The Michael Jackson Story: part 1

Ok we've been a bit sporadic recently, and although time has passed, and there's a lot of other issues I want to talk about, I actually wanted to write a bit more about Michael Jackson than we did before, and although it's not traditionally what this blog is about, there is a reason I would occasionally like to talk about stories that may seem not directly political, or important in that way at first.

For sure, I don't want to chase every little negative piece of gossip-mongering some gutter hack writes about this celebrity or that, but I do want to write some more about those stories that I see as important.

I would like to break this into a series of sections and we'll try get some other news in in between.

It's been interesting to see what the press come up with day to day since the death of Michael Jackson of course.

Everyone and their dog, including so called 'close friends' suddenly have a story that is 'really important' they must tell. Everyone from Michael Jackson's dermatologist to the shocking spectacle a couple of weeks ago with Uri Geller who would pull out his own granny's gold teeth if she died in front of him, it's something of a free-for-all.

I see the News of the World today have a story about some dude called Mark Lester who was apparently another one of these 'friends' of Jackson, who claims to be the father of at least one of his children.

I'm not going to get into that topic, but I just wonder how much the News of The World paid Lester for this story. Some friend.

Lester says that he wants, coincidentally, all the same usual 'reasons' poured out in a specific way that the media always construct around this kind of thing, i.e how he 'wants the best for those kids'. Yeah sure he does.

For what it's worth, frankly very little, I don't think any of Lester's own reasons are compelling which makes the whole thing even more wanton, I also think the story is flawed for a number of reasons which if anyone is really interested I can go into, but it's a great example he is setting to his own children and these and as puppet, a tool, and just another anything-for-a-buck hapless maggot trying to make a few pounds out of the death of someone who trusted him as his friend. If he was a friend in any significant way that is.

But this is all de rigueur of course and to be expected. These are the norms that the News of the World encourage, and that sad creatures and hangers on espouse. It's not easy to see a difference between Lester and the family of Gavin Arvizo, who falsely claimed Jackson molested him. Actually there is a difference, Arvizo didn't go to the News of the World. Although I tend to view the kinds of stories appearing now with considerable doubt anyway.

Meanwhile in the Mail on Sunday, Mr Ian Halperin is back again with a 'timeline of death', which internet-troll like includes repeated assertions about Jackson's mental state as 'breaking down', 'on the edge' , 'paranoid'. Whether any of that is true or just a description of Mr Halperin's own problems in this case I don't know but those things are pretty normal fare in a certain way for creatives, artists, creative performers and so on, which a working class hack like Halperin possibly wouldn't understand, hence he reports it as an 'issue'.

It's interesting that Halperin basically picks up the side of the story made by Michael's father, Joe Jackson, exactly as he made it with Larry King on CNN. I wonder if that's where some of the material for this article came from.

Halperin also goes on to claim that Jackson was being threatened "physically and financially" by people around him, presumably to do these shows, and being kept away from his family. If that's true it would explain a lot. But Halperin consistently puts this stuff together and then either simply isn't able to see or deliberately scurries away from the appropriate conclusion that doesn't fit what he or the publisher wants to peddle.

He also claims Jackson was in pain. Pain from what exactly ? You see the way this is written is almost to suggest that Jackson was in pain the way Darth Vader was in pain, as a kind of punishment of being attached to the dark side of the Force.

Again where truth may seep out accidentally from Halperin's poison pen is that Jackson felt he was being coerced into performing these shows, or at least the number or some aspect of the arrangements and that has something of a ring of truth about it, and has been hinted at elsewhere.

Anyway the story seems to subtly change from day to day but generally the story seems to be over the last few weeks, that this Doctor Conrad Murray was administering the general anesthetic drug Diprivan aka propofol as a sleeping aid to Jackson. It is claimed in some reports that Jackson may have been taking this for some time and that various figures around Jackson were aware of this.

And they had been getting away with this for a while, but on this occasion something went wrong, and the problem with this drug, like so many is that there appears to be a relatively narrow window between effective dose and lethal dose. We don't know, but it has been postulated in the press at different stages that terrifyingly Murray wasn't paying sufficient attention and Michael stopped breathing, which is a known result that can occur from this drug. Later reports suggest other drugs were involved as well.

At various points over the last few weeks Murray has become the focus of the affair, with talk of manslaughter or homicide charges, and possibly other people administering drugs as well.

At least this is the official line.

If that's correct, it's a tremendous and insane tragedy of course that Michael Jackson had become reliant on such an extreme drug just to get to sleep.

Part 2 next...