More Thoughts On Michael Jackson

Still Mourning, Still Trying To Figure Him Out


I've been thinking about Michael Jackson a lot because I'm finding it hard to remember a time I wasn't aware somehow of his work. I imagine it would be harder for people younger than Gen-X to fathom a world where Michael Jackson wasn't around on the celebrity gossip rags or on the airwaves.

Michael Jackson made his debut at the Apollo in 1967, and rose to prominence in 1968. It's interesting to note that the rise of Michael Jackson the performer begins during the epoch of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King making his famous "I have a Dream" speech.

For 40years, there was Michael Jackson's persona in the public sphere. He's been around as long as say, Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman. That 40years is actually looking like a very long time in the public consciousness.

Consider these random facts: his arrival on the public consciousness predates the moment George Steinbrenner buys the New York Yankees by 5 years, and 7 years before the renovated stadium re-opened. He was there before the World Trade Center opened in New York City. He arrived in the year Australians chose to let the Indigenous people of Australia be counted as citizens. His arrival predates the finishing of the Sydney Opera House. The Beatles were still together, producing 'Let It Be' and 'Abbey Road'.

His arrival happened the year of the Tet offensive in the Vietnam War. By the time he died, the Americans were just about to pull out of Iraq's cities ahead of a draw down.

More importantly - I've been pondering this - the end of that 40 years marks the first black American President in Barack Obama. And I keep thinking that across those 40 years, I cannot deny that maybe Michael Jackson did so much to move the world's perception, to turn Reverend King's vision from a dream to an electable reality.

Let's face it, Michael Jackson was so weird, that next to him, Barack Obama looks like... a very normal man. A man so normal he'd pass as politically white. And here's the key about being thrust next to Michael Jackson: Michael Jackson and his very weirdness pushed the boundaries so far, so wide, so, out-there that we - all of us -look normal, even though we are all slightly weird in our on little ways. By the time a de-polemicised black candidate turned up, the world was ready for Obama.

I'm not saying Obama got elected because Michael Jackson directly enabled him through his weirdness in 2008. No. What I am saying is that over the many, many years in between, Michael Jackson and his entire weird persona crossed over so many borderlines that eventually he weirded us all out. not only did he weird me out, he weirded out everybody to the extent that by the the Obama came along, the weirdness he infected the world made Obama look... decidedly normal.

"What is normal anyway?" I can hear you ask, and I'd not be able to give you a workable answer. But the 'normal' in this instance would include notions of being closer to the middle of the spectrum in things such as fashion, social status positioning and even sexual orientation.

So this is what I thnk about all this: In the future, when historians look at the second half of the 20th century, they're going to have to come to terms with Michael Jackson as a cultural influence. We might think of him as 'Whacko Jacko' today, but in 100years time, people might actually come to understand him as the man who changed the cultural landscape of America for the better. There is no doubt in my mind today that we lost a giant.

Obituaries for Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett

Michael Jackson 1958-2009

Pop icon and the man who defined the MTV approach to music marketing, Michael Jackson has died.

More Reports | 6:29 p.m. “A lot will be said about Michael Jackson as we learn more about this story,” Brian Williams said on the “NBC Nightly News.”

“He was incredibly talented, a child star who was an adult with deep troubles and physical and mental health issues.”

The reports of Mr. Jackson’s death ricocheted around the world with remarkable speed. The news led Friday morning newscasts in Japan.

CBS and ABC are also reporting the news, standing on their own reporting now.

L.A. Times Reports Jackson Is Dead | 6:24 p.m. The newspaper cited “city and law enforcement sources.” The networks and CNN are also broadcasting the news, citing the Times story.

Reports: Jackson in a Coma | 6:15 p.m. Several news organizations including the Los Angeles Times reported that Mr. Jackson “is in a coma.” The newspaper attributed the news to one law enforcement source. CNN is also citing “multiple sources” as saying that Mr. Jackson is in a coma.

Updated | 6:11 p.m. LOS ANGELES – An unconscious Michael Jackson was rushed to UCLA Medical Center on Thursday afternoon by paramedics who performed C.P.R., according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

And so it went.

He's a lot more than the simple appellations and epithets, and his passing reminds us that nothing in the flesh is eternal. Yes, and he sure did alter his flesh quite a bit. If ever there was a signpost for scary plastic surgery, Michael Jackson was it. He constantly transformed himself like one of the monsters in his 'Thriller' film clip.

The aspect of Michael Jackson that I will always remember is the glavanising, boundary crossing power of his music, which I actually held in suspician for the better part of the 1980s. It was only in the 1990s with the release of 'History' that I went and bought something of his ouvre. Until then the only thing I had was the '45 of 'Beat It' for the Eddie Van Halen solo.

In hindsight it is clear to see the lasting impact of the Thriller album to totally transform the music industry. If the transition from LPs to CDs was killing the AOR thing, then the album full of hit-singles propelled by video clips on MTV essentially buried album-oriented rock. Over a quarter of a century later, the music industry would still like to see an album with lost of hit singles than a considered series of song with an over-arching concept.

So while he created a new landscape, he also demolished the old one. Maybe it was a good thing, maybe it wasn't. In the long run, his music will be seen more and more as a sign of the times than the curios that they were, adorned with his ever-changing face and skin tone.

Perhaps that is being harsh. On his best days, Michael Jackson's song contained within them the transformative power of music and carried with it the distinctly American ideology into parts of the world that were highly resistant. His music was heard in the old communist block as well as Communist China, Vietnam and all over India and Africa. He was embraced as a man who sang we are the world.

If there is one thing I can say about Michael Jackson today, is that it would be best to remember him for his best moments rather than all the sordid rumours, speculations and trials for child molestation and eccentric behaviour.

UPDATE: Here is my tribute to the man, with the help of Mr. Clay Potts.

Charlie's Most Loved Angel, Farah Fawcett 1947-2009

Farah Fawcett wasn't just a name, she was like a sexual position men fantasised about. She defined the blonde bombshell in the 1970s, and in turn was defined as leading angels in Charlies' Angels, and then faded into obscurity in the 1980s, only to reemerge with a nude spread at the age of 48.

She passed after a long fight with cancer.

Her death, at St. John’s Health Center, was caused by anal cancer, which she had been battling since 2006, said her spokesman, Paul Bloch.

To an extraordinary degree, Ms. Fawcett’s cancer battle was played out in public, generating enormous interest worldwide. Her face, often showing the ravages of cancer, became a tabloid fixture, and updates on her health became staples of television entertainment news.

In May, that battle was chronicled in a prime-time NBC documentary, “Farrah’s Story,” some of it shot with her own home video recorder. An estimated nine million people viewed it. Ms. Fawcett had initiated the project with a friend, the actress Alana Stewart, after she first learned of her cancer.

Ms. Fawcett’s doctors declared her cancer-free after they removed a tumor in 2007, but her cancer returned later that year. She had been receiving alternative treatment in Germany and was hospitalized in early April for a blood clot resulting from that treatment, according to her doctor, Lawrence Piro. He also said her cancer had spread to her liver.

A lot can be said about her career but I won't go into that. I think it best we remembered her for her incredibly toothy smile that she flashed and the fact that she defined sex appeal for a generation of men. That alone is an accomplishment of sorts that stands the test of time.

Terror-Flops

Tony 'Bliar' Blair takes It On The Chin


In case you're wondering, the anti-terror law modifications Tony Blair wanted to put in were defeated in the House of Commons. What's interesting is that not only did the Tories oppose them, his own people crossed the floor to side against it. So Blair might want to look into changing his party whip.

Mr Blair says his authority is intact, despite his first Commons defeat, over a key part of his anti-terror plans.

But Tory leader Michael Howard says Mr Blair should resign, while Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy warned Mr Blair could become a "lame duck" leader.

MPs, including 49 Labour rebels, voted down plans to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge.

The police and Home Office said they were disappointed that their demands failed to get parliamentary approval and officials will meet Mr Blair shortly for a briefing on counter terrorism.

Mr Blair has said he hopes MPs "do not rue the day" they rejected his call to allow police to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days without charging them.

MPs voted against by 322 votes to 291, but later backed a proposal to extend the detention time limit to 28 days from the current 14 days.

Mr Blair, who is planning to quit as prime minister before the next election, has said he will serve a full third term.

He told BBC News: "I don't think it is a matter of my authority - of course I would have preferred to have won rather than lost."

Meanwhile in Australia where anti-terrorism is a way of life, there's now a chance you can be stripped of your citizenship if they find you guilty of terrorism. Now that's going to be a total freak out.

Prime Minister John Howard has asked Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and Citizenship Minister John Cobb to investigate whether terrorists should be entitled to keep the protection of citizenship.

And in the wake of Tuesday's arrests of 17 suspected terrorists in Sydney and Melbourne, Treasurer Peter Costello urged Muslims who wanted to live in a strict Islamic state to leave Australia.

"There are Islamic states around the world that practice sharia law, and if that is your object, you may well be much more at home in such a country than trying to turn Australia into one of those countries, because it is not going to happen," said Mr Costello.

As police in Sydney located a burnt-out car believed to be linked to Tuesday's raids, Federal Parliament began debating tough new counter-terrorism laws which Mr Howard said were needed to try to pre-empt attacks.

He confirmed the citizenship plan was on the agenda but said it could be difficult to put in action.

"It remains under consideration," Mr Howard told Sky News. "It's not right at the top of our list, there are arguments for and against and I am listening to those arguments but we are not about to make a decision on that."

It's also going to be very interesting to see how nations will respond when we dump these so-called terrorist criminals after their lengthy sentences, destitute and penniless, right on their doorsteps just because they were born there.
The rednecks must be having a field day with this stuff. Seriously, you can't write this sort of maliciousness as it is petty, mean and really really head-in-the-sand about the rest of the world.

Now I know why I'm listening to a lot of King Crimson this week. I'm actually really, really pissed off. I'm seeing Red.

Mailbag Funnies

Link 1: So you wanna be a US Republican?

Link 2: Michael Jackson sings his defense.

Also, found this pic predicting a Stormy Thursday for Sydney:

It's apparently a boat washed ashore in the Narabeen Lakes area.
It kind of looks like the subject of an old oil painting. :)

I Have At Least One Ally

Sharing my outrage, my housemate PJ has taken to the Web with his own weblog, 'Remote Control Society' where he says he's just going to post up all the stupid things going on in our part of the world. Really stupid things.
If you look at the 'Friends' Sites' on the right hand column, you'll see the latest addition there. Maybe you'll see some outrageous stuff there. It'd only be outrageous because you have common sense.

Living In A Nightmare

Lately, I've had this feeling that I've been living in a nightmare.
Think about it:
G.W. Bush in in the White House for a scheduled 8 years; including that horrible little election-jobbing he pulled with hiss family in Florida. John Howard in power for 9 years and counting and it's enough to make one vomit everyday.
A 'War on Terror' that knows no bounds of civil decency back home. The anti-terror laws that are going to shut me up.
The rise of nut-bar religious types around the world who are violently uncompromising in their fairy-tale vision, blurring the lines between Church and state, participating in elections.
No World Series win for the Yankees since before September 11; also that ugly collapse job in the 2004 ALCS. Not to mention The Red Sox finally winning the World Series and now The White Sox seem headed that way, on the back of Jose Contreras!.
So, you know, the only conclusion to be drawn is that we must be living in a nightmare, right?

On that note I want to present a couple of links today.

Where Are You Now Paul Keating, A Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes...


I guess I was a Keating-Labor man. I was never a party member nor an apparatchik; more like somebody who took a lot of delight in having a wit in the Lodge. Paul Keating was a pretty amazing dude to have as Prime Minister. I think I wrote a couple of days ago that I really missed the 1990s. More specifically, I miss Australia having a vision, and this was a Prime Minister who was providing oodles of it. He was everything John Howard is not; and to some, I'm sure that's a bad thing but really, how much more down a blind alley can Australia go?
So I dug up this little article in the Bulletin of all places.

Only now are historians trying to assess the Keating legacy. The most enduring will be economic reforms. After the Hawke-Keating reforms, Australia experienced one of the most prolonged periods of economic growth in its history.

But for all that, Keating could never break through his arrogance. The government’s and the Reserve Bank’s mismanagement of monetary policy caused the 1991 recession, says Paul Kelly. “Hawke has apologised for the recession, but Keating has not,” he says. “They were both responsible and it is the stain on their economic record.”

Like many of his cabinet colleagues, John Button was horrified by the “recession we had to have” comment: it damaged the government more than it should have because, while a business elite may have understood what he was saying, the mass of the Australian people did not. “[It] confirmed my view that at that time he was totally out of touch and a political fuckwit.”

Head of the Sydney Institute think-tank, Gerard Henderson, argues it was not Keating’s policy agenda that cost him the election: the Coalition supported most of the reforms and 80% of voters supported his general direction. It’s more simple, argues Henderson, “He was a smart arse and Australians don’t like a smart arse.”

As treasurer, says Henderson, it didn’t matter that Keating was flamboyant. Howard by contrast, he says, has carefully crafted his image, listening courteously to anyone who speaks to him. Hawke, likewise, moderated his language, personality and drinking. “Keating had a fan club patting him on the back but not many people telling him he should do this or shouldn’t do that. The successful PMs have all been cautious types.”

In the end, history is likely to view his judgment as flawed. He had come from a tough part of the country, and claimed to know what working-class Australians wanted. But he was seduced by the international world. Working-class voters – traditional Labor voters who switched to Howard – were waiting for him with baseball bats, as former Queensland leader Wayne Goss put it.

So, yesterday afternoon, I noticed that the SMH was reporting that the Australian populace is happy to forgo their rights in order to get Howard's terror laws in writ. The same idiots who voted for Pauline Hanson and voted out Paul Keating are going to get the Police State they always wanted. Who cares about their rights, their freedom of speech? "Screw it, get the elitist bastard, get the illegal immigrants, get the muslims! Get them all! Lock'em up and throw away they key; let them buttfuck each other for the rest of eternity..."
Edifying.
I say, bring back the elitist bastard and take us back to the future we once glimpsed in the 1990s.

Dave Brin's 'Holodeck Hypothesis'



There's a link to the right to David Brin's blog. I find it amazing that David Brin, a professional writer of some clout would bother to write a blog, but there you go. He must have a kind of graphomania or logorrhoea. The most recent entries covered an interesting thought; that we are merely figments of Dubbya's holodeck fantasy:

"The real exit strategy for the US in Iraq has already begun. Not because the war is won. But because W has begun to get bored with his latest Fantasy Job."

And what that implies may be the scariest possibility of all.

Come on! A youth spent in unbelievable frat boy party-stupor mode, with plenty of geeks to write your term papers while you get to torment em unmercifully.

Then... jet pilot! Wearing a snappy uniform and silk scarf while screeching over the Gulf, taking free flying lessons as you bravely defend your land from... Fidel! And each evening sipping margaritas by the beach, while a million other sons go off to battle Charlie in Nam...

...till that got boring. So then there came a series of other fantasy jobs: political operative, cowboy, oil man... oh!... and then baseball team owner! (The fantasy can't be baseball player, since that's real work.)

...then governor of the great Lone Star State of Texas. Yee haw! (Especially the way it starts, by putting down that Ann Richards bitty, who said all those mean things about people who are born with a silver foot-in-the-mouth. Here's my silver foot, Annie. Yeah!)

All right, so each of these jobs palled after a while. So each time you move on to something else, it means that you leave a train wreck behind you? A trail of steaming failures for others to clean up? Isn't that what nerds are for?

Oh, this kind of thing inevitably taxes the Holodeck. A long series of extreme improbabilities simply has to be hard on the machinery. Especially when a crucial parameter/rule is to keep everything consistent with some kind of "reality". How do you fill a world with smartypants types to defeat, while keeping those nerds from seeing the overall pattern? In other words, how to explain a string of impossible luck?

Well, within the simulation, smarty-pants pundits can be diverted, pointing to all sorts of “real world” explanations. Such as cronyism (so?) and Daddy's Friends (and your point is?) and even "genius Carl Rove (take THAT all you Nobel Prize pansies!) as the agents for this amazing string of events. (And that dipwad David Brin can yatter all he wants to, about the "return of boring old aristocratism" and the ultimate crony-subornation-influence of a certain foreign R-oil House. Let him!)

Even crank conspiracy theories only help distract from the real explanation for this incredible run for a fellow who frequently cannot even pronounce the name of his latest fantasy job?

Then there is religion. Isn't being the favorite of God an even better explanation?

Or maybe something a whole lot like God, in the present context? (In that case, haven't you been honest with us all along? Since you are the one who speaks to the Computer?)

If we need a QED for this hypothesis, just look at our situation today. The Presidency is the ultimate fantasy job. Especially if there's no duty, no hard work, no responsibility for outcomes, and none of the worry or care that has prematurely aged so many other occupants of the office.

What did I tell you? I'm not the only one thinking, "this can't be right! What the fuck is going on?"

Rosa Parkes Passes away.



The woman who ignited the Civil Rights movement in te USA by refusing to stand up on the bus, passed away. I kind of missed this in the shuffle of 'things anti-terror'

Michael Jackson Moves To Bahrain


this caught my eye for a certain kind of cultural dissonance angle, so to speak
After a lengthy trial, it is now apparent that Michael Jackson is going to move to Bahrain. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that it is okay to kiddy-fiddle in Bahrain... Only kidding. Who knows what's going there? Just look at that photo, will you? "Me and my buddies in Pederasty!"

Ichiro Is Unhappy



Ichiro Suzuki says he was very dissatisfied with the Mariners' performance this year. Well, I'd be too if I were him.
I've had this photo on my desktop for a few days now, so it seems this is a good a time as any to post it up.

Dead Shark



This Great White Shark corpse was washed up in a Japanese canal according to Yahoo. The thing was 4.8m long. That's one big beastie.