Michael Jackson is "evil"

It's not just that though, it's also that the black community tends to bristle (rightly so) at being told by white people who gets to be considered black.

I think the broader point with the hip hop community though is that it is really really rare for the black community to outright reject a previously successful one of their own for transgressions that make their way into the spotlight of white, mainstream media. Really the only instance I can think of is Cosby, and that was really recent and sort of unprecedented. Maybe I'm forgetting other examples, but I can think of lots of high profile examples where the "circle the wagons" mentality has prevailed. The black community tends to give a loooot of leeway and room for forgiveness, for obvious historical reasons that I hope I don't have to go into.

Is this the thread where white people opine about the thoughts of the black community's opinions on body dysmorphia. Just wanna pop in and say hi

"the black community"

I wasn’t speaking for anyone in particular. But if i were to guess why anyone at all would be hesitant to condemn jackson for the plastic surgery stuff, i’d say it had to do with feeling bad for him

yes WGW yes it is

had never seen this non-video video for ""Liberian Girl;" it's a sort of late 80's rosetta stone

Three dozen actors, musicians and celebrities can be seen in the short film, including Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Paula Abdul, Whoopi Goldberg, Bad producer Quincy Jones, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John (making their first on-screen appearance together since 1978's Grease), Steven Spielberg, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Suzanne Somers, Lou Ferrigno, Don King, illusionist David Copperfield, Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Glover and Dan Aykroyd. During the video, a mysterious person wearing bandages can be spotted; in the short film's end credits, he is credited simply as "?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3V-7DEAgdc

John Travolta, Jackie Collins, Lou Diamond Phillips, Billy Dee, Rosanna Arquette...

birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, back again

...Pepsi didn't start the fire...

eg from Skase to Pell

hey I got this one in under the wire

and in other "kept going to court very late in wheelchairs and oxygen tanks in order to somehow prove they couldn't be child molesters" news, Dragoncon founder Ed Kramer lasted two months out of his 5-year house arrest before getting caught photographing a child in a doctor's office

the first part of this is on channel4 next wednesday.

I was just reading this:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/mar/01/leaving-neverland-is-it-still-ok-to-listen-to-michael-jackson

I have never really associated Jackson with his music. I was born in 1989, and grew up in a pop landscape where he was decreasingly visible. His songs remained totemic, but so much so that it rarely occurred to me that they had been made by humans, the same way that I never wondered who designed the McDonald’s logo, or what’s really in a can of Coke.

Lol this is totally off to me surely most kids wonder what is in a can of Coke (apart from mountains of sugar).

Whaaaaat? No. Most kids are definitely not thinking about the ingredients of Coke. In your teens, you might be like "why does mtn dew have something called yellow #5 in it?" if you are an observant and reflective person.

Yeah, a very musically aware millennial friend of mine, after Jackson's death, posted saying "Oh wow, I've been listening to MJ's work, and I know you all said that he invented Pop, but I didn't realise that he you meant that he actually invented Pop"

ah ok I remember a period where I was thinking about the formula of coke. Guess I somehow heard that it wasn't something you could look up + it tasted different to Pepsi. Snapes saying she didn't wonder maybe me think it was a thing to perhaps wonder about it. xp

OK, maybe something like that would pique my interest if I had heard it, but I don't think I'd ever thought about it as a kid myself.

In middle school the rumor was that yellow #5 made your dick shrink. I’d like to say I was savvy enough them to not believe that, but I wasn’t.

lol

i love it when writers tell me when they were born

Only when they’re 89ers. Can’t relate to writers born in different years.

"but I didn't realise that he you meant that he actually invented Pop"

yeah, another disgrace of a kind...

i love it when writers tell me when they were born

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Friday, March 1, 2019 9:00 AM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Only Real 90s Kids Will Remember This Trick for Shrinking Your Dong"

twitter gonna be interesting on monday

Yeah, a very musically aware millennial friend of mine, after Jackson's death, posted saying "Oh wow, I've been listening to MJ's work, and I know you all said that he invented Pop, but I didn't realise that he you meant that he actually invented Pop"

Her social circle is a lot of pop-friendly older music journalists (many ex-ILXoRs, naturally) who had, in the wake of his death, pointed out that a lot of the template of modern pop had been laid down by Michael Jackson (or "Michael Jackson" if you're feeling less auteurist), would be the context there. I don't think that's a particularly controversial statement?

I wonder if the Jackson clan had Spike Lee make those recent documentaries because they knew what was coming?

Her social circle is a lot of pop-friendly older music journalists (many ex-ILXoRs, naturally) who had, in the wake of his death, pointed out that a lot of the template of modern pop had been laid down by Michael Jackson (or "Michael Jackson" if you're feeling less auteurist), would be the context there. I don't think that's a particularly controversial statement?

CNN: Corey Feldman defends Michael Jackson.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/05/entertainment/corey-feldman-michael-jackson/index.html

in a lifetime of brilliant career moves, this might take the cake

China rages continue....Fans in Chongqing city rally for #MichaelJackson , KEEP FIGHTING AND WE SHALL WIN #MJInnocent pic.twitter.com/zx3B1MGm87

— Keen Zhang (@mkgenie) March 2, 2019

small show of MJ support in Chongqing "lies runs sprints but the truth runs marathons".

I believe James and Wade. I also believe that Oprah is a terrible, terrible interviewer. "So, James, why are you so much more fucked up than Wade? Is it because you're not famous?" Wade jumping in and suggesting that evaluating their relative rates of recovery was maybe not such a good idea was a huge relief.

Watched this but didn't see the Oprah thing.

We only see it through the eyes of these two guys and their families, which is maybe a necessary corrective considering the fierceness of the MJ machine, but I found it utterly convincing. Gruesome stuff.

There are plenty of issues with the azo dye tartrazine (yellow #5). Shrinking dicks isn't one of them.

For some unknown reason I stumbled upon a video interview with MJ maid Adrian McManus. "Vaseline everywhere" would be a good addition to crime scene depictions: "Muddy boot prints, evidence of struggle, broken lamps, vaseline everywhere, blood spatter on walls..."

Thing is, even if you take for granted that some Michael Jackson is now beyond the pale - and there's never going to be consensus on that - people haven't started to get their heads around what's inadmissible and what isn't. Even if you draw the line at Bad or Thriller, or even Off The Wall, is the Jackson 5 now beyond the pale?

I'm not sure we as a culture have even begun to process how to deal with the voice of a child who grew up to be a serial paedophile and predator. And that's before you consider the child was an abuse victim himself and that the Motown-era records still contain some of the most joyous vocal performances ever committed to tape.

For all the debate about separating the art from the man, we're never asked to do that when the artist in question is seen as generally righteous. No one asks you to separate the art from the man when it's Curtis Mayfield or Stevie Wonder or Kurt Cobain - if anything we're invited to conflate them.

people seem to be down on baby hitler though

you gotta step up, man

baby hitler do do do do do

and yeah I have no clue what this is going to do for MJ's legacy. it's certainly going to hurt to some degree, his music is gonna get pulled from some stations and studios are gonna think twice about licensing any of it right now. but there are definitely a few key differences between MJ and say, R. Kelly, Louie CK, Woody Allen, or Bill Cosby - obviously, MJ was a much bigger celebrity than any of those guys, and he's dead now so there will be no trial, no 'discovery' process or anything. more than that I think MJ is a lot easier to separate from his actions, because his songs were so much more ubiquitous and woven into the DNA of pop music today, and I think it's possible to listen to them without necessarily being reminded of it. Like - it's impossible to get into the work of R. Kelly, Louie CK, and Woody Allen without being reminded of what they did, and I can't imagine watching The Cosby Show without thinking of how he used that persona to take advantage of women. They were all doing it at the time. With MJ, it's like...when did this start? Was it around the time of Bad, when things really started going haywire? Like, I can't hear Jackson 5 stuff or "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" and think, this dude's evil. Late 80s and beyond, sure, but the classic stuff.... :/

Mad respect to you frogbs but I have a tough time relating to what you have written. I am no closer to solving the "can you love the art while repudiating the artist" question than anyone here.

But! I am pretty sure the answer is not to decide at which album the person became "Bad" (pun intended) and then only liking the albums before that point.

Would anyone suggest that type of divide about another criminal/villain/badguy? "Yeah Vader blew up that defenseless planet, sure, but his early folk-punk singles were seminal. So I just won't listen to his later work."

different people process art differently, there's never going to be a transferrable standard of how to keep checking a #cancelled person's work

or: just edit yr ID3 tags to say Rod Temperton & Quincy Jones & carry on

different people process art differently, there's never going to be a transferrable standard of how to keep checking a #cancelled person's work

this is a good point that bears repeating here and elsewhere

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/arts/music/michael-jackson-leaving-neverland-fans.html

“If you’ve been a fan for a long time, you’ve seen this over and over again,” said Casey Rain, 30, a musician and YouTuber living in Birmingham, England. He called “Leaving Neverland” a “sick attempt at hijacking the Me-Too moment.”

“There’s nothing about Michael that the fan community doesn’t know,” said Rain, whose blog post about “Leaving Neverland” became a go-to text even before the documentary aired. “I really don’t think that we lack objectivity on him.” (Rain and others who had not yet seen the film said their information came from a few Jackson fans who attended the Sundance premiere and took “very, very detailed notes.”)

michael jackson diehards are some of the worst people and have always been some of the worst people.

unfathomable that there's any michael jackson diehards my age, I think my only natural exposure to the music of michael jackson was people in middle school doing the billie jean dance for talent shows

granted someone must have exposed them to michael jackson, but like ???

oh I realize it's different for everybody and I think it's hard to "figure out" because there's sort of a gut reaction to it. For example I wouldn't willingly listen to R. Kelly anymore because the knowledge that he's singing about stuff he's literally doing to the underage girls in his dungeon overrides everything, I can't separate it out, and when they come up on the playlists I have I skip them immediately. But I can see still maybe liking "I Believe I Can Fly", the one song of his that isn't totally gross, because personally I don't really think of R. Kelly with that song, I think about Space Jam. At least, I don't have the same visceral reaction to it.

When it comes to Michael Jackson there was definitely a point where his music suddenly got a lot more aggressive and paranoid, where every other song was about the rumors about him and wanting to be left alone, and to me that stuff is pretty inexorable from his "Wacko Jacko" persona, for which these accusations played a major part. Anyway, I'm not trying to say that "This stuff is okay, this stuff isn't", just that this is the reaction I personally have to it.

"i believe i can fly" was always kind of gross to me, b/c
1) allegations about r. kelly were already out there (not least his marriage to a teenage aaliyah)
2) the self-empowerment clichés in that song always struck me as kind of ridiculous and gross (even if, yes i know, many people find them inspirational)
3) the contradiction between (1) and (2) was always a bit too much for me. here's a predatory asshole telling me to just believe in myself and i can be like him? fuck off.
4) the lyrics are dead terrible.

that said, the song is now stuck in my head, so... thanks?

"it's impossible to get into the work of R. Kelly, Louie CK, and Woody Allen without being reminded of what they did"

I dunno, I still enjoy Allen's earlier movies. Polanski too. Sure they became terrible people later (maybe Polanski even then) but it's hard for me to write those off. I'm still going to enjoy MJ through Thriller (which I do think predated his worst proclivities); shit he did after that wasn't nearly as good anyway so go ahead, erase Dangerous from musical history, it matters not to me.

unfathomable that there's any michael jackson diehards my age, I think my only natural exposure to the music of michael jackson was people in middle school doing the billie jean dance for talent shows

― moose; squirrel (silby), Tuesday, March 5, 2019 3:22 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

granted someone must have exposed them to michael jackson, but like ???

― moose; squirrel (silby), Tuesday, March 5, 2019 3:22 PM

what year?