The Michael Jackson Story: Part 4

Ok we are bit behind schedule here on everything. Sorry guys. Ok so last night I went to see Michael Jackson's This is It movie, which since it was announced I was very anxious to see. This film of course was assembled after Michael's death earlier this year ; made up of rehearsal footage bought by Columbia (Sony) from the series of scheduled performances in London.

I haven't read any reviews of this film, so I'm writing this fresh, and I may well be saying things that some of you may well already have read about.

The film is certainly an appreciated glimpse for fans of these last rehearsals of Michael's and of course it's wonderful to see and hear Michael perform some of his famous songs again.

As we said before Michael Jackson is one of the great figures of the 20th century. A great unifying figure, a great global figure, a figure of enormous inspiration and gifts and creativity.

Although the early reports about these rehearsals were mixed , even quite positive and there was that early clip of "They Don't Care About Us", as a huge fan of MJ, at times in the film Michael does not seem quite prepared for those scheduled 50 performances.

Some people have said that 'well people get older and so on', actually I don't think that's the issue here at all.

I could be misinterpreting this, and some of this rehearsal footage may be of walk throughs rather than with full blown full energy, and it's important people understand that, but in 111 minutes it was difficult to find a Michael of the past there. I felt this was almost a different person in places.

Although there are some wonderful moments of performance, Michael looks almost in some discomfort possibly pain at times rehearsing, sometimes his gestures seem compromised and he appears quite stressed. His voice sounds great and he's extremely cognizant musically about different nuances he wants from his musicians and so on but he does not appear that well in my view and part of him does not look like he wants to be doing this right now. On the other hand he doesn't look like he's about to keel over any second either.

How much years of horrendous stress, allegations, and cocktails of drugs to try to deal with that stress overall (and I don't mean specifically in the case of propofol/Diprivan administration) contributed to all this, is going to remain a serious question.

Michael said he never wanted to tour again and it would kill him to do so, and there is a sense he's being pushed into doing this.

Like I say I haven't read any reviews or commentary about the film, so I don't know what others have written.

I was talking to a few people about it last night afterwards and I found a lot of people are suggesting Michael was murdered by the "New World Order". I recall I started seeing some of these ideas about a month or 2 back on places like YouTube.

Ok, you can look at these things from a point of view, of who killed Michael, and some will wish to, but again Michael is a great angel-like figure. One of the great figures of the age, with tremendous gifts. Like a lot of great iconic figures they tend to leave this world relatively, sometimes very early.

Now there are things that make you very suspicious, and people should certainly explore this if they feel strongly about it, in some loose ways I agree that the 'New World Order' if you want to call it that did kill Michael, but whatever exactly has happened, overall I tend to see this as the above as well.

Michael Jackson's This is It is of course definitely something fans are going to want to see.

The Michael Jackson Story: Part 3

Sorry we are a bit behind schedule at the moment with this. And one of the reasons I wanted to write about Michael Jackson in this way was because I really didn't like what I saw written out there, in the mainstream media, the specialist music press or the alternative news which in general dropped the ball a bit with this.

Since last time, the coroner's report into Michael's death is pointing towards an overdose of the general anesthetic Propofol/Diprivan and some other drugs.

This was ruled a homicide which means prosecution can be made against someone else, in this case the focus has been on Jackson's personal physician attending to him at the time, Doctor Conrad Murray.

What's striking about Michael's death is the uncanny similarity to Elvis' death, which I'm no expert on, but I've been looking at too. Their deaths near-immediately before starting a new performance schedule. The prescription drugs, yet according to other doctors being in apparent health only shortly before their death, the focus on the personal physician, the extravagant spending and lifestyle, being the absolute top of the tree but not being in quite the same intensity of public prominence as they were previously and the general similarities of what they meant to others as stars and performers.

And from what I've seen Michael Jackson was acutely aware of what happened to others like Elvis and John Lennon, and was quite concerned about ending up in either of those situations. He was also very concerned about what happened to Princess Diana, and there's some interesting footage about that here.

The other thing of course is Michael has been laid to rest at the Forest Lawn Cemetery near Los Angeles. Obviously, it's a decision for the family, but on a purely personal note, although I understand the controversy around Neverland, I don't feel totally at home with this. And it wouldn't surprise me, if like Elvis you may hear at some point Michael is moved again.

Needless to say, Michael Jackson was one of the great figures of the 20th century, one of the great cultural pillars. In the 1980s, he was the biggest star in the world. There was Michael Jackson, and then everybody else. He was described in news reports, along with President Ronald Reagan, as possibly one of the "two most important and famous men in the world" (6:39).

Back then of course, there was no need to label himself the "King of Pop", Michael was the King of all Stars, all performers, all artists. It didn't need to be said, to say it would be immoderate. (Although it was originally Elizabeth Taylor's description, it's only when things started to move away a bit from those heights you started to hear the term "King of Pop" actually be used.)

I don't think it's possible to underestimate the influence of Michael Jackson, it is so considerable, it is a cultural fundamental and Michael Jackson has become part of the firmament and universal ether of ideas.

And very interestingly, someone slightly younger I know said they didn't fully understand this, and just were aware of the allegations and controversies until his death when some of his stuff was put on TV. You couldn't have a more stark example of the power of the media to turn everything upside down.

Like everyone I grew up with Michael Jackson, as a huge fan, but later on wasn't following his career as closely. I would hear this or that about him, about his music, his first marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, about his children, but there was a sense Michael Jackson had some difficulties knowing where to go after Thriller and Bad. Whatever he'd opened the door to in an MTV world, whatever had come out, although could never come near his status, had somewhat displaced him afterwards on the ground. Indeed Michael's former producer on Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad, Quincy Jones touches on this here.

Perhaps partly as a consequence of that, there was some insistence on more extravagant productions, more Disneyeque qualities , which I personally I think some of that, didn't always necessarily do Michael that many favours artistically, although he was the only person in the world who could actually do that work.




And really when I became particuarly aware again and started thinking again about Michael Jackson, was in 2003 when the Martin Bashir documentary (aka Living with Michael Jackson) was broadcast. And despite everything, however much a chunk of the media had turned against him, however much this was a different Michael from the days of the historic eminence of Thriller and then Bad, however much, despite his incredible success, Michael now seemed more on the outside looking in or rather back, and however uncomfortable and nervous Bashir made everybody feel, I remember at the time the scene when Bashir asks Michael to show him some dancing (5:20+), and I remember getting awakened again to the incredible sense of who Michael Jackson was.

Suddenly all the media nonsense, all the crap, as well as all of the layers of things that perhaps didn't endear some fans over the years just fell away. And I'll be honest this was a very important and moving piece of television for me personally.

And despite his fabulous wealth, despite the lavish lifestyle, it was all the more difficult to see what exactly had happened since say Bad, and why this incredible man, who was once the Star of all stars was in a documentary with Martin Bashir trying to explain himself. At the height of Michael's fame, this would have been an unthinkable nonsense.

And I think the Bashir documentary/affair is important in all this, because this is Michael trying to connect to the outside world, trying to share a bit of his universe, trying to make people understand himself instead of through the layers of media venom and he presumably thought Bashir was the person with the right credentials for this. Possibly, as Bashir did the famous 'Queen of Hearts' interview with Princess Diana back in 1995.

(The story I've heard is that Uri Geller effectively sold a meeting with Michael Jackson to Bashir for £200,000.

Again these people aren't friends, same with this Mark Lester character of course, who's ex-wife remarked recently that Lester was actually nuts and had an obsession with Jackson⁽¹⁾.)

But the documentary overall was a PR catastrophe and a depressing catalogue of mindless pointless miseries assembled by Bashir. It all came out as a disaster, and I don't think a lot of people have any idea how that can make someone feel if they are trying to connect to the wider world, but instead it just makes everything worse. It's not a nice experience to be on the end of, especially for very sensitive creative people. And then it lead to more allegations, utterly opportunistic, by, as Michael's former manager Frank DiLeo described as a 'bunch of gypsies passing through', disproved in court, but which took their their toll.

It is said Martin Bashir is a Christian, I actually see this guy as a grade A tool, and you can see how totally uncomfortable he looks throughout the documentary.


It is possible that Michael simply wasn't aware how what he was trying to communicate could be seen, seized upon and presented as, including any unusual relationships with children, a subject that has in general been made hyper-sensitive and a source of day to day paranoia by the media and government across the board anyway. And anything that's seen as a challenge to that paranoia and atmosphere is going to be a problem, and I have unease and concern about that scene in the film as I think everyone did.

But at the same time, there's no question Bashir sees Michael Jackson as a strange curiosity that belongs in a jar on a shelf somewhere with an appropriate label on it in a museum of bizarre curiosities. You wince as you watch Bashir clumsily trying to ascribe this, ascribe that from his text book of moron's crap, and the sad thing is, the really sad thing is, he thinks he's doing a great job as a journalist. Yet ironically it's Bashir who can't seem to participate in anything Michael does without looking extremely uncomfortable and trying to pathologize it.

Bashir (rewarded with a job in the US with ABC) made this film at a time when it seemed to be safe territory to make a provocative documentary about Michael Jackson, and after Michael's death recently made slithering remarks⁽²⁾ towards him about the 'greatest entertainer ever' as if he'd never made the documentary to begin with, perhaps to try to exonerate his own role in Michael's problems.

Part 4 Next....

The Michael Jackson Story: Part 2

We're going to touch on one of the issues that the media brought up in the immediate hours, even minutes following the death of Michael Jackson. And this is a very difficult topic to write about, difficult as it seeps into other fraught areas of the history of music. Suffice to say it's not really a topic about Michael Jackson himself, more to do with some of the media noise.

And right from the get go of the coverage the media made it an issue, where I really don't think it was an overt issue before that.

And that is the controversial theme of race. Needless to say, I suppose generally this theme has been excited by Michael's changing appearance over the years.

Some time back US President Barrack Obama is asked by a reporter why he didn't say more about Michael's passing, as this has caused 'concern in the black community'. Interesting isn't it ? It's been decided that it isn't even an issue that it may have caused concern or be noticed by anyone else.

(As it went, Jackson's image must have became strained enough for Obama to distance himself as far as possible from this even being a serious proposition. In a politically astute way, Obama goes to some lengths to annotate, or rather funnel his tribute to Jackson through a great wariness about his' tragic and sad personal life', and he's 'glad to see that he's primarily being remembered for his entertaining and great gifts'.)

But perhaps some of the race theme is best encapsulated in a CBS interview with director Spike Lee:

Like Obama, Lee says that incredible talent and gifts are accompanied by other idiosyncrasies. That's absolutely correct, and it is very important people understand that. You can't judge certain kinds of people; gifted people, creative people etc through the same lens as you tend to judge everyone else. That's not to say people should be exonerated from anything and everything but at the same time it is simply naive to expect to hold them to the same criteria as everyone else. And I want to come back to this topic later on.

But Lee, injects that in a film he made he has a white guy list his heroes who are all black but goes on to say they are 'more than black'. This is a source of great amusement for Lee, who thinks he's discovered something really cool.

Lee, frankly at least partly at the media goading/fawning of interviewer Katie Couric goes on to suggest that Jackson's 'provenance' is such a sensitive issue and he even has no qualms about recounting some story of some guy getting attacked because he didn't sufficiently acknowledge Jackson's heritage.

Yet in a world where we are constantly asked to be colour blind when that angle suits, or even told that there is no such thing as race, the media's clear determination to revise the death of Michael Jackson into a narrative about racial group identity, rather than a narrative about a great man with a tremendous reach becomes a little conspicuous.

I'm sure some will disagree, and I don't wish to sound like I'm criticising whatever genuine feelings people may have, but clearly at times his death was also being shifted into some other statement, and this was happening immediately.

And this has specific effects, and one of those is that we end up looking at race rather than individuals, and although I understand it in one way, I also find this a slightly distorting emphasis to be placed on anyone, and it also puts something of a fence around the legacy of Michael Jackson.

Repeatedly it has been said in the coverage, that Michael Jackson opened the door to a lot of black artists, and that Michael Jackson broke into MTV where black artists were not generally encouraged previously.

The New York Times quoting Al Sharpton said, "“Before Michael we were limited and ghettoized,” Mr. Sharpton told the mostly black crowd. “But Michael put on a cutaway military jacket, pulled his pants leg up, put on a white glove and smashed the barriers of segregated music."

I think Al Sharpton has said some really wonderful things about Michael Jackson, some of them are said from a certain perspective, but they are poignant, moving and powerful. In one of these speeches says something like "You are Bad Michael Now, you are the Baddest". It was a great line I wish I could remember it properly or find the clip.

But how times change.

If Michael Jackson had a hand opening the door to presumably what came out, and the media are now telling us this is important, it just happens to be Michael Jackson also represented a set of things that like them or not, that I think were rather different.

At times you almost see Michael Jackson, and I don't mean to sound rude, but relegated to history as foot in the door for race-first self-esteem, with his own career as an artist something on the side.

You could almost be forgiven for thinking that's what it was all about if you knew nothing about Michael Jackson and just listened to some of the coverage of his death alone.

As far as Michael Jackson was concerned anything that even smelt like a bellicose 'dose of race' or any kind of specified racial delimiter publicly came much later on when his career was in trouble and I think it also needs to be seen in a certain context which gets even more controversial, because as far I'm aware this never had significant painstaking attention given to it in the music itself before that.

Songs like Black or White, which although I personally didn't care for at all, I generally understood as the opposite to the above, possibly the other extreme of racial comment. As a side note I think Michael was inadvertently playing into the hands of other trends when he made that song, but I believe it was genuine and well intentioned, and I know it has fans.

Michael Jackson is someone who brought light, hope, dazzle, joy and inspiration, instead of nonsense, despair, anger and confusion, and he had a tremendous global following and like a lot of great figures is difficult to categorize.

In his prime he was detached from the atmosphere of political correctness and group banner waving that's applauding him now. He was himself, an incredibly gifted person and it's that that makes someone a 'problem'.

Indeed, it's difficult to disagree with Michael's friend actress Elizabeth Taylor about the real reason at least for some of Michael's difficulties, where she said in 1993 in the interview with Oprah Winfrey, "He is larger than life and some people just cannot accept that" (1:14)

Part 3 Next...

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...

Michael Jackson Memorial Service

I just watched the Michael Jackson memorial service via internet broadcast. What can you say ? Where you actually there ? Extremely emotional.

There was a range of musical and spoken tributes from people like Lionel Richie, Mariah Carey and Stevie Wonder, including a fascinating and passionate oration by the Reverend Al Sharpton and finally his brothers and daughter give an extremely moving speech.

And frankly, you get the sense this isn't over. The repercussions of this are going to go on for some time, and because of who Michael Jackson was, of course in other ways forever.

While we certainly don't really know why Michael Jackson died, and whether we will know clearly or not remains an open question so far, some of the controversies and allegations seemed to contribute to factors now being pointed to surrounding his tragic death.

Like a lot of you I've been listening to Michael Jackson's work over the last twelve days or so and going over the videos, performances, interviews and tributes out there either on the internet or in real life. Everywhere you go Michael Jackson's songs are on the radio, people are talking about this in the street, and so on. Make no mistake about it, this is a very big deal.

And as such, there's a lot one can say about this topic. With this particular star, as we said before, perhaps the biggest and greatest ever, many different forces coincide. There's a lot of different threads one can explore from an artistic, cultural, or political perspective.

Perhaps too many, and perhaps it's too soon for some of that.

It was a very moving service they gave for him, his passing has been a devastating loss, there is no question that Michael Jackson brought an incredible light to this world, and people are going to miss Michael just tremendously.

Gutter slurs against Michael Jackson reveal problems of journalistic competence and that there was a campaign against Jackson

I've just about had enough of the Daily Mail.

It really thinks it can write anything it likes and there's no consequences to that.

Its position in the market is one of supposedely representing the interests of conservative middle England, but when it comes to some subjects it represents as much gutter garbage as the Sunday Sport or The Star.

The Mail's latest cracker is a staggering article about Michael Jackson.

I've never actually read an article in any newspaper in my life that's a complete fabrication, a complete heap of nonsense and lies from start to finish, until just now.

This is a rare gem at least in its inability to hide that, it really is. Congratulations to its writer, a so-called celebrity biographer named Mr. Ian Halperin. Unfortunately for Mr. Halperin, nonsense has a certain pattern, it's identifiable, it has a certain smell, it's unmistakable, and it repeats itself.

And this is what nonsense looks like, just mad insane stupid dumb nonsense.

Of course sometimes, journalists are guilty of wanting a particular story to be true, they 'find' they story they want in other little pieces of data. Just so you know that's in exactly the same way as the guy who wants to believe there are heads of C3P0-like robots and domes on the moon does. They want to see what they want to see and they want us to 'see' it too to vindicate themselves.

Sadly I don't even know if I can say for sure that it is the case here, and he hasn't just made the whole thing up whole cloth.

I feel sorry for this guy, because he just doesn't realise in what he's writing what he's writing. He just doesn't get it.

It's fascinating Halperin agrees there never was a real case about Michael Jackson and child abuse. Fascinating as Halperin begins this though by admitting, "I started my investigation convinced that Jackson was guilty".

So he had already come to the conclusion in that case.

But Halperin says aha, but never mind because dah dah DAHH! Jackson was really gay.

Was he ?

Around Michael and around people around Michael there will be lots of different people with all kinds of stories to tell, in exactly the same way that when people are employed in a job somewhere they are going to have a lot of stories and things they have heard about the boss.

Some of that is a kind of subordinate/working class angst and resentment, some of it is just to pass the time of day, or gossip about something at lunch and some of it is to try to make life more interesting than it is.

But I think it's important not to forget the obvious. Michael Jackson was a huge celebrity, perhaps the biggest and greatest of all time. Just like Elvis and others there's going to be a lot of people both women and gay guys who really believe they have had affairs with Michael and they were really part of his life and this just goes with the territory for anyone like that.

Just pretty convenient for Halperin then Michael Jackson can't directly defend himself now.

Ian Halperin claims he has seen a photo of Michael and an 'aspiring actor'. Is it a photo of them having sex ? Show us the photo then. If you have it publish it. Otherwise I've got a photo of me and Britney Spears. We had an affair. I'm telling you it's the truth I swear it so I do. Exclusive to my blog!

The other interesting thing is this idea of 'streams of lovers' coming and going. Funny these celebrities always have insatiable sexual appetites. It's never restrained is it ? And despite how ill Halperin claims Jackson was: i.e he couldn't sing, couldn't dance anymore, could barely talk, walk or think, was regularly collapsing, was drugged up to his eyeballs and not eating (I kind of agree with those last two based on other things I've read) yet had libido and was having plenty of sexual activity.

Needless to say I don't believe that, and we're starting to see what Mr. Halperin's article is.

As for predicting ill health, I'm no medical expert but I would imagine predicting when people are going to die due to medical reasons, even people who are quite ill is going to be difficult, yet Halperin claims he not only 'knew' Jackson was going to die, he knew when Jackson was going to die. You see to me, if anything, that raises alarm bells of a different kind and I'm wondering why (if Halperin can be believed at all) that someone was leaking him stories about Jackson going to die. This makes me concerned.

As Halperin wants to present a checklist of things I think that has to be a reasonable stigmata about the direction of the article/writer/publisher on the subject and he goes on to suggest that 'Michael Jackson was bad because he didn't pay for some hospitality provided to him by some sheik'.

Who cares ? There's a story like that about every celebrity under the Sun. As someone I know said, when Michael Jackson bought those enormous £600,000+ pots (someone remind me was it Harrods?) in that terrible Bashir documentary he almost certainly didn't pay for them, just as almost no other celebrity would either.

The only interesting thing in the whole article is this:

"Sony have been in a position for more than a year where it can repossess Michael’s share of the [Beatles] catalogue. That’s always been Sony’s dream scenario, full ownership.
‘But they don’t want to do it as they’re afraid of a backlash from his fans. Their nightmare is an organised 'boycott Sony' movement worldwide, which could prove hugely costly.'"

This statement I think is somewhere around the truth, and we know that because Michael talked about this himself in a fascinating interview with Jesse Jackson back in 2005. And I believe this is the key to a lot of this stuff and this negative publicity which is fed out to the press in a very specific and deliberate way, and we know Michael complained heavily about a conspiracy against him, which has almost been forgotten since his tragic death.

Apparently Halperin seems actually unaware that this is an area that would account for that negative publicity and the things in his own article. Like I say sometimes we make the story we want in our mind for our own reasons because we want it to be true and we miss the big picture.

Some people, like Halperin will undoubtedly say 'well you're only saying that because you want to believe the best about Michael, and Michael was only talking about a conspiracy because he was just trying to blame something for his own difficulties'

Was he ?

Again this is another one of those cases where you can't have it both ways. Halperin just said in his article at the begining, he just said:

"I could not find a single shred of evidence suggesting that Jackson had molested a child. But I found significant evidence demonstrating that most, if not all, of his accusers lacked credibility and were motivated primarily by money."

I don't know about you, but if those allegations are false, then it makes me wonder about the others and it makes me wonder why Halperin doesn't see that as a serious problem in his article.

No one wishes to be rude, but I think Mr Ian Halperin has demonstrated himself to be not a credible journalist and if not an all out fraud which I think remains a real possibility, a sad desperate opportunist, juvenile flibbertigibbet, gutter tabloid hack, a tool and an actually after reading what I have, frankly something of a moron. Somehow by accident he's actually managed to publish one paragraph of truth amongst a sea of very well-trodden, prototypical, formulaic, dribbling tabloid gossip, slurs and attributions (that are not celebrity specific) which actually explains the rest of his article, yet seems completely unaware of the fact.

There you go.

And the Daily Mail have demonstrated themselves yet again as a vehicle for all of the above.

Although I do enjoy some opinion in the Mail, I have thought for some time that the Mail has actually not served conservative England properly at a number of times. There's a gap in the tabloid market for something more serious, and if people ever start making real newspapers the Mail is in trouble, and I'm sorry to say that as someone who has more or less supported it implicitly. Unfortunately it's shameless opportunism, its ability to leave things out that are politically inconvenient and its showbiz stuff gone so extreme is just making it look like it's begging for readers, and its affecting the thin but vitally important bit of credibility of everything else it publishes.

I'm sure we will quote the Mail here in the future partly out of convenience, and sometimes they do have some good headlines and opinion but we deserve real newspapers as well and the Mail has demonstrated it's simply not up to the description of a real newspaper.

The incredible Michael Jackson

Thriller - Music Video

When I first wrote about this it hadn't sunk in at all. It started to a bit the next day when everywhere I went was playing Michael's songs. It's just so incredibly devastating.

Thriller is one of my all time favourites.

Michael Jackson Dies

I was completely shocked to learn in the last few hours the news that Michael Jackson died. Apparently of a heart attack.

I was huge fan of Michael Jackson as a child and he's a huge influence. Of course we don't know what's happened exactly or what's led up to this, but I kept hearing stories over the last couple of weeks about this postponed tour of Michael Jackson and that he was not eating, was terrified of putting on weight and that he was working with Lou Ferrigno of Incredible Hulk fame to try to get his nutrition and physical self on track. Apparently, I'm just learning these eating difficulties originated 15 years earlier when allegations against him started, and I didn't know until I started reading about this, Jackson had at various times been taking a cocktail of different prescription drugs, although it's not clear if he was still taking any.

It's too early to say obviously, but I think it's kind of interesting and ironic that outlets like ABC News suggest that stress may have been a factor in this. And I just wonder where ABC think that stress came from ? I'd say it's come largely from the media itself.

As well as being a phenomenal legend in entertainment, Michael Jackson also seemed to do some things that were only going to raise an eyebrow or two. Even a hint of anything unusual to do with children is quite enough for any normal person to be aghast. And being aghast is absolutely a perfectly correct reaction, but at the same time it doesn't mean at all that anything actually sinister was ever going on. And from what I've read about this it seems there never was actually any real proof that anything sinister ever was going on, rather Jackson just simply wanted to be like a child.

I have heard it suggested some time ago on Michael Collins Piper's radio show that Michael Jackson may have been set up at some point with what would become allegations against him to extort money out of him perhaps by distorting the above into other allegations which he would have been very vulnerable to, and there certainly seems to be some case in that direction. And we know as well later on he had some financial difficulties.

The BBC in their coverage interviewed Uri Geller, who they describe as a 'close friend', but as I understand it Jackson stopped being friends with Geller some time ago and saw him as a problem and hanger on and someone who betrayed him and he blamed Geller for the dreadful Martin Bashir documentary that led to a court case against Jackson.

Later he was fully acquitted of any wrongdoing and I'm not surprised, if you really were a child abuser why on Earth would you go on worldwide TV and flaunt it around ? It seems more likely it was because Jackson's intentions were entirely innocent of that, albeit highly unusual and perhaps not healthy in other ways, that he did present himself the way he did in that film.

It's a very very bad thing when a huge personality, icon, performer, 'eccentric' and individual leaves this world, especially when the media has had a hand in attacking them as an individual and as an eccentric , trying to bring them down somehow, reveling in publishing negative headlines about them and treating them as a sideshow.

But it also shows that media don't always win these wars with the public.

BBC News interviewed Rob Levine, executive editor of Billboard Magazine who said that he doubted that the likes of Michael Jackson will ever be seen again. Another guest they had on, who's name I didn't catch, suggested that it was the end of an era, the end of the eighties and the music industry that was, the time of mass global stars was over, and that the music industry today is fragmenting, falling apart, and so diverse that it is extremely unlikely you will ever have a global hyper star in the way Jackson was. I don't know about you but I find this pretty scary, and I'm sorry to say I think there's some truth in it.

As I'm writing this I'm watching BBC News with a clip of Michael next to that guy who presents Big Brother. I mean this is not super stardom when people like Michael Jackson are rubbing shoulders with people like that, this is trying to adapt to a world that's changed and dropped these super celebrities in it.

I think the same thing applies to Madonna as well who managed to effectively dissolve a lot of her super star status by moving to the UK and marrying that guy she did. Yeah they still had a lot of pull in today's press, but it's a different kind of pull than they had in the eighties.

In this proletarian clamor for 'equality' led by one thread of the media for their own reasons, the nature of celebrity has changed somewhat, but this is bad news for everyone.

What do we have to look forward to in this scenario ? Boring plebs and trolls fighting for attention on Facebook, Myspace or Twitter dizzy with glee to be made 'equal' to their benign masters ? And that's as well as celebrities using those sites to try to 'communicate ' with the 'real people', almost afraid they will be stripped of anymore of their status if they don't comply with this new game.

A good job then that great artists of any kind will always just produce great work. They do it automatically and anyway and influence others.

RIP Michael.