Scattered Thoughts On Michael Jackson

I did not watch Michael Jackson's memorial service, but I've got CNN's . . . post game show (?) on the background. Apparently, Stephen A. Smith now works for CNN, as a commentator on issues effecting the black community. Who thought that this was a good idea? He just used the word "classful" twice, within about a minute.

I really liked the music that Michael Jackson made before Dangerous, but the deification of Michael Jackson blows my mind. The revisionist history about his being a role model, and about the leadership he showed in bringing disparate branches of the black community together, just sounds like bullshit to me. If you stopped somebody on the street three weeks ago and asked them if Michael Jackson was a black leader, there is no way they would have answered in the affirmative. I would be willing to believe that about Billie Holiday, Paul Robeson, Nina Simone, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, the memebers of Public Enemy, you name it - but not Michael Jackson. He was never politcal, he was never really seen as a good role model, and he did just about everything in his power to ensure that people would not think of him as black. What am I missing? Seeing his brothers, dark-skinned and handsome, sitting together in the crowd, only reminded me further of how much of a freak he had become over the past twenty years.

He was an incredible talent, and in the mid-1980's he was arguably as famous as anybody in the world has ever been. I have long loved Off the Wall, Thriller and The Ultimate Collection's Jackson Five edition for the great dance songs they contained. Now, I will treasure them not just for their music, but because, like Are You Experienced? or Nevermind or college highlight reels of Len Bias, of what might have been, and of the enormous talent the world missed out of because of Jackson's premature demise. I would like to remember him for this: