When one mentions the name Michael Jackson, so many things come to mind ...
... His unparalleled success as an entertainer. He was known to be one of the hardest–working folks in show business,
... His general influence on pop culture — not only through his music but also through his dance style and fashion,
... The public's fascination with his — sometimes commendable, other times distasteful, always volatile — personal life,
... Even his untimely death.
He has been an endless source of fascination for decades. And Michael Jackson continues to fascinate. Even today, nearly five years after his death, there are many things about Jackson that compete for the public's attention — including milestone anniversaries of important dates in his life.
One of which is today.
It was 30 years ago today that Jackson suffered second–degree scalp burns when pyrotechnics went off accidentally during the filming of a Pepsi TV commercial at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
Most people would agree that was a bad way to start a new year, but, within 3½ months, Jackson was on top of the world again.
He had recovered sufficiently from his injuries to appear at the White House where President Reagan presented him with an award for supporting charities that assisted people who had abused alcohol and/or drugs.
His Victory Tour that year was a huge success. Jackson donated his $8 million revenue from the tour to charity — and Pepsi had agreed to a $1 million out–of–court settlement of his lawsuit.
Jackson donated the entire settlement to the Brotman Medical Center in Culver City, Calif. Brotman now has a burn center that bears Jackson's name.
Most of the time, it is my policy to write in my blogs about anniversaries that end in a five or a zero.
Nevertheless, I always write about the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. Every year.
I'm not sure why that is so — except for the obvious reason, that Elvis truly is one of the undisputed superstars of rock 'n' roll. Even now, more than three decades after his death.
The Washington Post reports that Presley's ex, Priscilla, and their daughter, Lisa Marie, unexpectedly joined fans at the Graceland mansion for a candlelight vigil on the eve of the anniversary.
Elvis' heyday was really before my time, but his presence was constant when I was growing up, overshadowing everything else even if Elvis wasn't pushing a new record at the time. Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones — along with others — took over the weekly top spot in record sales, but Elvis was always there, always the standard against which others were judged.
No one — except perhaps those closest to him who knew of his dependence on drugs — could have expected him to die at the age of 42.
When he died on this day in 1977, the outpouring of grief I witnessed was unlike anything I had ever seen and was really matched by only a few celebrities since — John Lennon, Princess Diana, Michael Jackson.
(It could truthfully be said, though, that John Lennon, Princess Diana and Michael Jackson died due to the actions of others — whereas Elvis brought about his own death. It almost certainly wasn't intentional, but it is an important distinction between Elvis and those other three.)
In many ways, the grieving never stopped. Maybe it was a sense of unfulfilled potential — even though Elvis had a couple of decades to make his mark whereas people like Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin had only a handful of years.
There are probably people out there who make their livings impersonating Morrison, Hendrix and Joplin — but there are many, many more who impersonate Elvis and make pretty good livings at it, too.
I have often wondered, in fact, if many of those "Elvis sightings" — you know, reports of seeing Elvis in convenience stores and walking along roads — were not hallucinations but rather sightings of Elvis impersonators.
The real thing, of course, is always with us in recordings and movies — and you can see the King in some of his better movies today on Turner Classic Movies.
I was being facetious. But now, with the premiere of "Michael Jackson's This Is It," I almost feel like I was being prescient.
An old friend of mine, George Lang, assistant entertainment editor for The Oklahoman, reviewed the film today. He acknowledges that "it was assembled in less than four months and carries all the warning signs of both a cynical cash grab and a maudlin lionization of a dead superstar."
But he sees through much of it, even if it was hastily assembled.
"It is easy to forget that Jackson, when he was truly engaged in what mattered, was a notorious perfectionist during the recordings of 'Off the Wall' and 'Thriller.' 'This Is It' proves that while Jackson was plagued by issues too voluminous to chronicle here, he badly wanted this comeback. If Jackson had lived, he might have gotten it."
When I was a child, I recall that Rowan and Martin had a routine on their "Laugh–In" show in which the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award was bestowed upon someone or something for some questionable accomplishment.
The name of the "award" apparently was inspired by a movie from the mid–1960s called "The Fickle Finger of Fate."
I say this as a way of making an observation about Michael Jackson.
I hope this will be the last time I feel the need to write about Michael Jackson. I may not have the same kind of personal connection to him that some people apparently have, but I did like him. I liked the Jackson Five when I was a child. Although I never bought any of the albums he recorded as an adult, I always admired his talent.
And it seems to me that, even though I am sorry he died so young, perhaps the fickle finger of fate did him a favor. In memory, he will always be a young man, doing the moon walk on stage, performing astonishing moves to "Thriller" and "Beat It." The "old" Michael Jackson will never exist in the public mind, just as the Kennedys and Martin Luther King and Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana will always be young.
It is the tradeoff one makes when one dies young, even if he/she is not famous. To die young is to be forever frozen in memory.
Sometimes I look at obituaries and see an obituary for a person who was elderly — but the picture that runs with the obituary was taken during the Korean War nearly 60 years ago. Such a person may be remembered at different stages of life by different people. But no one will have a memory of an arthritic Michael Jackson, no longer able to do his famous moon walk. No one will remember a Michael Jackson with gray hair or wrinkles or weak eyesight.
That Michael Jackson will only exist in speculation.
Yesterday's memorial for Michael Jackson was "more tasteful, moving and apt than the week and a half's media circus that led up to it," writes James Poniewozik for TIME.
That probably goes without saying, although I found it tiring by the time the 2½–hour broadcast concluded. As the program wound down, I had to wonder, who is being eulogized? Is it Gandhi? Mother Teresa? John Paul II?
No, the "King of Pop."
It was hard — indeed, it is still hard — to separate Jackson from his legal woes and "questionable choices," as Berry Gordy put it, no matter how many gold and platinum records he had.
Or how many stars sang and danced at Los Angeles' Staples Center.
But, ultimately, it was, as Poniewozik put it, "a goodbye to a son, brother and father, as we were reminded when Jackson's family took the stage at the end of the event. His daughter, Paris — previously shielded, like all his kids, from the media — had the tremulous last words: 'I just wanted to say I love him so much.' "
There will be more Michael Jackson news in the future — when a final resting place is determined, when the toxicology reports assess the cause of his death, when the inevitable issues surrounding his estate come up. There is no need to prop him up like the corpse in "Weekend at Bernie's," rigged to wave a gloved hand at the tug of a string.
For now, let's leave his family — and his fans — alone to come to terms with their grief. And let him take his place among the other cultural icons who died too young.
And it would be nice if the media would resume coverage of the many matters that still affect those who are living. There is no need to recite them here. We all know what they are.
Suffice to say there are many lives hanging in the balance today.
And, to borrow a line from one of Jackson's songs, it don't matter if they're black or white.
What matters is that they are human beings, facing a crisis.
I was reading a report on the arrangements for Michael Jackson's memorial service on Tuesday, written by Alan Duke for CNN.
Here are the first couple of paragraphs:
Some lucky Michael Jackson fans got the e–mails they were hoping for Sunday, saying they've won two free tickets to Tuesday's memorial service.
"OMG OMG OMG OMG i got tickets to the michael jackson memorial service!!!" Deka Motanya wrote Sunday afternoon in a Twitter message.
The 8,750 fans chosen were summoned to Dodger Stadium Monday to pick up their tickets and have a wristband placed on their arms to prevent them from reselling them.
Doesn't it seem to you that this is all getting a little out of hand?
I mean, I'm sorry the man died, but Twittering about winning tickets to his memorial service, like this is the first show in his "This Is Really It" tour, is kinda disturbing. Don't you agree?
In fact, I'm sure some savvy marketers have been thinking about an opportunity they squandered, probably (and perhaps without realizing it) in the name of good taste — a whistlestop funeral procession from California to Gary, Ind. They could have had memorial services in as many towns as they liked — only they would charge for the tickets.
And they could probably get their asking price — and raise some money for Jackson's estate in the bargain. Minus their commission, of course.
... and the world will be tuning in Tuesday for Michael Jackson's memorial service.
Todd Leopold of CNN speculates that the service "could be one of the most–viewed events of all time."
I can't argue with that. We've had wall–to–wall coverage ever since Jackson died more than a week ago — and we seem sure to have a lot more coverage until the investigations into the Diprivan allegations are finished.
It certainly makes sense that the memorial service would attract a sizable audience. Even those who are at work can tune in through the internet. And the same will be true all over the world. There will be people watching in the wee small hours of the morning.
In his analysis, Leopold seems to have considered every angle and every kind of event that has drawn large viewing audiences — the JFK assassination, the Beatles' first appearance on American TV, Apollo 11, the "Who Shot J.R.?" episode of "Dallas," the finale of "M*A*S*H," Princess Di's funeral, Super Bowls. It certainly seems plausible to believe Tuesday's memorial will exceed them all as a shared experience.
I've heard Jackson's death compared to Elvis Presley's. In terms of its impact on a generation, I'm sure that is true. I have no doubt that Presley's memorial would have drawn a television audience to rival Jackson's, but you have to keep in mind that technology was much more primitive in 1977.
And the world's population was much smaller 32 years ago. What's more, as improbable as it may seem to today's youth, there were some people who, by choice or circumstance or perhaps both, did not have a TV. Of those who did own TVs, most were not on cable, and those who were did not have CNN or any other news channels because they didn't exist.
The Big Three — ABC, CBS and NBC — provided plenty of coverage at the time, though. I remember watching the hearse leave Graceland with Presley's body — and the streets lined with people as far as the eye could see. And the networks may have covered his memorial service, too, but I honestly don't remember. He died around the time that school was resuming, and I must have been at school that day because I have no memory of his memorial.
But the raw numbers for Presley — and even Princess Di 20 years later — may be dwarfed by Jackson's.
It's become increasingly difficult to estimate how many people watch the same event on TV at the same time. The most efficient thing to calculate is perhaps the number of TVs that are tuned to a given network at a given time, but, as Leopold observes, "[N]obody knows how many people are watching in groups or in public places." Several people may watch an event or program on the same TV. That is how many Americans followed the news of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963, and people who had a TV in their office gathered around it when the terrorist attacks occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.
In the history of these shared events, Jackson's memorial may be the biggest of them all. We've been getting some indicators of what to expect.
I recall that, in the weeks after Elvis Presley's death, many of his records sold well, but I don't recall anything to rival Jackson. A few years later, when John Lennon was murdered, there was a surge in the sales of Beatles records, but, again, it wasn't really comparable. In the week since his death, I've heard that Jackson has nine of the albums in Billboard's Top 10.
Jackson's service will be held at the Staples Center, where he was preparing for the comeback concerts he didn't live to give. To gain admission, one must have one of the 17,500 free tickets that will be distributed via lottery.
Los Angeles' acting mayor is already urging citizens who do not have a ticket to stay at home and watch on TV, and the police have warned the public that people without tickets will be turned away or arrested.
But I'd still be willing to bet there will be a large crowd outside the Staples Center on Tuesday.
I have to wonder how Michael Jackson would feel about this.
Granted, Jackson's behavior was weird, but it has seemed to me, for a long time, that a lot of the blame for that belongs to his father, Joe Jackson. Michael Jackson said publicly, starting in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 1993, that his father abused him and his brothers when they were growing up. His father confirmed the allegations in 2003.
So, here we are, less than a week after Michael Jackson's death, and a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has granted temporary guardianship of his three children to his mother, Katherine Jackson.
Michael Jackson's parents live together. They've been married for nearly 60 years. If Michael Jackson's children will be living with their grandmother, it follows that they will also be living with their grandfather.
Joe Jackson is 80 years old now. Maybe he won't be inclined to abuse his grandchildren, particularly if he isn't trying to mold them into a lucrative performing act.
But who knows what may be going through Joe Jackson's mind? He addressed the subject of his son's children while answering questions about plans for a funeral/memorial service (there are no such plans as of yet), and he insisted that "We love those kids, too. We'll give them the education they're supposed to have."
But, truthfully, he seemed more interested in talking about a recording company venture of which he is a part.
There was no sign of external trauma or indication of foul play, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office so toxicology, neuropathology and pulmonary tests have been requested. As a result, it seems likely to be several weeks before a cause of death is determined.That, along with the release of the recording of the 911 call, is pretty much the extent of today's developments.
But don't worry that you might miss something. More than 24 hours after his death — and with apparently no other news to report — all the news websites are full of Michael coverage.
In some ways and at some sites, I expected that. I mean, take the Gary, Ind., newspaper, the Post–Tribune, for example. Michael Jackson is probably the most significant person to come out of Gary. I would have been surprised if he wasn't the focus of attention.And, considering that Jackson died in Los Angeles and his autopsy was conducted there, I would have been surprised if he wasn't the top story in the Los Angeles Times.But the apparent absence of much real news didn't keep USA Today from making Jackson its above–the–fold story.Even the Washington Post has not been immune. I would have thought that the Post, being in the nation's capital, would have a few other things on which to shine its spotlight — the economy, the revolution in Iran, health care reform, even Mark Sanford.Well, in life, Jackson sure sold a lot of papers.
And, in his death in the digital age, he's driving a lot of internet traffic.
Speaking of which, CNN is saying that there was a time yesterday when the online traffic seeking news of Jackson's condition nearly brought down the internet.
Hang on tight. With his funeral/memorial service and the revelation of the cause of death yet to come, it's shaping up to be a bumpy ride.
Across the country this afternoon, news departments were preparing tributes to Farrah Fawcett, who lost her three–year battle with cancer earlier in the day.
There was still considerable uncertainty about Jackson as I prepared to leave for the monthly Communications Commission meeting at my church a few hours ago. The Los Angeles Times was reporting that Jackson had died, but it was not basing its report on anything that had been said by someone connected to UCLA Medical Center, where Jackson was taken. CNN, apparently, was still waiting for that confirmation and would say only this for certain — Jackson had suffered cardiac arrest and was in a coma.
But now, a few minutes after my return from the meeting, it seems to be official. CNN, along with all the other media outlets, is no longer hedging.
Michael Jackson is dead.
I must confess that I'm not sure how to respond to this news. As I am sure it is with millions of others my age and younger, it often seems to me there has never been a time when Jackson was not a part of the entertainment scene.
And not just part of it. At times, Michael Jackson seemed to be the entertainment scene.
As Brooks Barnes writes in the New York Times, "As with Elvis Presley or the Beatles, it is impossible to calculate the full effect he had on the world of music. At the height of his career, he was indisputably the biggest star in the world; he has sold more than 750 million albums."
In my case, the truth is that I was never a Michael Jackson fan. For a time, when I was a child, I considered myself a fan of the Jackson Five. I used to listen to a collection of 45 rpm records of the group's top singles. But when Jackson embarked on a solo career, my interest began to go in a different direction.
And, when everyone else was buying "Off the Wall,""Thriller" and "Bad," I was buying albums by other performers — Dire Straits, Tom Petty, Pink Floyd, ZZ Top. But I knew Jackson's music. It was everywhere. You couldn't miss it. When you drove your car, it was on the radio. When you switched on your TV, you stood a good chance of seeing Jackson doing his moon walk. When you visited a friend's home, "Thriller" was likely to be the record that was already on the turntable. When you went into a store, you would probably hear "Billie Jean" on the P.A. system.
That, it seems to me, is how you tell if someone has left a large impression on a nation and the world. And everything Michael Jackson did, he did in a big way, whether it was selling albums or constructing Neverland or going on a concert tour.
In the days to come, I'm sure there will be those who will write of how Jackson's legal troubles late in his life ushered in his decline, strangling his creativity. Well, they said the same thing about Lenny Bruce. Different factors but the gist was the same.
The entertainers of my generation are disappearing in rapid–fire sequence lately. In a few short days, we've lost Ed McMahon, Fawcett and Jackson. When I was in the newspaper business, the accepted truism was that these things came in threes. If that really is how it works, I guess others in the entertainment field can relax a little now. They dodged that third bullet. Well, for now.
But how are the rest of us supposed to feel after losing Johnny's sidekick, the most popular of "Charlie's Angels" and the guy who sang "Beat It," all in the space of three days?
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
