to all your overblown hype and fan hysteria! RIP

leave it to a world pop-culture so dumbed-down as this to go on praising you like you were some GOD. and most of it by the same folk who wrote you off as a drug-addled has-been just a year ago!


folks, just throw a dart at this page and you'll find someone *more* worthy of mourning and praise:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-obits08,0,5839617.htmlstory

my vote: Arthur C. Clarke, Paul Newman, Harold Pinter, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Bo Diddley, Stan Winston, Sydney Pollack, George Carlin, Robert Rauschenberg, Bobby Fischer, etc etc etc

Dang, dude...I hear ya, and you could name millions of "little people" who led a more exemplary like than MJ, too.  But it's hard for me to believe someone as jaded as you is surprised by any of this.

Generally I believe that things are not as bad as they seem or as good.  I get tired of being beat over the head of people saying our country is evil.  We have done some pretty atrocious things but we have also done some awesome things.  That said... the MJ is us human beings at our lowest, the price of fame and the swath of destruction it causes.  

Anybody too young to remember Elvis' death, here we have the sick fucking 21st century version of it.  So anybody waiting with baited breath of the books sure to follow: mother of his children, children claiming to be abused by him, people who claim to know his medical secrets.

In honor of MJ's passing, McD's is coming out with the MJ burger, it is a 50 year old piece of meat between 9 year old buns.  I can just hear the first words the of "Bad" in the background of the commercial, "Your butt is mine....."   (And those are the 1st f'n words to the song)

evening CNN-athon was pissed away with 4 freakin consecutive hours of MJ coverage!  

amazing how quickly they forgot about the Iranian revolution!

i puked my soul out (on this board unfortunately)

You been smokin' crack, Jack!

If there was ever a dude goonier than Michael, it was that treasonous megalomaniac.

the dude was a certified GENIUS !

his anti-American rants are of no blemishing consequence whatsoever (some folk around the world even admired him for that)

his anti-Semitic rants on the other hand were pretty much reprehensible, but then what do you expect from a self-hating half-Jew with a strong Teutonic father (and a Jewish mother!)

if there is a price to pay for being a REAL genius (and hence becoming slightly unhinged) then ok he paid for it

Both Zita Rajcsanyi and Justine Org were under 18 when Fischer began boinking them.

Michael Jackson is a megastar because he INSPIRED people.  He was generally considered the best live concert performer of his professional era by all his contemporaries and no other American could pack a stadium in as many different countries as he did.  You think too small and feel to narrowly to pass judgment over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Those people on your list were interesting but ZERO of them would have had throngs of fans going into apoplexy at the opportunity to meet them -- in other words, THEY DON'T FUCKING MATTER to people where it counts -- in the gut and in the heart.  

Bo Diddley?  He had ONE fucking hit song in fifty years of "stardom"!  ONE!

Paul Newman would tell you that music connects an artist to his audience far more efficiently and permanently than any cinematic exercise.  He did a movie with Chevalier and for the 15 minutes Maurice was singing his old hits, folks forgot it was supposed to be a Newman-Woodward vehicle.

Harold Pinter?  Bwah-hah-hah!

I dare you to show me how the people on your list affected their fans to want to exert themselves to be the best they could be just to someday work for them!

That being said, I can't stand any Michael Jackson song after "Can You Feel It?" off The Jacksons' TRIUMPH (1980) album.  The 80's solo stuff just don't gets me the Funk.

That was 55 concerts in 5 months done for FREE!  Michael had received a letter from an 11 year-old girl accusing the Jacksons of gouging their fans because tickets for that tour had been bundled into 4-ticket blocks and she couldn't afford to buy 4-tickets.  Michael overrode his brothers and had the promoter revert to  conventional ticket purchasing methods and foreswore his share of the earnings for the tour.  

Who else then or now would forgo $5000000 as means of apologizing to an 11 year-old?

-- Modified on 6/27/2009 3:44:38 AM

Dude. I agree that the media (this time Fox too even though they pretend everyone else is 'the media') is covering MJ like flies on shit. But.. this is true of almost everything they do now and has been for a few years. Remember Sullenberger? Two CNN reporters said on the air they were tired of reporting the story but they were "doing their job." Their bosses give the public what it thinks it wants instead of using a good chunk of that time to do some other stories. It would be nice if they sent out alerts about missing persons once and a while.

As for MJ in particular - if you don't like him or his music, fair enough. Lisa Marie said it best: when he was great he was really great and when he was bad he was really really bad. (how you interpret that is up to you). I wasn't in his house with those kids and while his comments were at best inappropriate by our standards I still say the fact he settled out of court raises questions. Simply a case of "seeing money" or a family simply cutting their losses and saving their child embarrassment. As for your list of people to praise, most are celebrities. I thought that was the problem. Paul Newman (love the guy) was an actor. Bobby Fischer was a great chess player but also a wacko.

I end these long rants with lighter stuff: newsflash - Transformers: ROTF was Crrrrrrrrap. Oh wait.. that's not news. My bad

NOT TO WORRY Singleton, We'll feel the same way about you when you leave. Regardless who he was, he is dead, at least have some respect..same for Ed McMahon and Farrah..or the people in Iran fighting for the democracy..

I don't have any problem comparing the late Paul Newman favorably with almost anyone, as he led an exemplary life besides making outstanding movies.

Since 1982, all profits from his "Newman's Own" salad dressing went to charity, and he personally donated additional millions to various charitable groups in his later years.

Especially in these financially challenging times (a bit of an understatement there!), Paul Newman is a great role model.

Because shouldn't this be posted in another board? Maybe the Politics and Religion?

MJ was not a saint. He did LOTS of bad things and I've already aired my feelings about this (ala his dirty backstabbing dealings of how he practically swiped the Beatles catalog from the Beatles families)

There WERE many other wonderful - insightful people that really helped in the critical thinking process of our culture that are gone now. To name just two - Tim Russart and George Carlin. And I stand by honoring the life of the beautiful Farrah. She was a shinning soul that didn't hurt anyone, but suffered from the horrors of cancer.

These are the appropriate people to mourn for, as they were (without any conflict) people that inspired us, entertained us and enlightened us.

nycad

i gave up schoolyard fights decades ago

That's 55 shows in 5+ months for FREE!  And he announced the day before the first show that his entire share ($5 million) would go to charity because he'd received a letter from a little girl (Ladonna Jones) accusing the Jacksons of being greedy.  I'd have liked to have seen  Carlin or RUSSERT work for over half a year and not get paid for it -- let alone decline  $5,000,000.00 worth of pay in 1984 money!

Oh, and I used to watch Farrah's old reality show because Lisa Boyle was on it (as Farrah's personal photographer) and Farrah was a near-hapless airhead.  The real star of that show was Ryan O'Neal (the guy was a total drama queen).  I can see how Redmond grew up to be a third-rate criminal.

in this particular forum who do you think is going to win a sympathy contest .. "moonwalker" or a "blond bimbo"..... you get my point.

I agree with you that Michael Jackson was one of the most popular entertainers of his time. But, let's not confuse popular with important.  Charlie Parker, while not nearly as popular as M.J. changed jazz. Ditto Miles Davis. Or, how many people have read Melville's Moby Dick as opposed to the latest Nicholas Sparks' drivel Harold Pinter (and I'm not a huge fan) changed theater. Thomas Kincaid sells more paintings than Picasso, but who's the more important artist?

And let's not forget those throngs of fans you mentioned would forgive Mr. Jackson anything -- even child molestation. Adulation for any pop star (or anyone for that matter) can blind people to reality.

Like all of us, M.J. did some good (giving millions away) and some bad. And hey, I like some of M.J's stuff.

I did not realize the perv was a pornstar????
Come on,,,,,,

Swim

Not to mention the out of court settlements to make child abuse charges go away.  Another wonderful donation, huh?

This freak was not a great person.  Let's keep things in perspective here

As I have pointed out in the past this is a board for promoting a particular form of criminality.  So, don't forget what YOU are!  

Also, Jackson only had ONE out-of-court settlement, that was the 1993 case (which led to him licensing the Beatles catalog in 1995, he'd already owned it for 10 years without touching it).  The 2005 rap was a complete and total acquittal.

Also, that girl grew up and turned his house into America's most popular celebrity museum.  Nobody seems to mind now.

No kid ever went to see BETRAYAL and came out of there saying, "Mummy, I want to be a STAGE DRAMATIST!"  

However, thousands of kids saw BEAT IT, BILLIE JEAN, THRILLER, etc, and said, "Yo, Momz, I gots ta DANCE!"  Every singing dancer and dancing singer to debut since at least 1985 all ACROSS THE GLOBE will cite Michael Jackson as an INSPIRATION.

Pinter was so influencial, he took a waning art form and turned it into a DYING art form.  There's a reason why the hottest theatrical show in London for the last six months was THRILLER, LIVE!  (Had it not been for it's success, I doubt Jackson would have considered a 50-concert all-London engagement -- so he actually inspired even himself!).

The reality is that Whitish Black Dude was pronounced NOT GUILTY.  However, Leonardo and Michaelangelo were documented child rapists right to the end of their lives, but nobody is out there scraping off the paintings.

I think a lot of the negative comments about Michael Jackson are partly inspired by the over coverage of his death.  This tsunami of coverage was not just where one might expect – in entertainment focused outlets (and when you come down to it that is all Jackson was, an entertainer) – but also in what one would hope would be legitimate news outlets.  The over coverage reached a point, damn you would think it was Barack Obama that had died.  Thank god for the PBS Newshour; the one source of complete fair and balanced news on T.V.

As far as this board being the place, yeah maybe the transsexual board might have been better.  By the time Jackson died he had completed his transformation from a nice looking young black man into a scary white transvestite.  

He's your hero.  That being said, would you let your kids alone with him (and be honest)?   For chrissakes, he held his own kid over a balcony in Berlin.

And OJ was acquitted in the murder of Nicole Simpson, too, in California, which says something about the jury pool in that granola state.

The moonwalk has cured paralysis in some countries however, so I can understand why you're such a big fan.