish, except those self-imposed by limitations of the mind. All of the champions I had interviewed in my book,
Winning! had a flash of their greatness at an early age.

2. Be an Imitator. It was reported that Michael could watch the movement and maneuvers of the most accomplished and imitate their work. Whether it was singing, dancing, or even marketing, he would observe, integrate, and implement.

3. Be an Innovator. After he mastered imitating “the greats,” he would take it up a notch and become even greater. That kind of creation and innovation is what sets us apart from the masses as we transcend from being just good to great!

4. Be Different and Dimensional. Whether it was wearing just one glove when the rest of the world was wearing two, if you want to rise above you must stand out and be the purple cow.

5. Make Change a Habit. Change and change again, and again. Once people have you figured out, you become boring and they become disinterested. Change and newness renews excitement and keeps people engaged. This is true for personal relationships as well as a business strategy.

6. The Element of Surprise. Kids like to play peek-a-boo, but we never lose our love for the seduction of the surprise. Michael sang songs that if with your eyes closed, you would think the angels had descended upon you. But then he portrayed the “bad guy” with equal conviction of character. Be diverse in your thinking and be willing to risk new roles to avoid the ruts and routines that steal our excitement and passion for life.

7. God Is in the Details. Like his flawless memorial service, Michael always performed to perfection and made a personal commitment to always “top” himself in the next performance. He was perfection in motion. He studied, researched, and rehearsed endlessly. As a child it was reported that he always had a pencil and paper in hand to write down quotes and words of wisdom, but he also wrote down new words and concepts as a personal assignment.

8. Be Curious.The desire to learn more with an undying inquisitiveness propels us to explore, discover, and grow. It is the spark of all innovation and fans the fires of brilliance.

9. Love Is the Way. Come always from a loving place within. Everyone who intimately knew the person, not just the personality, referred to his love and kindness. Love is the most positive, powerful force in the universe. If Emmet Fox is right, “If only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world.” Try it!

10. Commit to Never Quit. Know who you are (your unique gift), what you want (your vision), and have a plan or strategy of how to get there. Be the “come-back” kid. At age 50, Michael was about to come back one last time. In the words of Sir Winston Churchill, “Never, never, never quit.” It is also wise to know what you don’t want or to have a “NOT To Do” list as well. Eliminate the distractions in your life that derail you from your purpose, passion, and mission. That may include activities and people who are no longer contributing to your ultimate success, happiness, and joy.

11. Dare to Dream…and Dream BIG. Michael grew up in Gary, Indiana, from very humble beginnings, but he dreamed big and was driven to manifest his desire to be the very best which is without dispute. Mission accomplished. He referred to Michelangelo’s wisdom in stating that the creator must die but his works will live on. What belief do you have that moves you in the direction of your dreams? In my first motivational keynote, I also referred to Michelangelo. “In every rock of marble I see a statue, I merely chisel away so that others may see what I already know. How can your dream come true, if you have not first dreamed the dream?” Your journey to greatness begins with a dream.

12. Be True to Yourself. March to your own drummer. A singer must sing, a dancer must dance, and a writer must write. Know your God-given, unique gift and don’t die with the music in you. YOU’VE GOT TO SING YOUR SONG.

As I reflect on his life, it reminds me of the magnetism, influence, connectedness, and generosity of my own father. He only had thousands at his funeral, not millions, but he lived in a small town of just 3,000 in rural Wisconsin. He was much older, 80 at the time of his passing on, and he was not a celebrity. But, like Michael Jackson, he was a person of passion. When you have passion and purpose you do become a person of power and influence. It is simple math and cannot be denied. He also loved music and danced as if he were a spirit without a body. Music is the universal language of love and thus breaks down all barriers and boundaries. It unifies people of all creeds, color, and cadences. It gives soul to the universe wings to the mind. If Emmet Fox was right, “A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all…If only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world.”

http://michaelerz.tumblr.com/post/51...l-the-power-of



Excellent article!!, important one, must read! the original source can't be found or have an error...http://raether.com/articles/?p=90

The author is Edie Raether, MS, CSP, a change strategist, international speaker and author. She is an authority on optimizing potential and the Other IQ – Innovation, Influence and Intuitive Intelligence. Visit Edie at Motivational Sales Training & Keynote Speaker, Business Leadership, Negotiation Skills Training, Retreat Facilitation and Wings For Wishes or email her at edie@raether.com

SPREAD MJFAM♥
 
The Article
The Lynching of Michael Jackson
Written by Jeff Koopersmith
Friday, 26 June 2009
First published in 2003, Jeff Koopersmith not only warned about the power of FOX News Channel&039;s Bill O'Reilly to foment hate but mustered a bold defense of Michael Jackson.

Feb. 20, 2003 -- NEW YORK (apj.us) -- Bill O'Reilly, master hatemonger for Rupert Murdoch's/Roger Ailes' FOX News Channel, should be proud of himself this week.
His vicious, nonstop attacks on Michael Jackson have come to fruition in the massively frenzied media lynching of the once-innocent, now-trampled persona of the little boy who led the Jackson Five, and later lost himself to what I call "The American Nightmare": reaching the pinnacle of success only to be gunned down from the envy of it.
O'Reilly, who claims to be master of a "No Spin Zone," spent months gnawing away and grinding his gnashing teeth at Jackson -- almost certainly because O'Reilly was sentient that ABC, NBC and FOX were working on outsized pieces slamming Jackson, his regrettable childhood, his plastic surgery, and most notably his conspicuous and seemingly unwholesome empathy for children.
O'Reilly wanted to cash in on it, take credit for it, and pretend that he actually has "The Power."
Yet what is loathsome about Bill O'Reilly is shared, in spades, by Stone Phillips, Barbara Walters, Josh Mankiewicz, and the producers of NBC's prime-time ersatz-news program "Dateline" and ABC's awful "20/20". To be honest, if I woke up as any of these so-called journalists, I would commit ritual suicide rather than look in the mirror.
Of course, television broadcasters excuse their near-pornographic slaughter of Jackson's reputation by playing up the sub-theme, "We must save the children" - specifically, "the children" with whom Jackson admits having sleepovers in his bedroom at the Santa Barbara ranch he has named "Neverland."
Under the guise of "policemen of the electronic age," these large corporate broadcasters offer and re-offer, over and over and over again, Michael Jackson's head on a bloody platter for viewers of all stripes to consume.
Now, it is true that Mr. Jackson settled litigation brought against him by the parents of a 13-year-old boy claiming to have been sexually seduced by the "King of Pop", but both Los Angeles and Santa Barbara District Attorneys declined to prosecute Mr. Jackson because of lack of evidence to do so.
And it is true that Jackson openly and oh-so-naively admits that he invites kids to sleep in his bedroom -- but claims he sleeps on the floor and bewails the sexual overtones that television plants.
This did not stop a retired detective from leading both NBC and ABC through a litany of "proof" that Jackson was an evil child molester who used his Disneyesque home-cum-theme-park as bait to bed young boys.
Put aside any preconceptions you may have about the "Michael Jackson scandals" and ask yourself a simple question: what is wrong with this picture?
That's not a tough question to answer. What is wrong is the same thing that is wrong with America in general these days.
We have forgotten about who we are, and what we stand for.
We have forgotten about the law.
We have forgotten about common decency.
And let me be the first to say that if Michael Jackson is indeed molesting children by the dozens, as powerful broadcasters would have us believe, then he should be arrested, perhaps jailed, and certainly treated for his mental illness.
But Michael Jackson has not been proved to be a child molester in a criminal or civil court. He has not even been charged with such an offense and one must believe, if we are truly a nation of laws, that he is, IS, innocent until PROVEN guilty by a jury of his peers.
Certainly he is altered, he is poles apart from you and I, but this doesn't prove that his love of children is not innocent or that his longing for his own mislaid-in-greed childhood results in perversion.
Perhaps the networks should spend as much time documenting proven pedophiles instead of "suspected" ones. That way they would less apt to be accused, as I am accusing them, of being nothing better than the Hitlers or Milosevics of this world who piled those they hated into mass graves much as the broadcast industry kills the reputations of celebrities gone off beam.
It's not enough for O'Reilly, Walters, Phillips, Mankiewicz, and the others working this celebrity "story" to trump up a case against Jackson. The power of network television has destroyed dozens of others -- only recently another black American superstar and her husband, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown. And before that, we saw the virtual demonization of Robert Downey Jr., Nick Nolte and Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens. And let's not ever forget what they did to President Bill Clinton and his wife.
It was Bill O'Reilly, again, who led the charge against Ms. Houston when she admitted to a drug problem. It is as if O'Reilly is acting as a "special prosecutor" trying to wrest custody of Ms. Houston's children from her. To listen to this phony pseudo-intellectual moralizer one cannot help but wonder how American families would take in another 30 million kids whose parents might light up a joint after a tough day on the construction site.
On just one night earlier this week, television viewers across the nation were treated to four hours (three on ABC and one on NBC) of contemptible "revelations" concerning Michael Jackson's troubles with growing up and his increasing age. Last week FOX Television did a "Special" lynching of Jackson which seemed to whet the appetite of a viewing public with a near-insatiable desire to see the powerful crushed, no matter the expense, no matter the lack of substantiated evidence.
To say these were American networks' sorriest hours would be an understatement.
For three hours, ABC -- The "American" Broadcasting Network, owned largely and ironically by the Disney Corporation who created the Magic Kingdom upon which Mr. Jackson seems to have modeled his "ranch" -- exploited and abused the "King of Pop" so ferociously that one might think it was endeavoring to force the man who won't grow up toward suicide, much as the editorialists as the Wall Street Journal drove Vince Foster to snuff out his own life on a park bench.
On NBC, the "General Electric Network," the Jackson story was likewise presented in as revolting a manner as could be slipped by their increasingly lax "censors", with that network choosing to go nose to nose with ABC in a sordid contest to see who could capture more avaricious and covetous American viewers while torching a pitiable little man who gave us all such great musical pleasure for most of his life.
I don't think I have ever been quite so riveted by a display of insufferable heartlessness.
Many, from the e-mail these programs have generated, did not watch to learn about Jackson, but sought to gloat and rejoice over what at least appeared to be his psychological instability, the terror of his childhood, his loneliness, and his desolation.
All three networks featured ghastly interviews with plastic surgeons studying only photographs of Michael Jackson's face and giving their "expert" opinions on how many surgeries he'd undergone, and how botched they were in a contemptible flaunt of the Hippocratic Oath: "Do no harm."

Martin BashirAmerica was treated to hours of Martin Bashir, the British "journalist" who was fortunate enough to "get" Princess Diana to talk about how she cheated on her husband, Prince Charles -- himself "a little odd."
It seems Mr. Bashir is fond of ingratiating himself with the famous, and more so the super wealthy, so that he can use them and abuse them -- and of course, cash in.
Bashir was at his most repellent pretending to take Mr. Jackson into his confidence, feigning concern for the singer, protecting Jackson's children from the paparazzi, and then humiliating him repeatedly -- for nothing more than money.
ABC, in cahoots with REAL Video, is offering up video of the Bashir interview -- the only catch being that you have to subscribe -- again for more money -- in order to wallow in the heartbreak that is Jackson's life.
Dateline, at NBC.com, featured a ghostly Flash Film of Jackson's face morphing eerily using six pictures taken over 30 years of the singing star's life making him appear as a monster to excite its Web surfers.
After all is said, Mr. Bashir -- who seems not to be a journalist at all but merely a pig wallowing in the mud of another's broken life -- and the network executives who participated in this modern Anglo-American lynching should be put in stocks and mocked in Times Square.
Bill O'Reilly would shout me down if I were across from him on "The Factor." He would yell "What about the children, Mr. Koopersmith? What about the children?"
I might answer -- "Yes, what about the children?"
I must add that Barbara Walter's participation in this dreadfulness was deplorable. I thought at least she had reached a zenith, where she like the others could have just said "No!"
Sadly, she chose to participate in this high-tech lynching.
She -- and all the other pilers-on -- should hang their heads in shame.
 
The Article
The Lynching of Michael Jackson
Written by Jeff Koopersmith
Friday, 26 June 2009
First published in 2003, Jeff Koopersmith not only warned about the power of FOX News Channel&039;s Bill O'Reilly to foment hate but mustered a bold defense of Michael Jackson.

Feb. 20, 2003 -- NEW YORK (apj.us) -- Bill O'Reilly, master hatemonger for Rupert Murdoch's/Roger Ailes' FOX News Channel, should be proud of himself this week.
His vicious, nonstop attacks on Michael Jackson have come to fruition in the massively frenzied media lynching of the once-innocent, now-trampled persona of the little boy who led the Jackson Five, and later lost himself to what I call "The American Nightmare": reaching the pinnacle of success only to be gunned down from the envy of it.
O'Reilly, who claims to be master of a "No Spin Zone," spent months gnawing away and grinding his gnashing teeth at Jackson -- almost certainly because O'Reilly was sentient that ABC, NBC and FOX were working on outsized pieces slamming Jackson, his regrettable childhood, his plastic surgery, and most notably his conspicuous and seemingly unwholesome empathy for children.
O'Reilly wanted to cash in on it, take credit for it, and pretend that he actually has "The Power."
Yet what is loathsome about Bill O'Reilly is shared, in spades, by Stone Phillips, Barbara Walters, Josh Mankiewicz, and the producers of NBC's prime-time ersatz-news program "Dateline" and ABC's awful "20/20". To be honest, if I woke up as any of these so-called journalists, I would commit ritual suicide rather than look in the mirror.
Of course, television broadcasters excuse their near-pornographic slaughter of Jackson's reputation by playing up the sub-theme, "We must save the children" - specifically, "the children" with whom Jackson admits having sleepovers in his bedroom at the Santa Barbara ranch he has named "Neverland."
Under the guise of "policemen of the electronic age," these large corporate broadcasters offer and re-offer, over and over and over again, Michael Jackson's head on a bloody platter for viewers of all stripes to consume.
Now, it is true that Mr. Jackson settled litigation brought against him by the parents of a 13-year-old boy claiming to have been sexually seduced by the "King of Pop", but both Los Angeles and Santa Barbara District Attorneys declined to prosecute Mr. Jackson because of lack of evidence to do so.
And it is true that Jackson openly and oh-so-naively admits that he invites kids to sleep in his bedroom -- but claims he sleeps on the floor and bewails the sexual overtones that television plants.
This did not stop a retired detective from leading both NBC and ABC through a litany of "proof" that Jackson was an evil child molester who used his Disneyesque home-cum-theme-park as bait to bed young boys.
Put aside any preconceptions you may have about the "Michael Jackson scandals" and ask yourself a simple question: what is wrong with this picture?
That's not a tough question to answer. What is wrong is the same thing that is wrong with America in general these days.
We have forgotten about who we are, and what we stand for.
We have forgotten about the law.
We have forgotten about common decency.
And let me be the first to say that if Michael Jackson is indeed molesting children by the dozens, as powerful broadcasters would have us believe, then he should be arrested, perhaps jailed, and certainly treated for his mental illness.
But Michael Jackson has not been proved to be a child molester in a criminal or civil court. He has not even been charged with such an offense and one must believe, if we are truly a nation of laws, that he is, IS, innocent until PROVEN guilty by a jury of his peers.
Certainly he is altered, he is poles apart from you and I, but this doesn't prove that his love of children is not innocent or that his longing for his own mislaid-in-greed childhood results in perversion.
Perhaps the networks should spend as much time documenting proven pedophiles instead of "suspected" ones. That way they would less apt to be accused, as I am accusing them, of being nothing better than the Hitlers or Milosevics of this world who piled those they hated into mass graves much as the broadcast industry kills the reputations of celebrities gone off beam.
It's not enough for O'Reilly, Walters, Phillips, Mankiewicz, and the others working this celebrity "story" to trump up a case against Jackson. The power of network television has destroyed dozens of others -- only recently another black American superstar and her husband, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown. And before that, we saw the virtual demonization of Robert Downey Jr., Nick Nolte and Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens. And let's not ever forget what they did to President Bill Clinton and his wife.
It was Bill O'Reilly, again, who led the charge against Ms. Houston when she admitted to a drug problem. It is as if O'Reilly is acting as a "special prosecutor" trying to wrest custody of Ms. Houston's children from her. To listen to this phony pseudo-intellectual moralizer one cannot help but wonder how American families would take in another 30 million kids whose parents might light up a joint after a tough day on the construction site.
On just one night earlier this week, television viewers across the nation were treated to four hours (three on ABC and one on NBC) of contemptible "revelations" concerning Michael Jackson's troubles with growing up and his increasing age. Last week FOX Television did a "Special" lynching of Jackson which seemed to whet the appetite of a viewing public with a near-insatiable desire to see the powerful crushed, no matter the expense, no matter the lack of substantiated evidence.
To say these were American networks' sorriest hours would be an understatement.
For three hours, ABC -- The "American" Broadcasting Network, owned largely and ironically by the Disney Corporation who created the Magic Kingdom upon which Mr. Jackson seems to have modeled his "ranch" -- exploited and abused the "King of Pop" so ferociously that one might think it was endeavoring to force the man who won't grow up toward suicide, much as the editorialists as the Wall Street Journal drove Vince Foster to snuff out his own life on a park bench.
On NBC, the "General Electric Network," the Jackson story was likewise presented in as revolting a manner as could be slipped by their increasingly lax "censors", with that network choosing to go nose to nose with ABC in a sordid contest to see who could capture more avaricious and covetous American viewers while torching a pitiable little man who gave us all such great musical pleasure for most of his life.
I don't think I have ever been quite so riveted by a display of insufferable heartlessness.
Many, from the e-mail these programs have generated, did not watch to learn about Jackson, but sought to gloat and rejoice over what at least appeared to be his psychological instability, the terror of his childhood, his loneliness, and his desolation.
All three networks featured ghastly interviews with plastic surgeons studying only photographs of Michael Jackson's face and giving their "expert" opinions on how many surgeries he'd undergone, and how botched they were in a contemptible flaunt of the Hippocratic Oath: "Do no harm."

Martin BashirAmerica was treated to hours of Martin Bashir, the British "journalist" who was fortunate enough to "get" Princess Diana to talk about how she cheated on her husband, Prince Charles -- himself "a little odd."
It seems Mr. Bashir is fond of ingratiating himself with the famous, and more so the super wealthy, so that he can use them and abuse them -- and of course, cash in.
Bashir was at his most repellent pretending to take Mr. Jackson into his confidence, feigning concern for the singer, protecting Jackson's children from the paparazzi, and then humiliating him repeatedly -- for nothing more than money.
ABC, in cahoots with REAL Video, is offering up video of the Bashir interview -- the only catch being that you have to subscribe -- again for more money -- in order to wallow in the heartbreak that is Jackson's life.
Dateline, at NBC.com, featured a ghostly Flash Film of Jackson's face morphing eerily using six pictures taken over 30 years of the singing star's life making him appear as a monster to excite its Web surfers.
After all is said, Mr. Bashir -- who seems not to be a journalist at all but merely a pig wallowing in the mud of another's broken life -- and the network executives who participated in this modern Anglo-American lynching should be put in stocks and mocked in Times Square.
Bill O'Reilly would shout me down if I were across from him on "The Factor." He would yell "What about the children, Mr. Koopersmith? What about the children?"
I might answer -- "Yes, what about the children?"
I must add that Barbara Walter's participation in this dreadfulness was deplorable. I thought at least she had reached a zenith, where she like the others could have just said "No!"
Sadly, she chose to participate in this high-tech lynching.
She -- and all the other pilers-on -- should hang their heads in shame.
 
The Article
The Lynching of Michael Jackson
Written by Jeff Koopersmith
Friday, 26 June 2009
First published in 2003, Jeff Koopersmith not only warned about the power of FOX News Channel&039;s Bill O'Reilly to foment hate but mustered a bold defense of Michael Jackson.

Feb. 20, 2003 -- NEW YORK (apj.us) -- Bill O'Reilly, master hatemonger for Rupert Murdoch's/Roger Ailes' FOX News Channel, should be proud of himself this week.
His vicious, nonstop attacks on Michael Jackson have come to fruition in the massively frenzied media lynching of the once-innocent, now-trampled persona of the little boy who led the Jackson Five, and later lost himself to what I call "The American Nightmare": reaching the pinnacle of success only to be gunned down from the envy of it.
O'Reilly, who claims to be master of a "No Spin Zone," spent months gnawing away and grinding his gnashing teeth at Jackson -- almost certainly because O'Reilly was sentient that ABC, NBC and FOX were working on outsized pieces slamming Jackson, his regrettable childhood, his plastic surgery, and most notably his conspicuous and seemingly unwholesome empathy for children.
O'Reilly wanted to cash in on it, take credit for it, and pretend that he actually has "The Power."
Yet what is loathsome about Bill O'Reilly is shared, in spades, by Stone Phillips, Barbara Walters, Josh Mankiewicz, and the producers of NBC's prime-time ersatz-news program "Dateline" and ABC's awful "20/20". To be honest, if I woke up as any of these so-called journalists, I would commit ritual suicide rather than look in the mirror.
Of course, television broadcasters excuse their near-pornographic slaughter of Jackson's reputation by playing up the sub-theme, "We must save the children" - specifically, "the children" with whom Jackson admits having sleepovers in his bedroom at the Santa Barbara ranch he has named "Neverland."
Under the guise of "policemen of the electronic age," these large corporate broadcasters offer and re-offer, over and over and over again, Michael Jackson's head on a bloody platter for viewers of all stripes to consume.
Now, it is true that Mr. Jackson settled litigation brought against him by the parents of a 13-year-old boy claiming to have been sexually seduced by the "King of Pop", but both Los Angeles and Santa Barbara District Attorneys declined to prosecute Mr. Jackson because of lack of evidence to do so.
And it is true that Jackson openly and oh-so-naively admits that he invites kids to sleep in his bedroom -- but claims he sleeps on the floor and bewails the sexual overtones that television plants.
This did not stop a retired detective from leading both NBC and ABC through a litany of "proof" that Jackson was an evil child molester who used his Disneyesque home-cum-theme-park as bait to bed young boys.
Put aside any preconceptions you may have about the "Michael Jackson scandals" and ask yourself a simple question: what is wrong with this picture?
That's not a tough question to answer. What is wrong is the same thing that is wrong with America in general these days.
We have forgotten about who we are, and what we stand for.
We have forgotten about the law.
We have forgotten about common decency.
And let me be the first to say that if Michael Jackson is indeed molesting children by the dozens, as powerful broadcasters would have us believe, then he should be arrested, perhaps jailed, and certainly treated for his mental illness.
But Michael Jackson has not been proved to be a child molester in a criminal or civil court. He has not even been charged with such an offense and one must believe, if we are truly a nation of laws, that he is, IS, innocent until PROVEN guilty by a jury of his peers.
Certainly he is altered, he is poles apart from you and I, but this doesn't prove that his love of children is not innocent or that his longing for his own mislaid-in-greed childhood results in perversion.
Perhaps the networks should spend as much time documenting proven pedophiles instead of "suspected" ones. That way they would less apt to be accused, as I am accusing them, of being nothing better than the Hitlers or Milosevics of this world who piled those they hated into mass graves much as the broadcast industry kills the reputations of celebrities gone off beam.
It's not enough for O'Reilly, Walters, Phillips, Mankiewicz, and the others working this celebrity "story" to trump up a case against Jackson. The power of network television has destroyed dozens of others -- only recently another black American superstar and her husband, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown. And before that, we saw the virtual demonization of Robert Downey Jr., Nick Nolte and Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens. And let's not ever forget what they did to President Bill Clinton and his wife.
It was Bill O'Reilly, again, who led the charge against Ms. Houston when she admitted to a drug problem. It is as if O'Reilly is acting as a "special prosecutor" trying to wrest custody of Ms. Houston's children from her. To listen to this phony pseudo-intellectual moralizer one cannot help but wonder how American families would take in another 30 million kids whose parents might light up a joint after a tough day on the construction site.
On just one night earlier this week, television viewers across the nation were treated to four hours (three on ABC and one on NBC) of contemptible "revelations" concerning Michael Jackson's troubles with growing up and his increasing age. Last week FOX Television did a "Special" lynching of Jackson which seemed to whet the appetite of a viewing public with a near-insatiable desire to see the powerful crushed, no matter the expense, no matter the lack of substantiated evidence.
To say these were American networks' sorriest hours would be an understatement.
For three hours, ABC -- The "American" Broadcasting Network, owned largely and ironically by the Disney Corporation who created the Magic Kingdom upon which Mr. Jackson seems to have modeled his "ranch" -- exploited and abused the "King of Pop" so ferociously that one might think it was endeavoring to force the man who won't grow up toward suicide, much as the editorialists as the Wall Street Journal drove Vince Foster to snuff out his own life on a park bench.
On NBC, the "General Electric Network," the Jackson story was likewise presented in as revolting a manner as could be slipped by their increasingly lax "censors", with that network choosing to go nose to nose with ABC in a sordid contest to see who could capture more avaricious and covetous American viewers while torching a pitiable little man who gave us all such great musical pleasure for most of his life.
I don't think I have ever been quite so riveted by a display of insufferable heartlessness.
Many, from the e-mail these programs have generated, did not watch to learn about Jackson, but sought to gloat and rejoice over what at least appeared to be his psychological instability, the terror of his childhood, his loneliness, and his desolation.
All three networks featured ghastly interviews with plastic surgeons studying only photographs of Michael Jackson's face and giving their "expert" opinions on how many surgeries he'd undergone, and how botched they were in a contemptible flaunt of the Hippocratic Oath: "Do no harm."

Martin BashirAmerica was treated to hours of Martin Bashir, the British "journalist" who was fortunate enough to "get" Princess Diana to talk about how she cheated on her husband, Prince Charles -- himself "a little odd."
It seems Mr. Bashir is fond of ingratiating himself with the famous, and more so the super wealthy, so that he can use them and abuse them -- and of course, cash in.
Bashir was at his most repellent pretending to take Mr. Jackson into his confidence, feigning concern for the singer, protecting Jackson's children from the paparazzi, and then humiliating him repeatedly -- for nothing more than money.
ABC, in cahoots with REAL Video, is offering up video of the Bashir interview -- the only catch being that you have to subscribe -- again for more money -- in order to wallow in the heartbreak that is Jackson's life.
Dateline, at NBC.com, featured a ghostly Flash Film of Jackson's face morphing eerily using six pictures taken over 30 years of the singing star's life making him appear as a monster to excite its Web surfers.
After all is said, Mr. Bashir -- who seems not to be a journalist at all but merely a pig wallowing in the mud of another's broken life -- and the network executives who participated in this modern Anglo-American lynching should be put in stocks and mocked in Times Square.
Bill O'Reilly would shout me down if I were across from him on "The Factor." He would yell "What about the children, Mr. Koopersmith? What about the children?"
I might answer -- "Yes, what about the children?"
I must add that Barbara Walter's participation in this dreadfulness was deplorable. I thought at least she had reached a zenith, where she like the others could have just said "No!"
Sadly, she chose to participate in this high-tech lynching.
She -- and all the other pilers-on -- should hang their heads in shame.
 
Wow 'Em in Heaven, Michael Jackson
Written by Jeff Koopersmith
Sunday, 28 June 2009

I never believed that Michael Jackson did what the publicity-seeking Los Angeles Police Department and a twisted, fame-grabbing district attorney crammed down the insensitive, sycophantic media's throats. Of course, Jackson was acquitted. But the theater of celebrity justice killed him then, and he disappeared, feeling humiliated and unrecovered.
Jeff Koopersmith, one of the few opinion journalists to defend Michael Jackson during his tabloid-driven scandals, has plenty to say about the phenomenal and influential performer and his shocking death at the age of 50.

June 26, 2009 – Geneva (apj.us) – I woke this morning at five to hear the BBC news reader reporting that Michael Jackson, at 50, had died of a heart attack at his temporary Holmby Hills home where he was preparing for a sold-out tour in Britain. I wept like child.

When Jackson, a severely misunderstood genius, was charged with hideous and false accusations, I was one of the few who defended him during that ordeal.

I never believed that Michael Jackson did what the publicity-seeking Los Angeles Police Department and a twisted, fame-grabbing district attorney crammed down the insensitive, sycophantic media's throats. Of course, Jackson was acquitted.

But the theater of celebrity justice killed him then, and he disappeared, feeling humiliated and unrecovered.

Now he is gone, and all I gave him was my courage that he was just as he said: a man who loved children, and a childhood that was robbed from him by us. Michael Jackson was one of the most talented performing artists of the 20th century.

This morning, scanning the news, I see that the media are up to our old tricks.

Instead of simply celebrating the joy Jackson broought a worldwide audience, dead-tree outlets and cable bobbleheads obsess over the more tawdry and seemingly inexplicable facets of his too-short lifetime.

I once claimed that we had lynched Michael Jackson. I stand by that opinion. As surely as others close to him sucked him dry, stole his treasure, and accused him with vicious malice, we lynched him. I will miss him. We will all miss him.

Jeff Koopersmith is an internationally renowned political consultant, opinion research authority and policy analyst. He has lobbied for causes including the alternative fuel sector and women's health, and is an expert on the international real estate market. He lives in Philadelphia, Washington and Geneva.

The Source:
http://www.apj.us/index.php?option=c...=2472&Itemid=2
 
Wow 'Em in Heaven, Michael Jackson
Written by Jeff Koopersmith
Sunday, 28 June 2009

I never believed that Michael Jackson did what the publicity-seeking Los Angeles Police Department and a twisted, fame-grabbing district attorney crammed down the insensitive, sycophantic media's throats. Of course, Jackson was acquitted. But the theater of celebrity justice killed him then, and he disappeared, feeling humiliated and unrecovered.
Jeff Koopersmith, one of the few opinion journalists to defend Michael Jackson during his tabloid-driven scandals, has plenty to say about the phenomenal and influential performer and his shocking death at the age of 50.

June 26, 2009 – Geneva (apj.us) – I woke this morning at five to hear the BBC news reader reporting that Michael Jackson, at 50, had died of a heart attack at his temporary Holmby Hills home where he was preparing for a sold-out tour in Britain. I wept like child.

When Jackson, a severely misunderstood genius, was charged with hideous and false accusations, I was one of the few who defended him during that ordeal.

I never believed that Michael Jackson did what the publicity-seeking Los Angeles Police Department and a twisted, fame-grabbing district attorney crammed down the insensitive, sycophantic media's throats. Of course, Jackson was acquitted.

But the theater of celebrity justice killed him then, and he disappeared, feeling humiliated and unrecovered.

Now he is gone, and all I gave him was my courage that he was just as he said: a man who loved children, and a childhood that was robbed from him by us. Michael Jackson was one of the most talented performing artists of the 20th century.

This morning, scanning the news, I see that the media are up to our old tricks.

Instead of simply celebrating the joy Jackson broought a worldwide audience, dead-tree outlets and cable bobbleheads obsess over the more tawdry and seemingly inexplicable facets of his too-short lifetime.

I once claimed that we had lynched Michael Jackson. I stand by that opinion. As surely as others close to him sucked him dry, stole his treasure, and accused him with vicious malice, we lynched him. I will miss him. We will all miss him.

Jeff Koopersmith is an internationally renowned political consultant, opinion research authority and policy analyst. He has lobbied for causes including the alternative fuel sector and women's health, and is an expert on the international real estate market. He lives in Philadelphia, Washington and Geneva.

The Source:
http://www.apj.us/index.php?option=c...=2472&Itemid=2
 
Wow 'Em in Heaven, Michael Jackson
Written by Jeff Koopersmith
Sunday, 28 June 2009

I never believed that Michael Jackson did what the publicity-seeking Los Angeles Police Department and a twisted, fame-grabbing district attorney crammed down the insensitive, sycophantic media's throats. Of course, Jackson was acquitted. But the theater of celebrity justice killed him then, and he disappeared, feeling humiliated and unrecovered.
Jeff Koopersmith, one of the few opinion journalists to defend Michael Jackson during his tabloid-driven scandals, has plenty to say about the phenomenal and influential performer and his shocking death at the age of 50.

June 26, 2009 – Geneva (apj.us) – I woke this morning at five to hear the BBC news reader reporting that Michael Jackson, at 50, had died of a heart attack at his temporary Holmby Hills home where he was preparing for a sold-out tour in Britain. I wept like child.

When Jackson, a severely misunderstood genius, was charged with hideous and false accusations, I was one of the few who defended him during that ordeal.

I never believed that Michael Jackson did what the publicity-seeking Los Angeles Police Department and a twisted, fame-grabbing district attorney crammed down the insensitive, sycophantic media's throats. Of course, Jackson was acquitted.

But the theater of celebrity justice killed him then, and he disappeared, feeling humiliated and unrecovered.

Now he is gone, and all I gave him was my courage that he was just as he said: a man who loved children, and a childhood that was robbed from him by us. Michael Jackson was one of the most talented performing artists of the 20th century.

This morning, scanning the news, I see that the media are up to our old tricks.

Instead of simply celebrating the joy Jackson broought a worldwide audience, dead-tree outlets and cable bobbleheads obsess over the more tawdry and seemingly inexplicable facets of his too-short lifetime.

I once claimed that we had lynched Michael Jackson. I stand by that opinion. As surely as others close to him sucked him dry, stole his treasure, and accused him with vicious malice, we lynched him. I will miss him. We will all miss him.

Jeff Koopersmith is an internationally renowned political consultant, opinion research authority and policy analyst. He has lobbied for causes including the alternative fuel sector and women's health, and is an expert on the international real estate market. He lives in Philadelphia, Washington and Geneva.

The Source:
http://www.apj.us/index.php?option=c...=2472&Itemid=2
 
TO WALK A LIFETIME IN MICHAEL JACKSON'S MOCCASINS
June 26, 2009, 12:56 pm - by Aberjhani


Michael Jackson giving it his all in concert around 1995.
(photographer unknown)

You probably can't read the words in the note next to the accompanying photo of Michael Jackson, but they were handwritten by the singer himself during the mid 1990s when he was constantly on tour and just as constantly a subject of much public ridicule and condemnation. This note was composed on hotel stationery and, complete with original spellings, grammar, and format, reads as follows:

"like the old Indian proverb says do not judge a man until you've walked 2 moons in his moccasins.
Most people don't know me, that is why they write such things in wich most is not true, I cry very very often because it hurts and I worry about the children all my children all over the world, I live for them.
If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.
Animals strike, not from malice, but because they want to live, it is the same with those who criticize, they desire our blood, not our pain. But still I must achieve I must seek truth in all things. I must endure for the power I was sent forth, for the world for the children.
But have mercy, for I've been bleeding a long time now." -Michael Jackson (circa 1995)

It's hard to think of Michael Joseph Jackson as having been a baby boomer because nothing defined him quite so much as his music, and his music possesses the eternal quality of genius that makes all superior art timeless, ageless, and endlessly compelling. But a baby boomer he was, born August 29, 1958, and now gone so soon to his rest June 25, 2009.

Reporting on Jackson's death just hours after it was confirmed, NBC News anchorman Lester Holt noted, "We were the same age. I remember being a ten-year-old watching this ten-year-old kid on television." A familiar feeling. I arrived on the planet one year before either of them but like Holt I also watched the young Michael Jackson on stage on television. My attention was fully captured with no desire to be released because there he was: a cultural mirror image of myself who was not the watermelon-eyed "Buckwheat" (all due respect to the actor who played that role) or a stereotypical barefoot "pickaninny" movie extra in some Gone With the Wind spin-off, but a little black boy musical genius so charged with the lightning of his talent and confidence that he could take the lead singer position with his four brothers behind him and an audience of thousands in front of him--and perform with all the grace, skill, and maturity of someone three times his age.

How did that kid do that? Living as I did in a southern region where black skin and a male anatomy often reduced one's life expectancy by decades, the answer of how that kid did what he did was important to this future author.
Years later I considered the greater scope of what he had achieved. While the vast majority of those in our peer group at age eleven or twelve were at home evenings studying for a quiz in school the next day or building up nerve to steal a first kiss, Michael Jackson was working--working in clubs, working in theaters, working on television, working in concert halls, working working working his ass off. On how many continents, and in how many countries, was that child a stranger in a strange land? Yet one who repeatedly channeled gifts of song and dance and love to bring respites of celebrated joy to the lives of others? His labors as a child played no small role in laying a foundation of lasting wealth for what has been called America's "preeminent family of pop music." Later on, those labors would pull a lagging recording industry out of its deathbed slump, and jump-start a new industry art form known as video while trashing racial barriers on TV and radio in the process. Did that make him a saint? No. Does it make his memory one worthy of respect? Most definitely.

Not all "child prodigies" who exhibit the level of talent that Jackson did as a child tend to fulfill the promise of those gifts in their adulthood. He was one of those who did. Once his ambition led him to pursue and establish with phenomenal results a solo career, each year thereafter when birthdays came around (his in August, mine in July) I started studying what he had accomplished to date and would challenge myself to do better in my own career. That's not to say I ever did, or even that I thought I could or should match him; only that his accomplishments motivated me to reach for some of my own.

The judgments of different critics aside, he outdid himself repeatedly: with the flawless album Off the Wall in 1979; the all-time bestselling Thriller in 1982; Bad in 1987; and Dangerous in 1991. By the time Jackson's HIStory-Past, Present and Future, Book I was released in 1995, I was managing a multi-media book, video, software and music store, which allowed me to indulge the pleasure of dancing along to the album's combination of anthology and new music while shelving and selling books. True, I was dancing to his life's soundtrack rather than my own and another three years would pass before my first book would get published. But: I celebrated this last album (not the last of his career) in particular because it was the first one released after the singer had descended into the tar-thick shadow-side of celebrity-hood: constant hounding by the paparazzi, reportedly "bizarre" behavior bordering on insanity, and allegations of pedophilia. The fact that his fame had become his cross made me less envious that he had achieved it so early.

Yet in the album HIStory, the purity of the music declared that whatever might or might not be the truth behind the scandalous headlines, all had somehow remained well with his soul. Whereas madness attempted to take over his life--and for a time possibly did--he fought and won his battle to turn it into superlative art. The new songs on HIStory presented his defense of himself even while going beyond that to champion the environment and level substantial social criticism of his own. It was around the time of HIStory's release that he wrote the above note and the photo that accompanies it was taken (my apologies for failing to track down the exact date or the photographer's name). When I saw them published in People Magazine, I cut the page out and placed it in a photo album, then said a prayer for this man whose voice had helped awaken my voice.

We human beings tend to demand that our heroes fulfill many fantasies, but one fantasy no hero can fulfill is perfection while in this world. They can make the effort to give as much of themselves to the global community as they can, and then beg forgiveness when the gifting isn't enough and the less appealing aromas of their humanity dim the air with the funky truth of their flesh and blood limitations. It was good that "the King of Pop" had been tested and learned something about his limitations in one major battle because he would need whatever strength he gained from it for other confrontations down the road. In the end, it was strength he was reaching for once again to begin his journey anew and do the one thing he did better than anybody else.

A lot of tabloids, magazines, websites, radio stations, entertainment personalities, and retail chains made tons of good hard cash peddling before the world what they presented as Michael Jackson's eccentricities and possible moral failings. Perhaps now that he has left the stage for the last time, they can pay a bit of that forward by leaning in the opposite direction and honoring the brilliance of his dynamic artistry, the beauty of his dazzling creative passion, and the simple sincerity--however wounded it may have been--of his love for his fellow human beings.

The Source:
http://www.redroom.com/blog/aberjhan...sons-moccasins
 
TO WALK A LIFETIME IN MICHAEL JACKSON'S MOCCASINS
June 26, 2009, 12:56 pm - by Aberjhani


Michael Jackson giving it his all in concert around 1995.
(photographer unknown)

You probably can't read the words in the note next to the accompanying photo of Michael Jackson, but they were handwritten by the singer himself during the mid 1990s when he was constantly on tour and just as constantly a subject of much public ridicule and condemnation. This note was composed on hotel stationery and, complete with original spellings, grammar, and format, reads as follows:

"like the old Indian proverb says do not judge a man until you've walked 2 moons in his moccasins.
Most people don't know me, that is why they write such things in wich most is not true, I cry very very often because it hurts and I worry about the children all my children all over the world, I live for them.
If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.
Animals strike, not from malice, but because they want to live, it is the same with those who criticize, they desire our blood, not our pain. But still I must achieve I must seek truth in all things. I must endure for the power I was sent forth, for the world for the children.
But have mercy, for I've been bleeding a long time now." -Michael Jackson (circa 1995)

It's hard to think of Michael Joseph Jackson as having been a baby boomer because nothing defined him quite so much as his music, and his music possesses the eternal quality of genius that makes all superior art timeless, ageless, and endlessly compelling. But a baby boomer he was, born August 29, 1958, and now gone so soon to his rest June 25, 2009.

Reporting on Jackson's death just hours after it was confirmed, NBC News anchorman Lester Holt noted, "We were the same age. I remember being a ten-year-old watching this ten-year-old kid on television." A familiar feeling. I arrived on the planet one year before either of them but like Holt I also watched the young Michael Jackson on stage on television. My attention was fully captured with no desire to be released because there he was: a cultural mirror image of myself who was not the watermelon-eyed "Buckwheat" (all due respect to the actor who played that role) or a stereotypical barefoot "pickaninny" movie extra in some Gone With the Wind spin-off, but a little black boy musical genius so charged with the lightning of his talent and confidence that he could take the lead singer position with his four brothers behind him and an audience of thousands in front of him--and perform with all the grace, skill, and maturity of someone three times his age.

How did that kid do that? Living as I did in a southern region where black skin and a male anatomy often reduced one's life expectancy by decades, the answer of how that kid did what he did was important to this future author.
Years later I considered the greater scope of what he had achieved. While the vast majority of those in our peer group at age eleven or twelve were at home evenings studying for a quiz in school the next day or building up nerve to steal a first kiss, Michael Jackson was working--working in clubs, working in theaters, working on television, working in concert halls, working working working his ass off. On how many continents, and in how many countries, was that child a stranger in a strange land? Yet one who repeatedly channeled gifts of song and dance and love to bring respites of celebrated joy to the lives of others? His labors as a child played no small role in laying a foundation of lasting wealth for what has been called America's "preeminent family of pop music." Later on, those labors would pull a lagging recording industry out of its deathbed slump, and jump-start a new industry art form known as video while trashing racial barriers on TV and radio in the process. Did that make him a saint? No. Does it make his memory one worthy of respect? Most definitely.

Not all "child prodigies" who exhibit the level of talent that Jackson did as a child tend to fulfill the promise of those gifts in their adulthood. He was one of those who did. Once his ambition led him to pursue and establish with phenomenal results a solo career, each year thereafter when birthdays came around (his in August, mine in July) I started studying what he had accomplished to date and would challenge myself to do better in my own career. That's not to say I ever did, or even that I thought I could or should match him; only that his accomplishments motivated me to reach for some of my own.

The judgments of different critics aside, he outdid himself repeatedly: with the flawless album Off the Wall in 1979; the all-time bestselling Thriller in 1982; Bad in 1987; and Dangerous in 1991. By the time Jackson's HIStory-Past, Present and Future, Book I was released in 1995, I was managing a multi-media book, video, software and music store, which allowed me to indulge the pleasure of dancing along to the album's combination of anthology and new music while shelving and selling books. True, I was dancing to his life's soundtrack rather than my own and another three years would pass before my first book would get published. But: I celebrated this last album (not the last of his career) in particular because it was the first one released after the singer had descended into the tar-thick shadow-side of celebrity-hood: constant hounding by the paparazzi, reportedly "bizarre" behavior bordering on insanity, and allegations of pedophilia. The fact that his fame had become his cross made me less envious that he had achieved it so early.

Yet in the album HIStory, the purity of the music declared that whatever might or might not be the truth behind the scandalous headlines, all had somehow remained well with his soul. Whereas madness attempted to take over his life--and for a time possibly did--he fought and won his battle to turn it into superlative art. The new songs on HIStory presented his defense of himself even while going beyond that to champion the environment and level substantial social criticism of his own. It was around the time of HIStory's release that he wrote the above note and the photo that accompanies it was taken (my apologies for failing to track down the exact date or the photographer's name). When I saw them published in People Magazine, I cut the page out and placed it in a photo album, then said a prayer for this man whose voice had helped awaken my voice.

We human beings tend to demand that our heroes fulfill many fantasies, but one fantasy no hero can fulfill is perfection while in this world. They can make the effort to give as much of themselves to the global community as they can, and then beg forgiveness when the gifting isn't enough and the less appealing aromas of their humanity dim the air with the funky truth of their flesh and blood limitations. It was good that "the King of Pop" had been tested and learned something about his limitations in one major battle because he would need whatever strength he gained from it for other confrontations down the road. In the end, it was strength he was reaching for once again to begin his journey anew and do the one thing he did better than anybody else.

A lot of tabloids, magazines, websites, radio stations, entertainment personalities, and retail chains made tons of good hard cash peddling before the world what they presented as Michael Jackson's eccentricities and possible moral failings. Perhaps now that he has left the stage for the last time, they can pay a bit of that forward by leaning in the opposite direction and honoring the brilliance of his dynamic artistry, the beauty of his dazzling creative passion, and the simple sincerity--however wounded it may have been--of his love for his fellow human beings.

The Source:
http://www.redroom.com/blog/aberjhan...sons-moccasins
 
TO WALK A LIFETIME IN MICHAEL JACKSON'S MOCCASINS
June 26, 2009, 12:56 pm - by Aberjhani


Michael Jackson giving it his all in concert around 1995.
(photographer unknown)

You probably can't read the words in the note next to the accompanying photo of Michael Jackson, but they were handwritten by the singer himself during the mid 1990s when he was constantly on tour and just as constantly a subject of much public ridicule and condemnation. This note was composed on hotel stationery and, complete with original spellings, grammar, and format, reads as follows:

"like the old Indian proverb says do not judge a man until you've walked 2 moons in his moccasins.
Most people don't know me, that is why they write such things in wich most is not true, I cry very very often because it hurts and I worry about the children all my children all over the world, I live for them.
If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.
Animals strike, not from malice, but because they want to live, it is the same with those who criticize, they desire our blood, not our pain. But still I must achieve I must seek truth in all things. I must endure for the power I was sent forth, for the world for the children.
But have mercy, for I've been bleeding a long time now." -Michael Jackson (circa 1995)

It's hard to think of Michael Joseph Jackson as having been a baby boomer because nothing defined him quite so much as his music, and his music possesses the eternal quality of genius that makes all superior art timeless, ageless, and endlessly compelling. But a baby boomer he was, born August 29, 1958, and now gone so soon to his rest June 25, 2009.

Reporting on Jackson's death just hours after it was confirmed, NBC News anchorman Lester Holt noted, "We were the same age. I remember being a ten-year-old watching this ten-year-old kid on television." A familiar feeling. I arrived on the planet one year before either of them but like Holt I also watched the young Michael Jackson on stage on television. My attention was fully captured with no desire to be released because there he was: a cultural mirror image of myself who was not the watermelon-eyed "Buckwheat" (all due respect to the actor who played that role) or a stereotypical barefoot "pickaninny" movie extra in some Gone With the Wind spin-off, but a little black boy musical genius so charged with the lightning of his talent and confidence that he could take the lead singer position with his four brothers behind him and an audience of thousands in front of him--and perform with all the grace, skill, and maturity of someone three times his age.

How did that kid do that? Living as I did in a southern region where black skin and a male anatomy often reduced one's life expectancy by decades, the answer of how that kid did what he did was important to this future author.
Years later I considered the greater scope of what he had achieved. While the vast majority of those in our peer group at age eleven or twelve were at home evenings studying for a quiz in school the next day or building up nerve to steal a first kiss, Michael Jackson was working--working in clubs, working in theaters, working on television, working in concert halls, working working working his ass off. On how many continents, and in how many countries, was that child a stranger in a strange land? Yet one who repeatedly channeled gifts of song and dance and love to bring respites of celebrated joy to the lives of others? His labors as a child played no small role in laying a foundation of lasting wealth for what has been called America's "preeminent family of pop music." Later on, those labors would pull a lagging recording industry out of its deathbed slump, and jump-start a new industry art form known as video while trashing racial barriers on TV and radio in the process. Did that make him a saint? No. Does it make his memory one worthy of respect? Most definitely.

Not all "child prodigies" who exhibit the level of talent that Jackson did as a child tend to fulfill the promise of those gifts in their adulthood. He was one of those who did. Once his ambition led him to pursue and establish with phenomenal results a solo career, each year thereafter when birthdays came around (his in August, mine in July) I started studying what he had accomplished to date and would challenge myself to do better in my own career. That's not to say I ever did, or even that I thought I could or should match him; only that his accomplishments motivated me to reach for some of my own.

The judgments of different critics aside, he outdid himself repeatedly: with the flawless album Off the Wall in 1979; the all-time bestselling Thriller in 1982; Bad in 1987; and Dangerous in 1991. By the time Jackson's HIStory-Past, Present and Future, Book I was released in 1995, I was managing a multi-media book, video, software and music store, which allowed me to indulge the pleasure of dancing along to the album's combination of anthology and new music while shelving and selling books. True, I was dancing to his life's soundtrack rather than my own and another three years would pass before my first book would get published. But: I celebrated this last album (not the last of his career) in particular because it was the first one released after the singer had descended into the tar-thick shadow-side of celebrity-hood: constant hounding by the paparazzi, reportedly "bizarre" behavior bordering on insanity, and allegations of pedophilia. The fact that his fame had become his cross made me less envious that he had achieved it so early.

Yet in the album HIStory, the purity of the music declared that whatever might or might not be the truth behind the scandalous headlines, all had somehow remained well with his soul. Whereas madness attempted to take over his life--and for a time possibly did--he fought and won his battle to turn it into superlative art. The new songs on HIStory presented his defense of himself even while going beyond that to champion the environment and level substantial social criticism of his own. It was around the time of HIStory's release that he wrote the above note and the photo that accompanies it was taken (my apologies for failing to track down the exact date or the photographer's name). When I saw them published in People Magazine, I cut the page out and placed it in a photo album, then said a prayer for this man whose voice had helped awaken my voice.

We human beings tend to demand that our heroes fulfill many fantasies, but one fantasy no hero can fulfill is perfection while in this world. They can make the effort to give as much of themselves to the global community as they can, and then beg forgiveness when the gifting isn't enough and the less appealing aromas of their humanity dim the air with the funky truth of their flesh and blood limitations. It was good that "the King of Pop" had been tested and learned something about his limitations in one major battle because he would need whatever strength he gained from it for other confrontations down the road. In the end, it was strength he was reaching for once again to begin his journey anew and do the one thing he did better than anybody else.

A lot of tabloids, magazines, websites, radio stations, entertainment personalities, and retail chains made tons of good hard cash peddling before the world what they presented as Michael Jackson's eccentricities and possible moral failings. Perhaps now that he has left the stage for the last time, they can pay a bit of that forward by leaning in the opposite direction and honoring the brilliance of his dynamic artistry, the beauty of his dazzling creative passion, and the simple sincerity--however wounded it may have been--of his love for his fellow human beings.

The Source:
http://www.redroom.com/blog/aberjhan...sons-moccasins
 
Originally posted by billyworld99

As news of Jackson’s death spread worldwide, a deluge of tributes emerged — not just from the singer’s home country, but from diverse international sources as well. Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, for example, described Jackson as “a hero of the world,” reported the New York Times, while the Nelson Mandela Foundation, created by the human rights activist and former president of South Africa, stated, “His loss will be felt by fans worldwide.”

Nowhere was the global impact of the singer’s death more evident than on the Internet, which exploded with Jackson-related news following the event. YouTube quickly displayed tens of thousands of homemade tribute videos; one particularly unusual segment, showing more than 1,500 inmates in a Philippines prison performing the signature dance from Jackson’s groundbreaking Thriller music video, spread virally, receiving more than 28 million views at the time this article was written. There were news reports that Google News, a leading search engine, initially received so many “Michael Jackson” requests that its computers mistakenly believed it was under automated cyberattack.

The power of Jackson’s music to unite fans from around the globe — seemingly regardless of their political, religious, ethnic, or socio-economic differences — remains unparalleled. “My parents don’t know much American music,” said Rajneil Singh, a 23-year-old whose family immigrated to the United States from the Fiji Islands in the 1970s. “But they know all of Michael Jackson. He transcends not just cultures, but generations — the old people are just as sad as the young people. There aren’t many artists who can have that sort of impact.”

THE MAN AND THE MUSIC



In 1999, Jackson met with Nelson Mandela (left, foreground) and donated profits from two shows to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund.

Jackson crafted a trademark musical style that earned him massive success. “You could say that it was pop or that it was rhythm and blues, but it really was a unique-sounding hybrid,” said Geoff Grace, a California composer who worked for Jackson as an arranger and orchestrator in conjunction with Jackson’s longtime music director, Brad Buxer. “Michael would never imitate someone else’s style. He was always an original.” While maintaining his distinctive voice, Jackson exhibited a wide stylistic range. “There are a lot of acts known for hard-hitting dance music, or for tender ballads, but Michael was known for both,” added Grace. “People might have been interested in him for something sweet like ‘The Girl Is Mine,’ or a harder, driving song like ‘Jam.’ He had a breadth, as well as uniqueness, of style that captured a lot of people’s attention.”

Key to Jackson’s style was the sonic bedrock that Buxer, Grace and others helped create for his recordings and live performances. “A lot of the instrumental sounds used on Michael’s recordings are larger than life, just like everything else about him,” said Grace. Whether recording pianos, drums, synthesizers or strings, Jackson and his production team took great care to produce tones and textures that were edgy and powerful. “The goal was more than just creating a wide, lush, stereo soundscape,” Grace continued. “It was, ‘What can we use to make an impact?’”

Perhaps more important than the music itself was Jackson’s total fearlessness on stage. The singer’s breakout television performance of the song “Billie Jean” for the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, and Forever special in 1983, for example, showcased Jackson’s fiery energy, explosively virtuosic dancing and total commitment to his performance. “Starting in the 1990s, there would be moments when he would just stop and scream during his concerts and videos,” said Grace. “He didn’t hold anything back.”

Jackson grew up in the spotlight as the youngest member of the Jackson 5 singing group, performing with his four older brothers and achieving stardom as a child. And though this early experience can explain much of the appeal Jackson would later develop as a solo artist, other factors contributed as well. “Michael Jackson transcended boundaries,” said Jason Burwen, a world-music radio disc jockey and graduate student in international public policy. “Pop music is about being popular, and he appealed to people with different backgrounds. He was not just music — he was, in and of himself, a fantasy, and people were into that.” Grace echoed the sentiment. “There was nobody who was even remotely like Michael,” he said. “He didn’t fit into anybody’s stereotypes of anything. And people wanted to know what made him tick.”

Indeed, Jackson’s life on and off the stage was one of spectacle and controversy, inspiring both adoration and revulsion from the global public. Jackson’s lavish California “Neverland Ranch,” for example, housed a zoo and amusement park, while his dramatic, plastic surgery-induced appearance changes attracted morbid fascination from fans and media alike. “He was larger than life, and nobody thought he was really human,” said Burwen. “So when he passed away, it was a huge shock. Nobody thought he could actually die.”

Michael Gallant, a musician, composer, producer and author living in San Francisco, serves as senior editor at Keyboard magazine
http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplac...A0.994198.html
 
Originally posted by billyworld99

As news of Jackson’s death spread worldwide, a deluge of tributes emerged — not just from the singer’s home country, but from diverse international sources as well. Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, for example, described Jackson as “a hero of the world,” reported the New York Times, while the Nelson Mandela Foundation, created by the human rights activist and former president of South Africa, stated, “His loss will be felt by fans worldwide.”

Nowhere was the global impact of the singer’s death more evident than on the Internet, which exploded with Jackson-related news following the event. YouTube quickly displayed tens of thousands of homemade tribute videos; one particularly unusual segment, showing more than 1,500 inmates in a Philippines prison performing the signature dance from Jackson’s groundbreaking Thriller music video, spread virally, receiving more than 28 million views at the time this article was written. There were news reports that Google News, a leading search engine, initially received so many “Michael Jackson” requests that its computers mistakenly believed it was under automated cyberattack.

The power of Jackson’s music to unite fans from around the globe — seemingly regardless of their political, religious, ethnic, or socio-economic differences — remains unparalleled. “My parents don’t know much American music,” said Rajneil Singh, a 23-year-old whose family immigrated to the United States from the Fiji Islands in the 1970s. “But they know all of Michael Jackson. He transcends not just cultures, but generations — the old people are just as sad as the young people. There aren’t many artists who can have that sort of impact.”

THE MAN AND THE MUSIC



In 1999, Jackson met with Nelson Mandela (left, foreground) and donated profits from two shows to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund.

Jackson crafted a trademark musical style that earned him massive success. “You could say that it was pop or that it was rhythm and blues, but it really was a unique-sounding hybrid,” said Geoff Grace, a California composer who worked for Jackson as an arranger and orchestrator in conjunction with Jackson’s longtime music director, Brad Buxer. “Michael would never imitate someone else’s style. He was always an original.” While maintaining his distinctive voice, Jackson exhibited a wide stylistic range. “There are a lot of acts known for hard-hitting dance music, or for tender ballads, but Michael was known for both,” added Grace. “People might have been interested in him for something sweet like ‘The Girl Is Mine,’ or a harder, driving song like ‘Jam.’ He had a breadth, as well as uniqueness, of style that captured a lot of people’s attention.”

Key to Jackson’s style was the sonic bedrock that Buxer, Grace and others helped create for his recordings and live performances. “A lot of the instrumental sounds used on Michael’s recordings are larger than life, just like everything else about him,” said Grace. Whether recording pianos, drums, synthesizers or strings, Jackson and his production team took great care to produce tones and textures that were edgy and powerful. “The goal was more than just creating a wide, lush, stereo soundscape,” Grace continued. “It was, ‘What can we use to make an impact?’”

Perhaps more important than the music itself was Jackson’s total fearlessness on stage. The singer’s breakout television performance of the song “Billie Jean” for the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, and Forever special in 1983, for example, showcased Jackson’s fiery energy, explosively virtuosic dancing and total commitment to his performance. “Starting in the 1990s, there would be moments when he would just stop and scream during his concerts and videos,” said Grace. “He didn’t hold anything back.”

Jackson grew up in the spotlight as the youngest member of the Jackson 5 singing group, performing with his four older brothers and achieving stardom as a child. And though this early experience can explain much of the appeal Jackson would later develop as a solo artist, other factors contributed as well. “Michael Jackson transcended boundaries,” said Jason Burwen, a world-music radio disc jockey and graduate student in international public policy. “Pop music is about being popular, and he appealed to people with different backgrounds. He was not just music — he was, in and of himself, a fantasy, and people were into that.” Grace echoed the sentiment. “There was nobody who was even remotely like Michael,” he said. “He didn’t fit into anybody’s stereotypes of anything. And people wanted to know what made him tick.”

Indeed, Jackson’s life on and off the stage was one of spectacle and controversy, inspiring both adoration and revulsion from the global public. Jackson’s lavish California “Neverland Ranch,” for example, housed a zoo and amusement park, while his dramatic, plastic surgery-induced appearance changes attracted morbid fascination from fans and media alike. “He was larger than life, and nobody thought he was really human,” said Burwen. “So when he passed away, it was a huge shock. Nobody thought he could actually die.”

Michael Gallant, a musician, composer, producer and author living in San Francisco, serves as senior editor at Keyboard magazine
http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplac...A0.994198.html
 
Originally posted by billyworld99

As news of Jackson’s death spread worldwide, a deluge of tributes emerged — not just from the singer’s home country, but from diverse international sources as well. Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, for example, described Jackson as “a hero of the world,” reported the New York Times, while the Nelson Mandela Foundation, created by the human rights activist and former president of South Africa, stated, “His loss will be felt by fans worldwide.”

Nowhere was the global impact of the singer’s death more evident than on the Internet, which exploded with Jackson-related news following the event. YouTube quickly displayed tens of thousands of homemade tribute videos; one particularly unusual segment, showing more than 1,500 inmates in a Philippines prison performing the signature dance from Jackson’s groundbreaking Thriller music video, spread virally, receiving more than 28 million views at the time this article was written. There were news reports that Google News, a leading search engine, initially received so many “Michael Jackson” requests that its computers mistakenly believed it was under automated cyberattack.

The power of Jackson’s music to unite fans from around the globe — seemingly regardless of their political, religious, ethnic, or socio-economic differences — remains unparalleled. “My parents don’t know much American music,” said Rajneil Singh, a 23-year-old whose family immigrated to the United States from the Fiji Islands in the 1970s. “But they know all of Michael Jackson. He transcends not just cultures, but generations — the old people are just as sad as the young people. There aren’t many artists who can have that sort of impact.”

THE MAN AND THE MUSIC



In 1999, Jackson met with Nelson Mandela (left, foreground) and donated profits from two shows to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund.

Jackson crafted a trademark musical style that earned him massive success. “You could say that it was pop or that it was rhythm and blues, but it really was a unique-sounding hybrid,” said Geoff Grace, a California composer who worked for Jackson as an arranger and orchestrator in conjunction with Jackson’s longtime music director, Brad Buxer. “Michael would never imitate someone else’s style. He was always an original.” While maintaining his distinctive voice, Jackson exhibited a wide stylistic range. “There are a lot of acts known for hard-hitting dance music, or for tender ballads, but Michael was known for both,” added Grace. “People might have been interested in him for something sweet like ‘The Girl Is Mine,’ or a harder, driving song like ‘Jam.’ He had a breadth, as well as uniqueness, of style that captured a lot of people’s attention.”

Key to Jackson’s style was the sonic bedrock that Buxer, Grace and others helped create for his recordings and live performances. “A lot of the instrumental sounds used on Michael’s recordings are larger than life, just like everything else about him,” said Grace. Whether recording pianos, drums, synthesizers or strings, Jackson and his production team took great care to produce tones and textures that were edgy and powerful. “The goal was more than just creating a wide, lush, stereo soundscape,” Grace continued. “It was, ‘What can we use to make an impact?’”

Perhaps more important than the music itself was Jackson’s total fearlessness on stage. The singer’s breakout television performance of the song “Billie Jean” for the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, and Forever special in 1983, for example, showcased Jackson’s fiery energy, explosively virtuosic dancing and total commitment to his performance. “Starting in the 1990s, there would be moments when he would just stop and scream during his concerts and videos,” said Grace. “He didn’t hold anything back.”

Jackson grew up in the spotlight as the youngest member of the Jackson 5 singing group, performing with his four older brothers and achieving stardom as a child. And though this early experience can explain much of the appeal Jackson would later develop as a solo artist, other factors contributed as well. “Michael Jackson transcended boundaries,” said Jason Burwen, a world-music radio disc jockey and graduate student in international public policy. “Pop music is about being popular, and he appealed to people with different backgrounds. He was not just music — he was, in and of himself, a fantasy, and people were into that.” Grace echoed the sentiment. “There was nobody who was even remotely like Michael,” he said. “He didn’t fit into anybody’s stereotypes of anything. And people wanted to know what made him tick.”

Indeed, Jackson’s life on and off the stage was one of spectacle and controversy, inspiring both adoration and revulsion from the global public. Jackson’s lavish California “Neverland Ranch,” for example, housed a zoo and amusement park, while his dramatic, plastic surgery-induced appearance changes attracted morbid fascination from fans and media alike. “He was larger than life, and nobody thought he was really human,” said Burwen. “So when he passed away, it was a huge shock. Nobody thought he could actually die.”

Michael Gallant, a musician, composer, producer and author living in San Francisco, serves as senior editor at Keyboard magazine
http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplac...A0.994198.html
 
Originally posted by billyworld99!


Wei Hongxia

Michael Jackson, one of the hottest names in pop culture recently, has spread to every corner of global media since his death on June 25. People all over the world are playing his music again and again to mourn the super star. His life stories are published by newspapers, magazines and websites. The extreme media coverage of Michael Jackson gives great testament to just how influential this superstar was.

Michael Jackson has always idolized a particular age of music as “The King of Pop”, so he is not only a person, but also is the essence of America’s cultural influence in other countries. Starting in the 1980s, American culture icons, such as Michael Jackson, Hollywood, Mcdonald's, KFC and Coca Cola, appear on the scene internationally for the first time. This really began to influence traditional cultures around the world, for example, traditional Africa music in south Sahara was replaced by Michael Jackson’s rock-and-roll, even teenagers in Iran, are crazy for Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson’s entertainment package became very profitable worldwide. Entertainment companies greatly promoted his music and his personal style; his unique music attracted many people and also influenced many of his fans as his successful career began flow onto the international stage. United States’ values, ideas of democracy, and freedom influenced young people all over the word; including their personal behaviors, dress styles and even social behaviors.

The King of Pop may be gone, but his reign will continue through his music and the love of his fans. Michael Jackson has truly become an international pop-culture icon, bringing mainstream American culture to all corners of the globe.

Ms. Wei Hongxia is a research fellow with the Institute of American Studies at the China Academy of Social Sciences.

(China.org.cn translated by Wu Huanshu, July 7, 2009
 
Originally posted by billyworld99!


Wei Hongxia

Michael Jackson, one of the hottest names in pop culture recently, has spread to every corner of global media since his death on June 25. People all over the world are playing his music again and again to mourn the super star. His life stories are published by newspapers, magazines and websites. The extreme media coverage of Michael Jackson gives great testament to just how influential this superstar was.

Michael Jackson has always idolized a particular age of music as “The King of Pop”, so he is not only a person, but also is the essence of America’s cultural influence in other countries. Starting in the 1980s, American culture icons, such as Michael Jackson, Hollywood, Mcdonald's, KFC and Coca Cola, appear on the scene internationally for the first time. This really began to influence traditional cultures around the world, for example, traditional Africa music in south Sahara was replaced by Michael Jackson’s rock-and-roll, even teenagers in Iran, are crazy for Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson’s entertainment package became very profitable worldwide. Entertainment companies greatly promoted his music and his personal style; his unique music attracted many people and also influenced many of his fans as his successful career began flow onto the international stage. United States’ values, ideas of democracy, and freedom influenced young people all over the word; including their personal behaviors, dress styles and even social behaviors.

The King of Pop may be gone, but his reign will continue through his music and the love of his fans. Michael Jackson has truly become an international pop-culture icon, bringing mainstream American culture to all corners of the globe.

Ms. Wei Hongxia is a research fellow with the Institute of American Studies at the China Academy of Social Sciences.

(China.org.cn translated by Wu Huanshu, July 7, 2009
 
Originally posted by billyworld99!


Wei Hongxia

Michael Jackson, one of the hottest names in pop culture recently, has spread to every corner of global media since his death on June 25. People all over the world are playing his music again and again to mourn the super star. His life stories are published by newspapers, magazines and websites. The extreme media coverage of Michael Jackson gives great testament to just how influential this superstar was.

Michael Jackson has always idolized a particular age of music as “The King of Pop”, so he is not only a person, but also is the essence of America’s cultural influence in other countries. Starting in the 1980s, American culture icons, such as Michael Jackson, Hollywood, Mcdonald's, KFC and Coca Cola, appear on the scene internationally for the first time. This really began to influence traditional cultures around the world, for example, traditional Africa music in south Sahara was replaced by Michael Jackson’s rock-and-roll, even teenagers in Iran, are crazy for Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson’s entertainment package became very profitable worldwide. Entertainment companies greatly promoted his music and his personal style; his unique music attracted many people and also influenced many of his fans as his successful career began flow onto the international stage. United States’ values, ideas of democracy, and freedom influenced young people all over the word; including their personal behaviors, dress styles and even social behaviors.

The King of Pop may be gone, but his reign will continue through his music and the love of his fans. Michael Jackson has truly become an international pop-culture icon, bringing mainstream American culture to all corners of the globe.

Ms. Wei Hongxia is a research fellow with the Institute of American Studies at the China Academy of Social Sciences.

(China.org.cn translated by Wu Huanshu, July 7, 2009
 
Found this in our News Archive. Thanks, qbee.

Keep Moving
Michael Jackson may not have been a film star,
but ARMOND WHITE explains his music videos as art



Armond White joins us on stage for a one-of-a-kind tribute to the King of Pop.
White will also be signing his new book Keep Moving: The Michael Jackson Chronicles.
Keep Moving: Michael Jackson’s Video Art At Walter Reade Theater, Nov. 22, 6 p.m.

By Armond White
. . . . . . .

Liz Taylor was right in her now famous Tweet about Michael Jackson’s This Is It. My Lincoln center program about MJ’s music videos (Keep Moving: Michael Jackson’s Video Art at the Walter Reade Theater, Nov. 22) was planned before This Is It,but it ought to confirm Dame Liz’s enthusiasm. It’s designed to show film enthusiasts who wonder: “What happened to the movie musical?” or “Why wasn’t Michael a film star?” Despite race, class and puritanical obstacles, Jackson advanced the movie-musical genre his own way—working with the best, trusting his instinct and raising the promo film to an art form every time out

MJ’s taken-for-granted cinematic passion was ahead of Hollywood in visualizing the complexities of sex (“In the Closet”) race (“Black or White”), ecology (“Earth Song”) and that aspect of our cultural heritage that wrestles with mankind’s aggressive instincts (“Smooth Criminal”). Put MJ in proper context with Singin’ in the Rain, Shall We Dance and The Band Wagon as serious expression, not trivial daydreaming. Too busy finger-sapping to consider “The Way You Make Me Feel” ’s exploration of courtship ritual? In This Is It, MJ turns masculine drive into iconography that studies eroticism and social custom—all of it beautifully sung and imaginatively choreographed.

MJ’s music video legacy shames contemporary Hollywood’s inability to sustain the music video as an expression of mankind’s dreams. He displayed rare understanding of how music and images can edify the human condition. That’s why Liz’s all-out defense and confirmation matters. She tweeted: “[This Is It] is the single most brilliant piece of filmmaking I have ever seen. It cements forever Michael’s genius in every aspect of creativity. To say he was a genius seems so little…I truly believe this film should be nominated in every category conceivable.”

Liz, of course, is totally right. She challenges the Motion Picture Academy and the upcoming parade of Oscarheads to see past tabloid demonization to the significance of MJ’s art; to make right the mainstream’s neglect of a great artist.



Get Armond White’s new book Keep Moving:
The Michael Jackson Chronicles from resistanceworkswdc@yahoo.com
 
Found this in our News Archive. Thanks, qbee.

Keep Moving
Michael Jackson may not have been a film star,
but ARMOND WHITE explains his music videos as art



Armond White joins us on stage for a one-of-a-kind tribute to the King of Pop.
White will also be signing his new book Keep Moving: The Michael Jackson Chronicles.
Keep Moving: Michael Jackson’s Video Art At Walter Reade Theater, Nov. 22, 6 p.m.

By Armond White
. . . . . . .

Liz Taylor was right in her now famous Tweet about Michael Jackson’s This Is It. My Lincoln center program about MJ’s music videos (Keep Moving: Michael Jackson’s Video Art at the Walter Reade Theater, Nov. 22) was planned before This Is It,but it ought to confirm Dame Liz’s enthusiasm. It’s designed to show film enthusiasts who wonder: “What happened to the movie musical?” or “Why wasn’t Michael a film star?” Despite race, class and puritanical obstacles, Jackson advanced the movie-musical genre his own way—working with the best, trusting his instinct and raising the promo film to an art form every time out

MJ’s taken-for-granted cinematic passion was ahead of Hollywood in visualizing the complexities of sex (“In the Closet”) race (“Black or White”), ecology (“Earth Song”) and that aspect of our cultural heritage that wrestles with mankind’s aggressive instincts (“Smooth Criminal”). Put MJ in proper context with Singin’ in the Rain, Shall We Dance and The Band Wagon as serious expression, not trivial daydreaming. Too busy finger-sapping to consider “The Way You Make Me Feel” ’s exploration of courtship ritual? In This Is It, MJ turns masculine drive into iconography that studies eroticism and social custom—all of it beautifully sung and imaginatively choreographed.

MJ’s music video legacy shames contemporary Hollywood’s inability to sustain the music video as an expression of mankind’s dreams. He displayed rare understanding of how music and images can edify the human condition. That’s why Liz’s all-out defense and confirmation matters. She tweeted: “[This Is It] is the single most brilliant piece of filmmaking I have ever seen. It cements forever Michael’s genius in every aspect of creativity. To say he was a genius seems so little…I truly believe this film should be nominated in every category conceivable.”

Liz, of course, is totally right. She challenges the Motion Picture Academy and the upcoming parade of Oscarheads to see past tabloid demonization to the significance of MJ’s art; to make right the mainstream’s neglect of a great artist.



Get Armond White’s new book Keep Moving:
The Michael Jackson Chronicles from resistanceworkswdc@yahoo.com
 
Found this in our News Archive. Thanks, qbee.

Keep Moving
Michael Jackson may not have been a film star,
but ARMOND WHITE explains his music videos as art



Armond White joins us on stage for a one-of-a-kind tribute to the King of Pop.
White will also be signing his new book Keep Moving: The Michael Jackson Chronicles.
Keep Moving: Michael Jackson’s Video Art At Walter Reade Theater, Nov. 22, 6 p.m.

By Armond White
. . . . . . .

Liz Taylor was right in her now famous Tweet about Michael Jackson’s This Is It. My Lincoln center program about MJ’s music videos (Keep Moving: Michael Jackson’s Video Art at the Walter Reade Theater, Nov. 22) was planned before This Is It,but it ought to confirm Dame Liz’s enthusiasm. It’s designed to show film enthusiasts who wonder: “What happened to the movie musical?” or “Why wasn’t Michael a film star?” Despite race, class and puritanical obstacles, Jackson advanced the movie-musical genre his own way—working with the best, trusting his instinct and raising the promo film to an art form every time out

MJ’s taken-for-granted cinematic passion was ahead of Hollywood in visualizing the complexities of sex (“In the Closet”) race (“Black or White”), ecology (“Earth Song”) and that aspect of our cultural heritage that wrestles with mankind’s aggressive instincts (“Smooth Criminal”). Put MJ in proper context with Singin’ in the Rain, Shall We Dance and The Band Wagon as serious expression, not trivial daydreaming. Too busy finger-sapping to consider “The Way You Make Me Feel” ’s exploration of courtship ritual? In This Is It, MJ turns masculine drive into iconography that studies eroticism and social custom—all of it beautifully sung and imaginatively choreographed.

MJ’s music video legacy shames contemporary Hollywood’s inability to sustain the music video as an expression of mankind’s dreams. He displayed rare understanding of how music and images can edify the human condition. That’s why Liz’s all-out defense and confirmation matters. She tweeted: “[This Is It] is the single most brilliant piece of filmmaking I have ever seen. It cements forever Michael’s genius in every aspect of creativity. To say he was a genius seems so little…I truly believe this film should be nominated in every category conceivable.”

Liz, of course, is totally right. She challenges the Motion Picture Academy and the upcoming parade of Oscarheads to see past tabloid demonization to the significance of MJ’s art; to make right the mainstream’s neglect of a great artist.



Get Armond White’s new book Keep Moving:
The Michael Jackson Chronicles from resistanceworkswdc@yahoo.com
 
http://everydayirishman.wordpress.co...about-michael/

Blues Away: Five Reasons Not to Be Sad about Michael
Posted in The Sunday Columns by everydayirishman on the July 5, 2009


When I heard about Michael Jackson’s death, I was sitting in a bar with a friend. I was already on the way to being drunk; not half an hour before I had been gushing about how much I was looking forward to the O2 concert. Sky News was on in the bar, so I saw the story tick across the bottom of the screen like an unbelievable nightmare…

THERE ARE UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT MICHAEL JACKSON HAS DIED

I didn’t need the reports to be confirmed. I knew it was true.

Shock. Like a bullet. I began getting texts immediately. I ran outside to call a friend, who was in Spain but would still always be the first person I called. I was bent over against a wall outside the pub. I later asked my friend what I said on that phone call; she told me I just announced that he was dead, and then cried.

I straightened up, went inside. Drank some more with my friend. Cried a little. Tried to think of other things.

It was when I left my friend that grief really broke loose. I walked to my dad’s office, which was nearby and where I often stayed, collapsed onto the floor and just forgot I had any responsibilities to anything.

Apparently by this time my family were in a panic trying to reach me. My dad eventually found me in the office; I got sick all over the floor and later in my dad’s car.

My dad took me home. I slept for a few fitful hours then got up and went into work, still drunk and shocked, and now feeling like I was coming down with the flu. I was printing out the wrong things in work, finding it hard to speak coherently on the phone. I left as soon as I’d done what I needed to do that day.

I spent most of the weekend in bed, wallowing in the TV news coverage. I couldn’t listen to his music or see his face without sadness swelling inside me.

It was Monday before things began to change. My best friend, returned from Spain, was going to come up the following Friday to watch some MJ DVDs with me, and I found myself looking through my collection to see which particular live version of Billie Jean I’d show her, whether we’d look at parts of Moonwalker or Ghosts…

Some of the videos I hadn’t seen in some time, though I still knew them inside out. And I discovered I couldn’t help but smile as I watched the man dance, saw that perfection he touched time and again in his performances. There were so many reasons to be sad, but mostly I just felt grateful that I had become a fan and known MJ’s music and life that way for the last 13 years.

This is a time of profound change for Michael Jackson fans. We’ll no longer have our idol’s physical presence to follow. But we can take heart in many things. Here’s my two (or rather five) cents.

1. He made the best use of himself

None of us, except perhaps the most troubled, choose when we leave this earth. And so all we can do is make the best use of ourselves in the time we’re granted: whether it’s through the art we need to create, the kindness we show to others, the legacy of a family, or simply finding a line of work that we were born to live in. Michael Jackson made the best use of his life: his endless humanitarian and charitable work; his devotion to his children, as corroborated by anyone who knew him. Most of all, he was constantly creating music and using his stunning talent right up until the end.

2. There’s still music to look forward to

Ironically, the world will see more ‘new’ Michael Jackson material now than we have in the last decade of his life. Every unreleased recording, every demo tape, every concert on film will be dusted off, packaged and appear on record store shelves. There’s already talk of producing a DVD from the footage of the London concert rehearsals, which includes a professionally filmed full dress rehearsal two days before he died. Former Sony Music CEO Tommy Mottola describes the archives of unreleased MJ songs as ‘endless’, and we know over the last few years Michael had been recording with contemporary artists for a new album. If the few previously unreleased tracks on 2004’s Ultimate Collection are any indication of what’s in the Sony vault, Michael left much greatness still unheard. While the endless commercialism will no doubt prove nauseating, there is some comfort in the thought that we’ll discover even more of the deep, rich musical legacy left to us.

3. The world remembers how much it loved him

For more than ten years, in the mainstream media, Michael’s music has been a footnote to the scandals; now, the scandals have become the footnote and the music and the man are the story. Of course there is still the tabloid/TV circus and the detractors are still there, but the tenderness and compassion with which MJ has been treated is astonishing: praise and appreciation has come pouring in from all sections of the media and the public at large. All of a sudden he was ‘Michael’ and not ‘*****’. The surge in sales of his music has been covered everywhere. In the days following his passing, MJ albums accounted for 15 of Amazon UK’s top 20 albums and all of the top 10; HMV in the UK saw an 80 times increase in sales of his albums overnight – the largest for any artist ever; in the UK chart MJ had five albums in the top 20, including the number one spot for Number Ones; on the Big Top 40 chart show in the UK Man in the Mirror reached number one 20 years after its original release and he had 12 other songs in the top 40; 43 of the top 200 songs in the UK were MJ tunes; at one point 50 of the 100 most-downloaded songs on iTunes were MJ songs; his songs topped iTunes downloads in every country except Japan; he sold a record 2.6 million downloads in one week, making him the first artist ever to sell over a million in seven days; in the US alone, nearly half a million of his albums were sold in the week after his death; in the States, the top nine albums on Billboard’s catalogue pop chart were his; In Ireland currently, Michael has seven albums in the top 20, including the one, two and three spots, and 16 of his songs are in the top 40 singles; in the global chart, he has four albums in the top 20 and 11 songs in the top 40 singles. On a personal level, friends have been sharing stories of their favourite songs, albums and videos, the things that soundtracked their lives – even pals who had little interest in MJ are discovering and rediscovering things they liked about him. On the bus in and out of work this week, so many times I have heard people, mostly teenagers, listening to or singing Michael Jackson, and chattering about him in glowing terms. A whole new generation is finding and downloading him. The world truly loved this man; it forgot that for a while, but it will never forget again.

4. He came back

After his trial four years ago, Michael Jackson was an empty man: you could see it as he left the courthouse. He spent years as nomad, travelling from country to country, before announcing his comeback gigs in the O2. The night before he died he told Randy Phillips of AEG Live, promoter of the London shows: ‘Now I know I can do this.’ Look at the rehearsal video that was released and you’ll know he could have too. Michael looks better, stronger than he has in ages. He’s not playing full out, but you can tell it’s there, waiting behind the tentative motions of a rehearsal: his timing and precision are perfect. Michael died doing what he was born to do: ready for the stage again. He came back. There was nothing more to prove.

5. What more could he give?

This final point returns to the first. Both life and art are about a constant striving for perfection. We are always following an ideal, whether it’s the image we have in our head of the perfect book we want to write, or our dreamed-for life: three kids, a beautiful wife, and enough money to provide – whatever the dream may be. We all have to be content with pieces of perfection, things we find as we take pleasure in the journey, always pursuing the ideal but never realising it, at least in quite the way we imagine. Perhaps we get to kiss the girl we love so much, but not marry her; perhaps the song we wanted to write in our head turns out to be very different on paper; perhaps, as Michael Jackson found, being the most successful person on the planet is twinned with inevitable tragedy – the loss of a childhood, innocence never to be recaptured. There is no pure perfection on this earth; if there were, the world would end, for it is the tension between triumph and tragedy that actually keeps the world moving. No great creation without madness. No great learning without suffering. No progress without loss. We must love people as they come (and leave us) and in the end not ask for more. Far easier written than done of course. Michael Jackson goes down in history as the most successful entertainer of all time (according to the Guinness Book of World Records), selling 750 million records; Thriller – the biggest selling album of all time; he was inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame; he won 18 Grammy Awards, 22 American Music Awards, 12 World Music Awards and endless other accolades including Artist of the Decade, Artist of the Generation, Artist of the Century and Artist of the Millennium; he broke musical and social boundaries of colour and genre, gaining unprecedented global influence and appeal; he supported more charities than any other entertainer and set up the Heal the World Foundation. He became, quite simply, the king not only of popular music but of global popular culture. Not bad for a half century. And MJ was breaking records right up until – and even after – the end. He set a record for the fastest London ticket sales with his O2 concerts. After his death so many people were searching for him that Google interpreted it as an automated attack – at one point 70 percent of all searches worldwide were for his name. Michael Jackson lives, and will continue to live, until the earth crumbles to dust. For all that makes him a legend, however, perhaps the most wonderful thing is that – according to those around him – in his final days, this man was so happy. He’d given so much to earn it. It’s nice to remember him smiling.


Thanks for this callmerose.
 
http://everydayirishman.wordpress.co...about-michael/

Blues Away: Five Reasons Not to Be Sad about Michael
Posted in The Sunday Columns by everydayirishman on the July 5, 2009


When I heard about Michael Jackson’s death, I was sitting in a bar with a friend. I was already on the way to being drunk; not half an hour before I had been gushing about how much I was looking forward to the O2 concert. Sky News was on in the bar, so I saw the story tick across the bottom of the screen like an unbelievable nightmare…

THERE ARE UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT MICHAEL JACKSON HAS DIED

I didn’t need the reports to be confirmed. I knew it was true.

Shock. Like a bullet. I began getting texts immediately. I ran outside to call a friend, who was in Spain but would still always be the first person I called. I was bent over against a wall outside the pub. I later asked my friend what I said on that phone call; she told me I just announced that he was dead, and then cried.

I straightened up, went inside. Drank some more with my friend. Cried a little. Tried to think of other things.

It was when I left my friend that grief really broke loose. I walked to my dad’s office, which was nearby and where I often stayed, collapsed onto the floor and just forgot I had any responsibilities to anything.

Apparently by this time my family were in a panic trying to reach me. My dad eventually found me in the office; I got sick all over the floor and later in my dad’s car.

My dad took me home. I slept for a few fitful hours then got up and went into work, still drunk and shocked, and now feeling like I was coming down with the flu. I was printing out the wrong things in work, finding it hard to speak coherently on the phone. I left as soon as I’d done what I needed to do that day.

I spent most of the weekend in bed, wallowing in the TV news coverage. I couldn’t listen to his music or see his face without sadness swelling inside me.

It was Monday before things began to change. My best friend, returned from Spain, was going to come up the following Friday to watch some MJ DVDs with me, and I found myself looking through my collection to see which particular live version of Billie Jean I’d show her, whether we’d look at parts of Moonwalker or Ghosts…

Some of the videos I hadn’t seen in some time, though I still knew them inside out. And I discovered I couldn’t help but smile as I watched the man dance, saw that perfection he touched time and again in his performances. There were so many reasons to be sad, but mostly I just felt grateful that I had become a fan and known MJ’s music and life that way for the last 13 years.

This is a time of profound change for Michael Jackson fans. We’ll no longer have our idol’s physical presence to follow. But we can take heart in many things. Here’s my two (or rather five) cents.

1. He made the best use of himself

None of us, except perhaps the most troubled, choose when we leave this earth. And so all we can do is make the best use of ourselves in the time we’re granted: whether it’s through the art we need to create, the kindness we show to others, the legacy of a family, or simply finding a line of work that we were born to live in. Michael Jackson made the best use of his life: his endless humanitarian and charitable work; his devotion to his children, as corroborated by anyone who knew him. Most of all, he was constantly creating music and using his stunning talent right up until the end.

2. There’s still music to look forward to

Ironically, the world will see more ‘new’ Michael Jackson material now than we have in the last decade of his life. Every unreleased recording, every demo tape, every concert on film will be dusted off, packaged and appear on record store shelves. There’s already talk of producing a DVD from the footage of the London concert rehearsals, which includes a professionally filmed full dress rehearsal two days before he died. Former Sony Music CEO Tommy Mottola describes the archives of unreleased MJ songs as ‘endless’, and we know over the last few years Michael had been recording with contemporary artists for a new album. If the few previously unreleased tracks on 2004’s Ultimate Collection are any indication of what’s in the Sony vault, Michael left much greatness still unheard. While the endless commercialism will no doubt prove nauseating, there is some comfort in the thought that we’ll discover even more of the deep, rich musical legacy left to us.

3. The world remembers how much it loved him

For more than ten years, in the mainstream media, Michael’s music has been a footnote to the scandals; now, the scandals have become the footnote and the music and the man are the story. Of course there is still the tabloid/TV circus and the detractors are still there, but the tenderness and compassion with which MJ has been treated is astonishing: praise and appreciation has come pouring in from all sections of the media and the public at large. All of a sudden he was ‘Michael’ and not ‘*****’. The surge in sales of his music has been covered everywhere. In the days following his passing, MJ albums accounted for 15 of Amazon UK’s top 20 albums and all of the top 10; HMV in the UK saw an 80 times increase in sales of his albums overnight – the largest for any artist ever; in the UK chart MJ had five albums in the top 20, including the number one spot for Number Ones; on the Big Top 40 chart show in the UK Man in the Mirror reached number one 20 years after its original release and he had 12 other songs in the top 40; 43 of the top 200 songs in the UK were MJ tunes; at one point 50 of the 100 most-downloaded songs on iTunes were MJ songs; his songs topped iTunes downloads in every country except Japan; he sold a record 2.6 million downloads in one week, making him the first artist ever to sell over a million in seven days; in the US alone, nearly half a million of his albums were sold in the week after his death; in the States, the top nine albums on Billboard’s catalogue pop chart were his; In Ireland currently, Michael has seven albums in the top 20, including the one, two and three spots, and 16 of his songs are in the top 40 singles; in the global chart, he has four albums in the top 20 and 11 songs in the top 40 singles. On a personal level, friends have been sharing stories of their favourite songs, albums and videos, the things that soundtracked their lives – even pals who had little interest in MJ are discovering and rediscovering things they liked about him. On the bus in and out of work this week, so many times I have heard people, mostly teenagers, listening to or singing Michael Jackson, and chattering about him in glowing terms. A whole new generation is finding and downloading him. The world truly loved this man; it forgot that for a while, but it will never forget again.

4. He came back

After his trial four years ago, Michael Jackson was an empty man: you could see it as he left the courthouse. He spent years as nomad, travelling from country to country, before announcing his comeback gigs in the O2. The night before he died he told Randy Phillips of AEG Live, promoter of the London shows: ‘Now I know I can do this.’ Look at the rehearsal video that was released and you’ll know he could have too. Michael looks better, stronger than he has in ages. He’s not playing full out, but you can tell it’s there, waiting behind the tentative motions of a rehearsal: his timing and precision are perfect. Michael died doing what he was born to do: ready for the stage again. He came back. There was nothing more to prove.

5. What more could he give?

This final point returns to the first. Both life and art are about a constant striving for perfection. We are always following an ideal, whether it’s the image we have in our head of the perfect book we want to write, or our dreamed-for life: three kids, a beautiful wife, and enough money to provide – whatever the dream may be. We all have to be content with pieces of perfection, things we find as we take pleasure in the journey, always pursuing the ideal but never realising it, at least in quite the way we imagine. Perhaps we get to kiss the girl we love so much, but not marry her; perhaps the song we wanted to write in our head turns out to be very different on paper; perhaps, as Michael Jackson found, being the most successful person on the planet is twinned with inevitable tragedy – the loss of a childhood, innocence never to be recaptured. There is no pure perfection on this earth; if there were, the world would end, for it is the tension between triumph and tragedy that actually keeps the world moving. No great creation without madness. No great learning without suffering. No progress without loss. We must love people as they come (and leave us) and in the end not ask for more. Far easier written than done of course. Michael Jackson goes down in history as the most successful entertainer of all time (according to the Guinness Book of World Records), selling 750 million records; Thriller – the biggest selling album of all time; he was inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame; he won 18 Grammy Awards, 22 American Music Awards, 12 World Music Awards and endless other accolades including Artist of the Decade, Artist of the Generation, Artist of the Century and Artist of the Millennium; he broke musical and social boundaries of colour and genre, gaining unprecedented global influence and appeal; he supported more charities than any other entertainer and set up the Heal the World Foundation. He became, quite simply, the king not only of popular music but of global popular culture. Not bad for a half century. And MJ was breaking records right up until – and even after – the end. He set a record for the fastest London ticket sales with his O2 concerts. After his death so many people were searching for him that Google interpreted it as an automated attack – at one point 70 percent of all searches worldwide were for his name. Michael Jackson lives, and will continue to live, until the earth crumbles to dust. For all that makes him a legend, however, perhaps the most wonderful thing is that – according to those around him – in his final days, this man was so happy. He’d given so much to earn it. It’s nice to remember him smiling.


Thanks for this callmerose.
 
http://everydayirishman.wordpress.co...about-michael/

Blues Away: Five Reasons Not to Be Sad about Michael
Posted in The Sunday Columns by everydayirishman on the July 5, 2009


When I heard about Michael Jackson’s death, I was sitting in a bar with a friend. I was already on the way to being drunk; not half an hour before I had been gushing about how much I was looking forward to the O2 concert. Sky News was on in the bar, so I saw the story tick across the bottom of the screen like an unbelievable nightmare…

THERE ARE UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT MICHAEL JACKSON HAS DIED

I didn’t need the reports to be confirmed. I knew it was true.

Shock. Like a bullet. I began getting texts immediately. I ran outside to call a friend, who was in Spain but would still always be the first person I called. I was bent over against a wall outside the pub. I later asked my friend what I said on that phone call; she told me I just announced that he was dead, and then cried.

I straightened up, went inside. Drank some more with my friend. Cried a little. Tried to think of other things.

It was when I left my friend that grief really broke loose. I walked to my dad’s office, which was nearby and where I often stayed, collapsed onto the floor and just forgot I had any responsibilities to anything.

Apparently by this time my family were in a panic trying to reach me. My dad eventually found me in the office; I got sick all over the floor and later in my dad’s car.

My dad took me home. I slept for a few fitful hours then got up and went into work, still drunk and shocked, and now feeling like I was coming down with the flu. I was printing out the wrong things in work, finding it hard to speak coherently on the phone. I left as soon as I’d done what I needed to do that day.

I spent most of the weekend in bed, wallowing in the TV news coverage. I couldn’t listen to his music or see his face without sadness swelling inside me.

It was Monday before things began to change. My best friend, returned from Spain, was going to come up the following Friday to watch some MJ DVDs with me, and I found myself looking through my collection to see which particular live version of Billie Jean I’d show her, whether we’d look at parts of Moonwalker or Ghosts…

Some of the videos I hadn’t seen in some time, though I still knew them inside out. And I discovered I couldn’t help but smile as I watched the man dance, saw that perfection he touched time and again in his performances. There were so many reasons to be sad, but mostly I just felt grateful that I had become a fan and known MJ’s music and life that way for the last 13 years.

This is a time of profound change for Michael Jackson fans. We’ll no longer have our idol’s physical presence to follow. But we can take heart in many things. Here’s my two (or rather five) cents.

1. He made the best use of himself

None of us, except perhaps the most troubled, choose when we leave this earth. And so all we can do is make the best use of ourselves in the time we’re granted: whether it’s through the art we need to create, the kindness we show to others, the legacy of a family, or simply finding a line of work that we were born to live in. Michael Jackson made the best use of his life: his endless humanitarian and charitable work; his devotion to his children, as corroborated by anyone who knew him. Most of all, he was constantly creating music and using his stunning talent right up until the end.

2. There’s still music to look forward to

Ironically, the world will see more ‘new’ Michael Jackson material now than we have in the last decade of his life. Every unreleased recording, every demo tape, every concert on film will be dusted off, packaged and appear on record store shelves. There’s already talk of producing a DVD from the footage of the London concert rehearsals, which includes a professionally filmed full dress rehearsal two days before he died. Former Sony Music CEO Tommy Mottola describes the archives of unreleased MJ songs as ‘endless’, and we know over the last few years Michael had been recording with contemporary artists for a new album. If the few previously unreleased tracks on 2004’s Ultimate Collection are any indication of what’s in the Sony vault, Michael left much greatness still unheard. While the endless commercialism will no doubt prove nauseating, there is some comfort in the thought that we’ll discover even more of the deep, rich musical legacy left to us.

3. The world remembers how much it loved him

For more than ten years, in the mainstream media, Michael’s music has been a footnote to the scandals; now, the scandals have become the footnote and the music and the man are the story. Of course there is still the tabloid/TV circus and the detractors are still there, but the tenderness and compassion with which MJ has been treated is astonishing: praise and appreciation has come pouring in from all sections of the media and the public at large. All of a sudden he was ‘Michael’ and not ‘*****’. The surge in sales of his music has been covered everywhere. In the days following his passing, MJ albums accounted for 15 of Amazon UK’s top 20 albums and all of the top 10; HMV in the UK saw an 80 times increase in sales of his albums overnight – the largest for any artist ever; in the UK chart MJ had five albums in the top 20, including the number one spot for Number Ones; on the Big Top 40 chart show in the UK Man in the Mirror reached number one 20 years after its original release and he had 12 other songs in the top 40; 43 of the top 200 songs in the UK were MJ tunes; at one point 50 of the 100 most-downloaded songs on iTunes were MJ songs; his songs topped iTunes downloads in every country except Japan; he sold a record 2.6 million downloads in one week, making him the first artist ever to sell over a million in seven days; in the US alone, nearly half a million of his albums were sold in the week after his death; in the States, the top nine albums on Billboard’s catalogue pop chart were his; In Ireland currently, Michael has seven albums in the top 20, including the one, two and three spots, and 16 of his songs are in the top 40 singles; in the global chart, he has four albums in the top 20 and 11 songs in the top 40 singles. On a personal level, friends have been sharing stories of their favourite songs, albums and videos, the things that soundtracked their lives – even pals who had little interest in MJ are discovering and rediscovering things they liked about him. On the bus in and out of work this week, so many times I have heard people, mostly teenagers, listening to or singing Michael Jackson, and chattering about him in glowing terms. A whole new generation is finding and downloading him. The world truly loved this man; it forgot that for a while, but it will never forget again.

4. He came back

After his trial four years ago, Michael Jackson was an empty man: you could see it as he left the courthouse. He spent years as nomad, travelling from country to country, before announcing his comeback gigs in the O2. The night before he died he told Randy Phillips of AEG Live, promoter of the London shows: ‘Now I know I can do this.’ Look at the rehearsal video that was released and you’ll know he could have too. Michael looks better, stronger than he has in ages. He’s not playing full out, but you can tell it’s there, waiting behind the tentative motions of a rehearsal: his timing and precision are perfect. Michael died doing what he was born to do: ready for the stage again. He came back. There was nothing more to prove.

5. What more could he give?

This final point returns to the first. Both life and art are about a constant striving for perfection. We are always following an ideal, whether it’s the image we have in our head of the perfect book we want to write, or our dreamed-for life: three kids, a beautiful wife, and enough money to provide – whatever the dream may be. We all have to be content with pieces of perfection, things we find as we take pleasure in the journey, always pursuing the ideal but never realising it, at least in quite the way we imagine. Perhaps we get to kiss the girl we love so much, but not marry her; perhaps the song we wanted to write in our head turns out to be very different on paper; perhaps, as Michael Jackson found, being the most successful person on the planet is twinned with inevitable tragedy – the loss of a childhood, innocence never to be recaptured. There is no pure perfection on this earth; if there were, the world would end, for it is the tension between triumph and tragedy that actually keeps the world moving. No great creation without madness. No great learning without suffering. No progress without loss. We must love people as they come (and leave us) and in the end not ask for more. Far easier written than done of course. Michael Jackson goes down in history as the most successful entertainer of all time (according to the Guinness Book of World Records), selling 750 million records; Thriller – the biggest selling album of all time; he was inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame; he won 18 Grammy Awards, 22 American Music Awards, 12 World Music Awards and endless other accolades including Artist of the Decade, Artist of the Generation, Artist of the Century and Artist of the Millennium; he broke musical and social boundaries of colour and genre, gaining unprecedented global influence and appeal; he supported more charities than any other entertainer and set up the Heal the World Foundation. He became, quite simply, the king not only of popular music but of global popular culture. Not bad for a half century. And MJ was breaking records right up until – and even after – the end. He set a record for the fastest London ticket sales with his O2 concerts. After his death so many people were searching for him that Google interpreted it as an automated attack – at one point 70 percent of all searches worldwide were for his name. Michael Jackson lives, and will continue to live, until the earth crumbles to dust. For all that makes him a legend, however, perhaps the most wonderful thing is that – according to those around him – in his final days, this man was so happy. He’d given so much to earn it. It’s nice to remember him smiling.


Thanks for this callmerose.
 
Michael Jackson an icon of style again

By BOOTH MOORE

The Los Angeles Times




For his song “Smooth Criminal,” Michael Jackson sports a 1940s-inspired pinstripe suit by Michael Bush.
In Michael Jackson’s “This Is It,” moviegoers do not see the elaborate costumes created for the tour that never was, bedazzled with 4 million Swarovski crystals and lighted up using LED technology. Those are on display at the O2 Arena in London, where the engagement had been scheduled to begin in July, and will go on to New York and Tokyo.




But what they do see, in addition to tough and tender moments that humanize the pop singer, and one hell of a music and dance show, is an amazing array of designer outfits Jackson wore to rehearsals. A black leather, pagoda-sleeve jacket and a crystal-trimmed tuxedo are among pieces designed by the likes of Christophe Decarnin for Balmain, Kris Van Assche for Dior Homme and Tom Ford that speak to Jackson’s renewed relevance in fashion circles and the changing relationship between music and fashion.

Jackson became a style icon in the 1980s because of his individual, often theatrical styles for the stage — the single sequined glove, the white socks, the fedora. But his recent comeback effort was engineered with the help of fashion designers, with Decarnin recognizing the retro appeal of tennis-ball-shaped shoulders and over-the-top embroidery.
We had been used to seeing Jackson show up for courtroom appearances in scrubs, surgical masks, armbands and other kooky attire, some of it created by his longtime Los Angeles costume designers Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins, who have a Michael mannequin in their Los Feliz studio.
But his look changed with fashion stylist Rushka Bergman, and it is her work that is mostly front and center in the film, as Jackson’s everyday clothes end up as his de facto costumes. A pint-sized powerhouse from Serbia who says things like “forever daaahling,” Bergman met Jackson when she styled him in Dior Homme for the October 2007 issue of Italian L’Uomo Vogue.

Some might say it was the beginning of his comeback when she put him in Hedi Slimane’s slim-line suits, fashionable at the time with Mick Jagger, Beck, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand and nearly every other credible male rocker.
The morning of the film’s premiere, Bergman pulled out snapshots of Jackson trying on clothes at his house, and called him her “supermodel” because he fit into anything, including women’s clothes. She emphasized his sex appeal (“He’s sooooooo sexxxy!”), which comes into focus in the film for the first time in a long time, despite Jackson’s surgerized face.
“When he wears Balmain on screen, you say, Wow!’” she said.
In the film, Jackson looks fabulous much of the time, save for a few unfortunate print shirts and patched sweat pants that could well be the influence of Los Angeles fashion impresario Christian Audigier, who had approached Jackson about collaborating on a line.

But more often, you notice sharp tailoring and light-reflecting color. In a Tom Ford tuxedo worn during dancer auditions; skinny orange Dior Homme jeans, a red leather Balmain motorcycle jacket with crystal-studded shoulders worn at the “Thriller” rehearsal; a Balmain suede military jacket worn with Alessandro Dell’Acqua gold sequin pants, Jackson looks powerful and contemporary.

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainm...y/1558987.html
 
Michael Jackson an icon of style again

By BOOTH MOORE

The Los Angeles Times




For his song “Smooth Criminal,” Michael Jackson sports a 1940s-inspired pinstripe suit by Michael Bush.
In Michael Jackson’s “This Is It,” moviegoers do not see the elaborate costumes created for the tour that never was, bedazzled with 4 million Swarovski crystals and lighted up using LED technology. Those are on display at the O2 Arena in London, where the engagement had been scheduled to begin in July, and will go on to New York and Tokyo.




But what they do see, in addition to tough and tender moments that humanize the pop singer, and one hell of a music and dance show, is an amazing array of designer outfits Jackson wore to rehearsals. A black leather, pagoda-sleeve jacket and a crystal-trimmed tuxedo are among pieces designed by the likes of Christophe Decarnin for Balmain, Kris Van Assche for Dior Homme and Tom Ford that speak to Jackson’s renewed relevance in fashion circles and the changing relationship between music and fashion.

Jackson became a style icon in the 1980s because of his individual, often theatrical styles for the stage — the single sequined glove, the white socks, the fedora. But his recent comeback effort was engineered with the help of fashion designers, with Decarnin recognizing the retro appeal of tennis-ball-shaped shoulders and over-the-top embroidery.
We had been used to seeing Jackson show up for courtroom appearances in scrubs, surgical masks, armbands and other kooky attire, some of it created by his longtime Los Angeles costume designers Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins, who have a Michael mannequin in their Los Feliz studio.
But his look changed with fashion stylist Rushka Bergman, and it is her work that is mostly front and center in the film, as Jackson’s everyday clothes end up as his de facto costumes. A pint-sized powerhouse from Serbia who says things like “forever daaahling,” Bergman met Jackson when she styled him in Dior Homme for the October 2007 issue of Italian L’Uomo Vogue.

Some might say it was the beginning of his comeback when she put him in Hedi Slimane’s slim-line suits, fashionable at the time with Mick Jagger, Beck, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand and nearly every other credible male rocker.
The morning of the film’s premiere, Bergman pulled out snapshots of Jackson trying on clothes at his house, and called him her “supermodel” because he fit into anything, including women’s clothes. She emphasized his sex appeal (“He’s sooooooo sexxxy!”), which comes into focus in the film for the first time in a long time, despite Jackson’s surgerized face.
“When he wears Balmain on screen, you say, Wow!’” she said.
In the film, Jackson looks fabulous much of the time, save for a few unfortunate print shirts and patched sweat pants that could well be the influence of Los Angeles fashion impresario Christian Audigier, who had approached Jackson about collaborating on a line.

But more often, you notice sharp tailoring and light-reflecting color. In a Tom Ford tuxedo worn during dancer auditions; skinny orange Dior Homme jeans, a red leather Balmain motorcycle jacket with crystal-studded shoulders worn at the “Thriller” rehearsal; a Balmain suede military jacket worn with Alessandro Dell’Acqua gold sequin pants, Jackson looks powerful and contemporary.

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainm...y/1558987.html
 
Michael Jackson an icon of style again

By BOOTH MOORE

The Los Angeles Times




For his song “Smooth Criminal,” Michael Jackson sports a 1940s-inspired pinstripe suit by Michael Bush.
In Michael Jackson’s “This Is It,” moviegoers do not see the elaborate costumes created for the tour that never was, bedazzled with 4 million Swarovski crystals and lighted up using LED technology. Those are on display at the O2 Arena in London, where the engagement had been scheduled to begin in July, and will go on to New York and Tokyo.




But what they do see, in addition to tough and tender moments that humanize the pop singer, and one hell of a music and dance show, is an amazing array of designer outfits Jackson wore to rehearsals. A black leather, pagoda-sleeve jacket and a crystal-trimmed tuxedo are among pieces designed by the likes of Christophe Decarnin for Balmain, Kris Van Assche for Dior Homme and Tom Ford that speak to Jackson’s renewed relevance in fashion circles and the changing relationship between music and fashion.

Jackson became a style icon in the 1980s because of his individual, often theatrical styles for the stage — the single sequined glove, the white socks, the fedora. But his recent comeback effort was engineered with the help of fashion designers, with Decarnin recognizing the retro appeal of tennis-ball-shaped shoulders and over-the-top embroidery.
We had been used to seeing Jackson show up for courtroom appearances in scrubs, surgical masks, armbands and other kooky attire, some of it created by his longtime Los Angeles costume designers Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins, who have a Michael mannequin in their Los Feliz studio.
But his look changed with fashion stylist Rushka Bergman, and it is her work that is mostly front and center in the film, as Jackson’s everyday clothes end up as his de facto costumes. A pint-sized powerhouse from Serbia who says things like “forever daaahling,” Bergman met Jackson when she styled him in Dior Homme for the October 2007 issue of Italian L’Uomo Vogue.

Some might say it was the beginning of his comeback when she put him in Hedi Slimane’s slim-line suits, fashionable at the time with Mick Jagger, Beck, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand and nearly every other credible male rocker.
The morning of the film’s premiere, Bergman pulled out snapshots of Jackson trying on clothes at his house, and called him her “supermodel” because he fit into anything, including women’s clothes. She emphasized his sex appeal (“He’s sooooooo sexxxy!”), which comes into focus in the film for the first time in a long time, despite Jackson’s surgerized face.
“When he wears Balmain on screen, you say, Wow!’” she said.
In the film, Jackson looks fabulous much of the time, save for a few unfortunate print shirts and patched sweat pants that could well be the influence of Los Angeles fashion impresario Christian Audigier, who had approached Jackson about collaborating on a line.

But more often, you notice sharp tailoring and light-reflecting color. In a Tom Ford tuxedo worn during dancer auditions; skinny orange Dior Homme jeans, a red leather Balmain motorcycle jacket with crystal-studded shoulders worn at the “Thriller” rehearsal; a Balmain suede military jacket worn with Alessandro Dell’Acqua gold sequin pants, Jackson looks powerful and contemporary.

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainm...y/1558987.html
 
An oldie but a goodie! Originally posted back in 2007

STEVEN IVORY: Thriller


(December 4, 2007)



*The other day I wandered into the electronics section of a department store and found several people gazing at a screen full of Michael Jackson's iconic "Motown 25" "Billie Jean" performance in HD and whatever else TVs are supposed to do today.

An eager young salesman sauntered over and made his pitch. "To see that any clearer," he quipped with the authoritative smarm of a merchant hawking snake oil, "you'd have to have BEEN there." He followed that with a wicked snicker, as if being there was an impossibility.

I chose not to ruin my man's pitch by telling him that indeed I was there, but I was.

On the evening of March 25, 1983, I drove to the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in an economy car and an ill-fitting tux, both rented, for the taping of NBC's Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever. What the tape of Jackson's performance (lip-synched, which is ironic considering his prowess at singing live while dancing) fails to accurately capture is just what was going on the audience: Sheer bedlam.

What seems routine now, was spellbinding then; we'd never seen this Michael Jackson. Even his brothers, after they'd performed a reunion medley with him, were seeing it for the first time from the wings. Michael, goes the story, put his act together the day before.

If you were a Jackson fan, you were glad he was back. If you were a Jackson fan and Black, you were awash in a wave of cultural pride that transcended mere pop music to fasten itself onto American history outright.
To be sure, the five minutes Jackson was onstage alone somehow elevated the whole race--certainly the Pasadena Civic, where, after Jackson left the stage, the show had to be halted so that entire production and building could regain its composure; so that men in the audience could straighten their ties and women could adjust their wigs.

It was as if Jackson had dropped a bomb on the place, walked away and left us there to negotiate the soulful fallout. "Ladies and gentlemen," pleaded a stern, amplified male voice, "please take your seats, we have more show to be taped. PLEASE…." Folk dabbed water from their eyes, hugged one another and high-fived strangers. Performance? We'd just witnessed a coronation. Soon, order prevailed. We politely watched the rest of the show, our collective consciousness stuck on Jackson.

Michael has said that, initially, after leaving the stage, he was disappointed with his performance. His plan, when he went up on his toes, was to simply stay there, suspended infinitely. Just as well that he didn't; the house could not have handled it. As it was, they went nuts when he showed up at the after party, held at an indoor shopping mall across the street that Motown shut down and converted into a massive disco.

As his security team wedged him through the crush of excited well-wishers, Tops, Tempts, Supremes and others pushed their way toward Jackson as if they themselves weren't legends, as if they hadn't made music that influenced and inspired this man. Chaos ensued. It was all Jackson's bodyguards could do to turn him around and push him back out to his limo out front.

Those of us lucky enough to attend the taping had to wait weeks for the show to air. Would Jackson's performance be all that we'd raved to anyone who'd listen? Yes, even to the Jacksons. Rebbie Jackson told me when the show aired, they, like other viewers across America, taped it off the TV. The next day, friends, entertainers and assorted dignitaries, acknowledging that the universe had indeed tilted, phoned, sent flowers and wired kudos. "People came by Hayvenhurst (the Jackson home in Encino) all day long," she said. "It was as if someone got married or brought a baby home from the hospital. We played that tape over and over all day until it broke."

And the day after "Motown 25" aired, all retail hell broke loose. At the height of its phenomenal sales history, the album was nationally selling half a million copies a week. With more than one million copies sold in Los Angeles alone, "Thriller" demanded its own zip code. Years later, Quincy Jones confided to me that at some point it all began to frighten him.

"First I prayed it would sell, and then I wanted it to STOP selling," he said. "It was getting too big. I was afraid it would eclipse my entire career and be the only thing people remembered." Because of this, Jones said he suffered what amounted to a minor nervous breakdown, leaving Jackson and engineer Bruce Swedien to begin "Bad" while he recovered in the tropics. No disrespect Q, but I'd like a shot at that kind of breakdown.

It's been twenty-five years since "Thriller" was released, on December 1, 1982. With 104 million copies sold worldwide and counting, it is, of course, the biggest selling recording of all time. I wish Jackson had made better, more musically adventurous recordings post "Thriller," but it doesn't matter now.

Today, the music industry today exists in two historical periods--before "Thriller" and after it. With "Thriller," Michael Jackson changed the game. Considering how indispensable hip hop and likewise themed programming is to MTV and its subsidiaries today, it's hard to imagine that before "Thriller," the music channel refused to play the videos of black artists, including "Billie Jean." It relented only after Jackson's label, CBS Records (now Sony) threatened to pull the clips of its white acts if "Billie Jean" wasn't given a shot. That Jackson would go on to redefine the music video medium altogether was sweet redress.

People talk about Michael Jackson making a comeback. Come back and do what--levitate? Comebacks are for mortals. You don't comeback after being Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson just is. He is his own global culture, his own musical manifestation. Come back and do what? He's done it all. The Michael Jackson of "Thriller" is forever etched in time, for all time. Now, he's just Michael Jackson.

Besides, Michael never left. He simply morphed into his own genre, as evidenced by the images a kid flicked through on another space age looking TV in the electronic section. On one channel there was Usher; on another, Chris Brown; on yet another, Justin Timberlake and look, there's the omnipresent Britney. None of them are half as thrilling as MJ, though they all look good in HD.
 
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