The NY Post says the autopsy found Michael Jackson had nothing in his stomach but half-dissolved pills. His emaciated body was a network of needlemarks and scars weighing barely 112 pounds on a 5′ 10″ frame; and the whole skeletal assembly was surmounted by a head bald but for a scant covering of peach fuzz, a fact artfully disguised by wigs worn on all his public appearances. The Post writes:
“He was skin and bone, his hair had fallen out, and he had been eating nothing but pills when he died,” a source close to the singer’s entourage told the paper. “Injection marks all over his body and the disfigurement caused by years of plastic surgery show he’d been in terminal decline for some years.”
There were four fresh injections around his heart, presumably from attempts to pump adrenaline into it to jumpstart it, the paper said. Three of them had penetrated and damaged his heart wall, while a fourth struck his ribs, the paper reported. He also sustained several broken ribs while authorities administered CPR during his final moments Thursday.
If any man in Guantanamo Bay prison had been found in this condition there would be cries for a war crimes prosecution. But since Jackson succumbed to that most socially acceptable and lucrative of ends, death by celebrity, the real question is whether anyone — anyone at all, bar some fall guy — will be found guilty of anything. If the Post’s report is accurate, the conspiracy of silence that kept this information secret, that prevented Jackson from being confined in a hospital and allowed him to commit to fifty performances in London is staggering. This guy lived and died in the middle of a big city; he was among the most watched human beings on the planet and yet everything that was publicly known about him was either a lie or so shaded a truth as to be virtually indistinguishable. How any investor could be induced to bet hundreds of millions of dollars on a series of Farewell Concerts featuring a man in the condition of a Holocaust concentration camp victim is something that could never have happened without some major league disinformation going down.
These information lockdown artists were geniuses. Where were these masters of deception over the decades when US codes, missile designs and nuclear installation data were falling down behind copiers, suddenly appearing in China or being accidentally published in open source? If these guys were put in charge of counterintel, Barack Obama could abolish the entire US Armed Forces and replace them with the Girl Scouts and no one would be the wiser.
One might be forgiven for imagining that the elite media system actually works quite well: that it can keep a secret when it wants to; that secrets only leak when it is convenient. When massive liquidity problems impend, when tax bills disguised as climate change fixes are introduced in the dead of the night, when totally incompetent people are foisted on an unsuspecting public, it can hide the information quite effectively. If these horrible autopsy results are real then I hope it starts a fire that doesn’t stop until everyone associated with this incident goes down. Here’s one slogan from the sixties that hasn’t gone out of date. Burn, baby, burn. It isn’t that I like Michael Jackson particularly, but no human being should be beset by bloodsuckers this bad.
Ian Halperin wrote in the Daily Mail that Michael Jackson said, a week before he died that “‘I’m better off dead. I’m done.” Maybe he was right.
It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes
You’re paralyzedThe foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doomAnd though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller
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64 Comments
1. Doug:But for the circle of handlers who surrounded Jackson during his final years, their golden goose could not be allowed to run dry. Bankruptcy was not an option.
These, after all, were not the handlers who had seen him through the aftermath of the Arvizo trial and who had been protecting his fragile emotional health to the best of their ability. They were gone, and a new set of advisers was in place.
The clearout had apparently been engineered by his children’s nanny, Grace Rwaramba, who was gaining considerable influence over Jackson and his affairs and has been described as the ‘queen bee’ by those around Jackson.
Rwaramba had ties to the black militant organisation, the Nation of Islam, and its controversial leader, Louis Farrakhan, whom she enlisted for help in running Jackson’s affairs.
Before long, the Nation was supplying Jackson’s security detail and Farrakhan’s son-in-law, Leonard Muhammad, was appointed as Jackson’s business manager, though his role has lessened significantly in recent years.
In late 2008, a shadowy figure who called himself Dr Tohme Tohme suddenly emerged as Jackson’s ‘official spokesman’.
Tohme has been alternately described as a Saudi Arabian billionaire and an orthopaedic surgeon, but he is actually a Lebanese businessman who does not have a medical licence. At one point, Tohme claimed he was an ambassador at large for Senegal, but the Senegalese embassy said they had never heard of him.
Tohme’s own ties to the Nation of Islam came to light in March 2009, when New York auctioneer Darren Julien was conducting an auction of Michael Jackson memorabilia.
Jun 29, 2009 - 1:57 am 2. Chiral:Julien filed an affidavit in Los Angeles Superior Court that month in which he described a meeting he had with Tohme’s business partner, James R. Weller. According to Julien’s account, ‘Weller said if we refused to postpone [the auction], we would be in danger from ‘Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam; those people are very protective of Michael’.
He told us that Dr Tohme and Michael Jackson wanted to give the message to us that ‘our lives are at stake and there will be bloodshed’.’
A month after these alleged threats, Tohme accompanied Jackson to a meeting at a Las Vegas hotel with Randy Phillips, chief executive of the AEG Group, to finalise plans for Jackson’s return to the concert stage.
Jackson’s handlers had twice before said no to Phillips. This time, with Tohme acting as his confidant, Jackson left the room agreeing to perform ten concerts at the O2.
Before long, however, ten concerts had turned into 50 and the potential revenues had skyrocketed. ‘The vultures who were pulling his strings somehow managed to put this concert extravaganza together behind his back, then presented it to him as a fait accompli,’ said one aide.
‘The money was just unbelievable and all his financial people were telling him he was facing bankruptcy. But Michael still resisted. He didn’t think he could pull it off.’
Eventually, they wore him down, the aide explained, but not with the money argument.
‘They told him that this would be the greatest comeback the world had ever known. That’s what convinced him. He thought if he could emerge triumphantly from the success of these concerts, he could be the King again.’
>”the conspiracy of silence that kept this information secret, that prevented Jackson from being confined in a hospital and allowed him to commit to fifty performances in London is staggering”
Self-destruction isn’t a crime in itself, and what authority can rightfully intervene? His enablers were also subordinates. He could have fired them all and hired a dozen nuns to look after his health.
As for the media, both tabloids and respectable sources questioned his health persistently. What solution was missed? Forced psychiatric care? The only chance for that was blown when he hung his kid from a balcony and nothing came of it.
If he had dropped his kid from that balcony… he would have all of the same fans as today. They would love him even more for it, because Michael was a child, and children are innocent, and WE are to blame for not loving Michael enough. Isn’t that right?
Jun 29, 2009 - 2:21 am 3. wretchard:Some news source, I forget which, has reported that immediately after Jackson kicked the bucket, an unnamed relative made a call to a former household employee who is now working in London. The unnamed relative said words to this effect: ‘I know Michael keeps ready cash hidden around the house, do you happen to know where he might have it stashed?’ The corpse was still warm and already the buzzards were pecking away. I’m willing to bet that if no one was looking there might have been some characters who would have gone through his pockets right then and there. Who could lived in such a snake pit as that was? I know I’m mixing my metaphors, but I think you get the point.
Back in the day I used to have a fairly well developed “creep sense”. The creep meter did not register the same value even in a group of people who were, objectively speaking, in the same line of nefarious business. For strange as it may be to say, some people retained a twisted sense of honor, which manifested itself occasionally, even when they were on the wrong side of things. But some people gave off such an aura of slime, such a reptilian electricity that you could literally feel it throbbing through the air. Even in hell, I suppose, the demons do not all have the same degree of malignancy. Yet reading through the accounts of Michael Jackson’s life one cannot help but get the sense that although they may not have plied their trade with knives or guns, that some of the people around him were, as they say, pieces of work. And you just know that they’ll get away with it. Somehow the guys at the top of the creep meter always do. Don’t ask me how, but they do.
Jun 29, 2009 - 2:25 am 4. vanderleun:I detect a distinct snap in the usual Belmont tone of equanimity.
Jun 29, 2009 - 2:31 am 5. wretchard:I detect a distinct snap in the usual Belmont tone of equanimity
I guess one could argue that anyone who likes to surround himself with dogs is bound to get up with fleas. In that sense Jackson indubitably had it coming. But Jackson’s gone and whatever beef he has with his Creator is between them now. I am not outraged as much as awestruck at the sheer tawdry nastiness of it. And of course you know that the whole wretched contraption will shamble forward. The ship of marketed fantasy will sail on under other colors. There’ll be a new King of Sop or whatever else they come up with next. And we’ll be part of it and love it. That’s what scares me.
Amen.
Jun 29, 2009 - 2:38 am 6. ledger:Good Lord, Michael Jackson was one heavy drug addict. Injection marks all over his body… Gad, how nasty.
But, stepping back, he has a lot of company – from Jimmy Hendrix to Tommy Bolin. Here is a list.
http://organicrock.org/page9.php
Jun 29, 2009 - 2:57 am 7. Doug:– I Was Not Michael Jackson –
Jun 29, 2009 - 3:04 am 8. Doug:More Pleasant Ways to Go
Jun 29, 2009 - 3:06 am 9. Doug:Musicians killed by Drugs and Alcohol:
Jun 29, 2009 - 3:18 am 10. bob:“Ray Charles – singer / pianist who won twelve Grammy awards and is remembered for hits like “Hit the Road Jack”, “What’d I Say” and “Georgia on My Mind”, succumbed to complications from liver disease on June 10th, 2004, at the age of 73”
—
Ledger:
I’d call that an unnecessarily unpleasant stretch, given that Ray outlived his demographically determined allotment, and usually epitomized a robust exuberance quite unlike MJ.
The names in Ledger’s ledger seem heavily weighted on the male side of the sexual divide.
Jun 29, 2009 - 4:13 am 11. DeadButMorallySuperior:“…Barack Obama could abolish the entire US Armed Forces and replace them with the Girl Scouts and no one would be the wiser.”
He could do that now, and the MSM would cover for him.
Jun 29, 2009 - 4:13 am 12. Lifeofthemind:Can someone pull the wig off of Obama and reveal to the public the wizened freak underneath?
Jun 29, 2009 - 5:02 am 13. plumpplumber:Wretchard, I’ve read your missives for quite a while now, and I’m struck at how this pustulent mess has affected you. How much was the Nation of Islam involved in this? Why in the world would folks who profess to Islamic values have anything to do with such a “tawdry” affair? My question is as old as Rome itself – “Who benefits”?
If, as has been mentioned, his enablers are masters of misdirection, and are gonna walk away from this nastiness, well, where did the money go? Buzzards don’t flock unless there is a carcass to feast upon. What about Rwaramba or Tohme? Are they an embarrasment for the Nation of Islam? Just wonderin’……
Jun 29, 2009 - 5:03 am 14. Doug:Lifeof:
Jun 29, 2009 - 5:57 am 15. Thrasymachus:Hair’s too short.
We could get a good grasp on those big ears, tho, and see what happens.
I honestly don’t know what there is new to say about this. But as self-indulgent as Michael Jackson was, he was programmed from childhood to believe his purpose in life was to support his family. As long as they wanted him to work he would, even if it killed him. He didn’t have the selfhood to say, “No, I’m done. Take care of yourselves for once.” Who would have heard of them but for him? How would they have lived other than workig class existences but for him?
Jun 29, 2009 - 5:58 am 16. Dave the Kapampangan:Alas, poor Jacko didn’t want to believe his hair was balding and that his creaky dancing legs were 50 years old. So he surrounded himself with yes men and got some sleazoid doctor to drug him up in order to hide from reality and died lonely, emaciated and disfigured surrounded by cultist human leeches.
Hollyweird celestials think that by castigating authorities such as America and the church (for choosing the least worst options instead of perfect but unavailable options) that they’ve equalized all moral choices– and given themselves license to pursue all sorts of selfishness. And secure in their hubris, they pull out the “glorious” Hollyweird sacred cows, and try to dictate the new form of worship to the public using the media monopoly as their bullhorn.
In the end what they really prove is that their ideology was as much a disconnected flash in the pan as their transient celebrity. It is one thing for a genius to discover a deeper reality from what formerly seemed impossible to everyone else. It is another thing to have the hubris to believe that you don’t live and breath on Earth when you actually do — which is why such disconnected “luminaries” never survive contact with evil and end up overdosed, or hanging on the end of an auto-erotic rope in a hotel room, or smashed up in a wrecked car or plane.
As the Inuit say, live real. or you can’t recognize the polar bear when it comes to bite you on the ass.
Jun 29, 2009 - 6:14 am 17. Gordon:Last night, researching another topic, I came across some information about the Primitive Baptist Church Universalist, which is found in parts of Appalachia. They are also called the “No-Hellers” because they don’t believe that Hell exists, as such, but rather is found here, in everyday life, in the form of things like sin and evil.
Looking at this Jackson mess I think they’re right.
Jun 29, 2009 - 6:15 am 18. RWE:” … the elite media system actually works quite well: that it can keep a secret when it wants to …”
Everyone knows how it kept secrets for JFK, and the mystery of Bill Clinton’s passport history and medical records remains uninvestigated by the people who reported on Ollie North’s requests for more prompt travel voucher reimbursements and the cost of the electric gate at his home.
In WWII the Japanese launched around 15,000 balloon bombs at the US. The Fed Govt asked the media to supress the news of the balloon bombs that actually made it to the US and they did so – without active censorship. This had the effect of having the Japanese stop the attacks, since they all seemed to be failing.
Jun 29, 2009 - 6:28 am 19. Doug:You reminded me of this, RWE:
Britain’s WWII Poison Dart Plans Revealed
Jun 29, 2009 - 6:41 am 20. Charles:The deep terror here is that what if Michael Jackson is a metaphor for western civilization in general and the USA in particular. Metaphor may not be the right word. Foreshadowing may be the better word.
When you’re in the presence of a miracle you need to be afraid of God. Very afraid. Why? Because it took a miracle to enable things to continue as they are–as they have been. That means two things.
God is merciful.(He has spared you this time)
God is just. (He will not spare you forever if you don’t change your ways.)
Jun 29, 2009 - 7:15 am 21. Doug:We don’t seem to be changing, Charles:
—
Media nervous on new Duke U. rape case (updated)
—
Frank Lombard is the associate director of Duke’s Center for Health Policy. The university administrator was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with offering up his adopted 5-year-old son for sex. I tried to contact Frank Lombard over the weekend to probe his expertise regarding the health benefits of raping small children. So far, he’s declined to comment.
University administrator Lombard is accused of logging on to a chat room online and describing himself as a “perv dad for fun.” The detective who wisely looked into the suspicious screen name says that Lombard admitted to molesting his own adopted son. All this was before allegedly inviting a stranger to travel to North Carolina from another state to statutorily rape his already-molested adopted son.
It gets worse. The allegations are stunning and sickening. Adams spares us what he says is the worst.
However, identity politics are probably also involved in understanding the media response. Again, Adams:
The Associate Press (AP) did not mention the fact that the five-year old offered up for molestation was black. Bringing that fact to light might be damaging to the political coalition that exists between blacks and gays. Nor did the AP mention that the adopted child is being raised by a homosexual couple. Bringing that fact to light might harm the gay adoption movement.
I am afraid that as far as the media and academic communities are involved, it is not the crime itself that matters, but rather whether the alleged perp is a member of an “oppressor” group. Although white, Lombard is gay, so in the interest of avoiding unpleasant stories involving homosexual adoption, the media is anxious to shut down public interest in the affair.
ht – Linearthinker
Jun 29, 2009 - 7:36 am 22. Doug:Update: Thomas Lifson notes that Stanley B. Chambers of the Raleigh News and Observer (hat tip: C. Edmund Wright) brings is the following nugget:
Lombard, a licensed clinical social worker with a master’s degree in social work, is a health-disparities researcher who studies HIV/AIDS in the rural South.
This means that Lombard toiled in fields of the victimology industry, mining data for correlations that would underwrite government favoritism of victim groups.
A victimologist victimized at least one child in the most heinous way. The ultimate victim(s). And the media see no hypocrisy, and want to make sure the public doesn’t either. Nothing to see here, move along.
All this coming in the wake of another highly publicized incident at the same prominent university? I don’t think they can suppress this one.
Jun 29, 2009 - 7:40 am 23. Charles:The conservative media have the power to put this case on the national agenda.
It is too dramatic.
what was the miracle?
Jun 29, 2009 - 8:05 am 24. starling:I read this story, as well. Sad and sickening, and yes self-inflicted too. Still, I am reminded here of the several scenes from science-fiction movies where the alien uses the body of a human as a host. It strings up the poor b*st*rd in some sticky, stinky, cocoon and keeps him alive only so long as it takes to use up his viscera for food, warmth, and shelter for its progeny. When he’s served his awful purpose, his hollowed-out shell is discarded, eyes wide-open and glazed, terrified, nothing but a husk where a human soul once lived. The newborn alien then goes on the hunt. Rinse and repeat.
Jun 29, 2009 - 8:09 am 25. peterike:But some people gave off such an aura of slime, such a reptilian electricity that you could literally feel it throbbing through the air.
I recall two times when my own creep meter flashed instantly into the red zone. On first seeing the Clintons, and on first seeing the Obamas. (John Kerry, too, for that matter.)
Unfortunately, most people don’t have any kind of creep meter at all.
Jun 29, 2009 - 8:18 am 26. Doug:Uh, if I’m just a wide-eyed shell,
do you really expect me to repeat?
– Just Curious
Jun 29, 2009 - 8:49 am 27. raymondshaw:Michael didn’t support the whole family. Janet did OK using her ample talents.
Jun 29, 2009 - 8:50 am 28. Doug:Watch for the costume failure at the funeral.
“Unfortunately, most people don’t have any kind of creep meter at all.”
Jun 29, 2009 - 8:53 am 29. starling:—
So you hate our Pop Culture, right, Peter?
That’s what I thought.
Traitor.
Raymond, I am sure there will be brave faces all around. Still, don’t put it past LaToya to do whatever is necessary to be front and center where ever microphones and cameras are to be found.
Jun 29, 2009 - 8:53 am 30. Doug:raymondshaw:
Jun 29, 2009 - 8:55 am 31. Langley:—
The Funereal Fallout!
“When the tide goes out you see who has been swimming naked.”
Jun 29, 2009 - 9:03 am 32. Mad Fiddler:The circuitry we’re calling the “creep meter” has been shorted out by many decades of CDIC Cognitive Cissonance Immersion Conditioning.
You’ve been lectured, exhorted, shouted at, sneered at, spit on, lied to, and generally made to feel like a damned soul for feeling threatened by the approach of an ethnic person if you are a DIFFERENT ethnicity. This makes you IGNORE your own mis-givings about an approaching figure on a dark street.
Don’t want anyone to be able to accuse you of stereotyping or EVILEVILEVIL racial profiling.
There can’t be much comfort for a victim of an actual mugging in being able to say “Well, I never thought ill of the person until the knife blade actually pierced my flesh.”
There’s a self-defense movement aimed at encouraging women to “pay attention to their mis-givings about a developing situation, or an approaching person of the contrarywise gender. The developer of this self-defense scheme reminds readers and viewers that we have developed our defensive “radar” over many thousands of generations, and we should trust it and choose to protect ourselves and put distance between us and any threat. We have no obligation to other persons to let them approach us to “striking distance” out of any sense of political correctness, etc.
I recall wandering around Greenwich Village with a college friend in the early 1970’s. It was near midnight, but it was a brightly lit street, with a number of people standing around outside clubs and bars, conversing and strolling. I spotted a couple of ladies I recognized as regulars on Sesame Street (hey! I’m an animator!) and dragged my friend over toward them.
They saw us – two long-haired freaky types – approaching, and one said to the other, “Uh-oh, we’re about to get mugged.”
I immediately stopped in my tracks and told them “No, we were just going to ask for your autographs!”
They laughed, and gave us the signatures, all smiles.
Then we mugged them.
Jun 29, 2009 - 9:19 am 33. Mad Fiddler:NO NO NO, THAT WAS A JOKE!
We didn’t mug’em.
What I really meant to say, when a chance for a cheap laugh took over my brain, was that I didn’t feel like it was unreasonable for them to feel threatened; I didn’t take offense; I didn’t assume they were a couple of vicious reactionary types seeing me through a relentlessly bourgeois filter of sexual stereotyping.
Can’t we all just get a…
(What are the codes for strike-through?)
Jun 29, 2009 - 9:27 am 34. Political News Highlights and Controversy» Thriller: No Human Being Should Be Beset By Bloodsuckers This Bad.:[...] clicksor_enable_text_link = true; clicksor_enable_VideoAd = true; flyers Easy AdSenser by UnrealRichard Fernandez may have the only rational view on the “death by celebrity” [...]
Jun 29, 2009 - 9:30 am 35. mariner:Wretchard, as perceptive as you are I believe you’re missing the boat here.
If Jackson lived in a virtual prison it was one of his own making. As I understand it he spent a considerable amount of time, effort and money to make sure the public only knew about him what he wanted the public to know. He surrounded himself with people who told him what he wanted to hear, and paid them very well to do so. I agree with you that those people are sleazeballs, but he enabled them every bit as much as they enabled him — they and Jackson were symbiotes.
The people who continued to lend Jackson money were not deceived. They had the right and the ability to see the truth, but they overlooked what they simply didn’t wish to see. Likewise the promoters of this “comeback” — they saw dollar signs where they could and should have seen a very sick man.
I have long believed that Jackson was a sick and tortured soul. I hope he’s in a better place now.
Jun 29, 2009 - 11:37 am 36. mariner:Peterike,
Unfortunately, most people don’t have any kind of creep meter at all.
Jun 29, 2009 - 11:44 am 37. JMH:Most people do in fact have a creep meter, but it has been programmed over a long period to register conservatives, Christians, and straight people as creeps.
Lifeof:
Hair’s too short.
We could get a good grasp on those big ears, tho, and see what happens.
Wait, didn’t the recent remake of “V” already do this? Sort of…
Jun 29, 2009 - 11:52 am 38. JenLArt:I made the same analogy: had Jackson been at Club Gitmo™ he would be 60 pounds heavier, and alive and healthy.
Jun 29, 2009 - 11:53 am 39. Hutsul:Drug addiction always has the same ending – recovery or death. MJ was a drug addict who chose death. He had been in treatment and was probably told many times what the road ahead was like. His pick was the easier softer way – continued use of drugs. When you are rich or have access to money, that decision brings all sorts of suckers, hangerson and enablers out of the woodwork. But remember, it was MJ’s decision. He is no different that the crack whore found dead in an alley – just that the enablers and cons did their job.
Jun 29, 2009 - 12:07 pm 40. J Charles:Mad Fiddler, you didn’t happen to get the moniker from Doug Kershaw’s character in Zacharia, didja?
Jun 29, 2009 - 12:12 pm 41. philo:A friend of mine from high school rose to a very high level in the rock music world and got to know Michael Jackson personally. He described him as having a sweet, beautiful, childlike spirit. “Neverland”– he saw himself as a child who didn’t want to grow up. The point is like that in several recent Belmont Club posts: He attracted reptilian creatures who saw someone of whom they could take advantage, and he was incapable of recognizing their evil. In the end, they destroyed him, and are even now, I’m sure, in the process of identifying a new host.
Jun 29, 2009 - 12:16 pm 42. peterike:Doug: So you hate our Pop Culture, right, Peter?
That’s what I thought.
Traitor.
Not sure is this is sarc or not. But in case it’s not, no, I don’t by any stretch hate all of our Pop Culture, though I’m a bit pickier in my pop culture choices than some might be, and I hope I can recognize junk even when I enjoy it (like, say, that last Batman movie).
Mariner @ 36. Agreed. I was thinking something along those lines, but didn’t bother to flesh out my thought. As a telling example of what you refer to, how many people’s creep meters went nutz when they first saw Sarah Palin?
Interesting test question. Who is creepier to you: Michael Jackson or Sarah Palin? I suspect you’d get large majorities saying Sarah Palin in most of our hipper urban centers.
Jun 29, 2009 - 12:19 pm 43. exhelodrvr:35) Mariner,
Jun 29, 2009 - 12:40 pm 44. RCM:And the public was as much a part of it as Jackson and his inner circle. Think baseball fans during the big McGwire/Sosa/Bonds home run years.
23. Charles:
“what was the miracle?”
Perhaps, that we are here at all, and given the gift of choice in the walk we take.
Jun 29, 2009 - 1:04 pm 45. Charles:41. philo:
Would you rephrase 41.
Right now 41 brushes up against a logical paradox that goes something like this.
Everything I say is a lie.
I’m lying.
Jun 29, 2009 - 1:06 pm 46. whiskey:Wretchard — Michael Jackson had not had a hit since the 1980’s. His first few albums were pop gems, entertained people, and so sold a lot of copies and made money. After that, he could no longer produce any enjoyable music, became a celebrity freak show, and made most of his money off investments plus selling access to his freak show life.
What’s remarkable is that as the media presence has grown, the social distance between entertainers and audience has grown bigger, and fewer and fewer personalities, acts, and so on are broadly popular.
It’s not just album sales, few today could name the people or music behind say, “Keane” or Arctic Monkeys or whatever new acts are coming up. The collapse of broad culture is one of the most telling cultural artifacts of the period 1990-2009.
Jun 29, 2009 - 1:33 pm 47. whiskey:As for “honor,” a man who might have to switch sides, or join another group, would have to present trustworthiness, so far as not reneging on deals, getting one’s back, and so on. Particularly or especially if he/she is in a violent trade and situations.
Honor is “adaptive” in that it lets humans cooperate in highly risky situations, the higher the personal risk of dying, the more honor is found, examples soldiers under combat conditions.
The reptilian behavior is indicative that Jackson’s entourage found little immediate personal threats to life and limb. Therefore, little loyalty. A low-risk or perceived low-risk society tends to have these sorts of behavioral markers. Things that are “expensive” in terms of behaviors, such as honor, which means forgone exploitative opportunities, are abandoned because the payoff (ability to switch groups to survive) is perceived to be not needed.
Even in a tribal situation, such as say Saddam-era Tikrit, such behavior would not fly, because any who would act like that would not be trusted even by kinsmen, and would therefore be sidelined from risky but high payoff activities that required high levels of trust.
In other words, a short term loot and scoot mentality was the behavior of the Jackson entourage.
Jun 29, 2009 - 1:41 pm 48. geoffb:This could very well apply to many in the higher levels of the political class. It has always been so. This is how they cut the ties to reality. Manipulators manipulating other manipulators ad infinitum. Works as long as the money and/or power hold out.
Reality smacks upside the head eventually. The longer it is held at bay the harder the smack. Unless they can manage to die first, still believing all their own hype. That’s the best end. For a version of the worst see Saddam or Mussolini or…
Jun 29, 2009 - 1:58 pm 49. NahnCee:With a lizard like Pappa Joe for a father, what chance did Michael ever have to be a fully developed human being. He was surrounded by evil from the get-go so why wouldn’t he assume that’s just how it was?
BTW, TMZ is saying the lurid story about the corpse being bald and having needles plunged into his heart is fake. Which I wondered how a British tabloid could reach across an ocean and a continent and get an interview from the LA Coroner’s office before any of the local pap’s could manage same. TMZ has also posted pictures of his last rehearsal two days before his demise and poor Michael is actually a pretty happy and snappy-looking performer in them.
Jun 29, 2009 - 2:33 pm 50. Charles:Monty Python-Bring out your dead!
Jun 29, 2009 - 2:38 pm 51. Roderick Reilly:“”"”"The people who continued to lend Jackson money were not deceived. They had the right and the ability to see the truth, but they overlooked what they simply didn’t wish to see. Likewise the promoters of this “comeback” — they saw dollar signs where they could and should have seen a very sick man.”"”"”"
Wow! What a GREAT metaphor for the world’s financial meltdown, Mariner!
Jun 29, 2009 - 2:43 pm 52. Roderick Reilly:“”"”"”BTW, TMZ is saying the lurid story about the corpse being bald and having needles plunged into his heart is fake.”"”"”
I believe we’ll find NahnCee to be correct on this. Although the needles into the heart (fresh injections at the hospital?) may have some plausibility.
Jun 29, 2009 - 2:46 pm 53. Marcus Aurelius:Watch the movie The Last Emperor for a similar situation. A man never in control of those supposedly serving him but instead used as a prop by the servants to justify their existence.
In many ways, I get the same feeling reading these details as I do when watching The Last Emperor.
One has to wonder, MJ’s career seemed to progress along a fairly normal trajectory until the late 80s early 90s. He was coming out with playable music on a regular basis and then of course his monster hits. Then something happened, was it retainers managed to get control over him, was it despite the success he never mentality progressed beyond childhood, did he fall for the lure of yes-men. In fact, one of the reported MJ quotes I heard on the day of his death was in response to why he liked to hang with children the reported response was “they tell the truth”.
No matter what the truth is on MJ’s state at his death, it is clear something not quite right was going on.
Another TV show that I am reminded of is a Star Trek episode where a friend of Kirk’s transformed a society into a NAZI state, it was benevolent to begin but the planet’s “fuhrer” (Kirk’s buddy) was in essence captured by a malign individual.
Jun 29, 2009 - 4:13 pm 54. NahnCee:I always thought racism had something to do with his mental development. He was so incredibly intent and focused on NOT being negroid.
Imagine being an immensely gifted child prodigy with Pappa Joe beating you on the one hand and white society snarling at you on the other AND also the possible mutation and social rejection of blossoming homosexuality on the third hand …
Jun 29, 2009 - 4:40 pm 55. steveaz:It may be indelicate to ask (and I beg your pardon if someone as crass has already posed this), but…
…with all of his media handlers, and all of his media appearances, and all of his media money, and all of his media friends, why did no one in media ever report Michael Jackson’s deteriorated condition to the public?
As a group, our media fashion themselves the eyes and ears of our nation, going so far as to dig doggedly into Alaskans’ birth records, or amplifying American soldiers’ deaths in-theatre, or fudging climate science – all to serve “our greater good.”
They’ve told us that detainees were “tortured,” Bush “lied,” the surge “failed,” and Sarah is, too, “lying” about Trig. But, when it came to reporting news that may have saved the life of their favorite pet, they gagged.
Why? And what message lies therein for the rest of the media’s “kept” menagerie, politician and civilian alike.
Jun 29, 2009 - 4:44 pm 56. Ashcat:Steveaz@55: ***why did no one in media ever report Michael Jackson’s deteriorated condition to the public?***
Because the golden goose must be kept alive. (Even for the media who aren’t in his inner circle–they’re still trying to make money off him, even postmortem).
Probably as important as the monetary benefits to the inner circle, are the ego benefits to those surrounding an icon. “If this star wants me to be around him, I must be important”. It’s intoxicating to bask in the glow of an icon, and very hard to give this privileged position up. It’s also very hard to risk excommunication by the megastar if you point out anything he doesn’t want to hear. So the hawk-like predators surrounding him intially come, in time as the situation deteriorates, to be replaced by buzzard-like scavengers when the situation becomes pitiful.
A child—-and I can’t help but think that for MJ normal development would be impossible after his first number 1 hit, unless he had a very wise, protective, and loving family—-can’t be wise enough to protect himself from all the predators and scavengers. In time he was separated from all of his earthly wealth (monetary and existential).
Those reported needle marks in the chest at autopsy make sense–intracardiac epinephrine injections occasionally restore a heart rhythm. Kind of like a Hail Mary pass in football.
Jun 29, 2009 - 5:35 pm 57. Charles:I got a good laugh out of the monty python skit above. but the last line there is sobering.
arthur walks by.the main character says”there goes the king” the guy with him says”how do you know” the main character replies” he’s the only one not covered in shit”
as to richards’s comment:
And you just know that they’ll get away with it. Somehow the guys at the top of the creep meter always do. Don’t ask me how, but they do.
these were the kings of old. some good some not so good. the book of judges in the OT is known as the evil period. there is a refrain that goes like this. every man did what was right in his own eyes. and they all did evil in the sight of the Lord. at the end of it the people call out samuel to get them a king. samuel says…something to the effect;… this is not a good idea. you’ll regret it. but they insist.
hmm…. I’ll have to get chapter and verse.
Jun 29, 2009 - 5:41 pm 58. Charles:1 Samuel 8:1-3
Israel Asks for a King
[1] And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel.
[2] Now the name of his firstborn was Joel; and the name of his second, Abiah: they were judges in Beersheba.
[3] And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.
1 Samuel 8:4-9
[4] Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah,
[5] And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.
[6] But the thing displeased [1] Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord.
[7] And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.
[8] According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.
[9] Now therefore hearken [2] unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.
Jun 29, 2009 - 5:52 pm 59. Charles:1 Samuel 8:10-22
[10] And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king.
[11] And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.
[12] And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
[13] And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
[14] And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
[15] And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, [1] and to his servants.
[16] And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
[17] He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
[18] And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.
[19] Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;
[20] That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.
[21] And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord.
[22] And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king. And Samuel said unto the men of Israel, Go ye every man unto his city.
Jun 29, 2009 - 5:59 pm 60. Doug:exHelo:
Jun 29, 2009 - 6:23 pm 61. Doug:Now Dodger fans are doing it big time with Manny.
…and he’s still on suspension!
Jun 29, 2009 - 6:24 pm 62. Doug:Fiddler,
Jun 29, 2009 - 6:32 pm 63. steveaz:We knew a couple named “Jewel” (Jerry J and his wife) that were Sesame writers way back in the begining.
Didn’t seem to show up in Wiki, though.
Ashcat @56,
I wrestle with the self-evident nature of your comment. It seems right on its face, but limiting, too.
Which caused me to wonder, does media exploitation have to be the kiss of death? Many in media needed to recoup their investments in the media-product, Micheal Jackson, but the maudlin, dark plot that ends with the celebrity’s death needs not be the only way. Instead of running a 24/7 televized orgy of mourning, bookended and riddled with groveling advertisers, scavenger-like looming over the event of MJ’s death, couldn’t CBS’s, or MSNBC’s, or the NYT’s creative corps hatch a positive, recovery-oriented fairy-tale ending for their pet?
It seems salacity demands death, but need it? I’m just a gardener with dirt under my fingernails and a working internet connection, but even I, if tapped, could envision a coherent, concerted and profitable, televized pageant lasting for many years that focused laser-like on our beloved celebrities’ pathologies, coaxed them to seek comprehensive treatment – from accupuncture to ahyurveda to 12-step programs, and then heralded every step the celebs took towards renewing their health.
Think about it…
1. Oprah (a celeb with her own publicized dieting compulsions) could have done monthly updates on MJ’s progress. Ka-Ching!
2. Trendy advertizers and political evangelists would have paid BIG BUCKS to see their products and policies pitched alongside MJ’s latest calibrated “baby step” towards recovery. Ka-ching!
3. People, Time, Newsweek and Rolling Stone could have made the media project, “Michael Jackson, His Fight” a regular monthly feature, and charged advertizers a premium for siting their ads before, in and immediately after the piece. Ka-ching!
4. And even MJ’s set backs, like a report of his sipping NyQuil regularly in the mornings, or a sighting of him chumming with an old dealer, or a National Enquirer piece calling him “unhealthily obese,” could be spun to produce an enervating suspense that brings viewers back day after day, week after week, to see if Michael would win the latest battle, or lose ground to temptation. Ka-ching!
If his media friends were merchants of light, the positivist approach would have guided their campaign. But, folks, the more I see the more I’m convinced, if allowed the full the length of their leashes, people like those MJ trusted to “handle” his life, money and public relations will lead all of humanity to very dark ends.
Jul 1, 2009 - 8:27 am 64. Ashcat:-Steve
Steveaz @63:
***If his media friends were merchants of light, the positivist approach would have guided their campaign.***
Yes, if only they were merchants of light. I think you’re right that such a reality show you imagine–kind of like “The Biggest Loser” from the weight loss world–could be successful, but it would depend on several factors that wouldn’t likely apply here.
First, I think the Biggest Losers agree to humiliate themselves only because it’s the one shot for their 15 minutes of fame. But MJ had plenty of fame already. (Imagine how miserable it would be to attempt to go out in public–you couldn’t really do anything outside your house without being accosted by everyone).
The second factor, upon which real recovery from substance dependence depends, is a genuine conviction (to oneself mostly, but also to the world) that I am utterly powerless over my addiction. The First Step: “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable”. Would MJ be allowed to admit, and did he have the humility to admit, that conviction? How many people die because they cannot take even the first step? I’m not sure I could (but I abuse no substances other than nicotine, and I’m not prepared to do so even for that!).
Jul 1, 2009 - 7:16 pmSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.