Michael Jackson

He was a talented guy.  But it's kind of difficult for me mourn a person whose been a pop culture joke for so many years.

Now if peter gabriel had died...

I'm wondering about the rights of the biological mother here, Debbie (forget her last name). She said the children were a product of her egg and a donor's sperm (not Michael Jackson's - guess he didn't want his kids to be mixed - but that is my opinion). The weird thing is, what about the third kid? Again a product of a surrogate mother and donor sperm.The surrogate mother has never been named publicly.

I mean, the thought of Michael Jackson's parents taking custody is scary to me. Bad enough you had Michael Jackson as the father - the face masks the kids wore, the strange way they were hidden...they were never given a chance to be normal.

I've been reading that Debbie will not stand a chance of winning custody. How is that and why is that? Should these kids still walk around with their faces covered in masks, living the life of some twisted fairy tale? The whole thing seems creepy to me on so many levels.

Guess we'll never know why MJ did not use his own sperm with the surrogate mother. I think MJ internalized racism to such an extent that he did not want half black kids. That is a really messed up way of thinking. I can only imagine how it will be living with the whacked out grandfather.

My daughter called me about something else, and mentioned Jackson's death at the outset of the phone call, probably a half hour or so after the news became general.

I can't understand the outpouring of public sentiment.  Then again, few can understand why I was in a funk for a week after Carl Sagan died, and why thinking about his passing can put that lump in my throat.

I guess the good thing is that people are being respectfull this many days in.  Puts a nice face on the general public, as many bad things and many less than respectfull things could be said about Micheal Jackson.

We're the same age, MJ and I (and also the annoying pitch man Billy Mays who died yesterday)  and I remember him as a child singing sensation hitting the scene at the same time as Donny Osmond.  Rock is dead....   Anyway, we all hated Donny Osmand, and while the Jackson 5 wasn't our usual cup of tea, the tunes were catchy, and unlike Osmond, you knew Micheal Jackson was a young singing sensation because he had something besides marketing, called talent. 

Donny Osmond was on the radio because Pat Boone was too old and exposed for them to use to keep black artists off white radio anymore.

I am glad Madonna is still alive. She is so much better.

Maddona makes me want to go back in time and kill the guy who sold herion to Janis Joplin.

The Queen of Pop is a fierce woman and she is an inspiration.

She is still standing law, kicking asses, looking great, selling albums, unlike MJ.

Madonna is steel, compared to the sad ending of MJ.

Tommy_Paine wrote:

Maddona makes me want to go back in time and kill the guy who sold herion to Janis Joplin.

I have always believed she was offed.

takeitslowly wrote:

The Queen of Pop is a fierce woman and she is an inspiration.

She is still standing law, kicking asses, looking great, selling albums, unlike MJ.

Madonna is steel, compared to the sad ending of MJ.

MJ sold wayy more albums n his shit on top of the charts since his death. It aint a good to talk about a dead man like that RIP

edit - wtf who the fucc is weird al w.e why yall tryna take away from MJ?

Back in the spring of '84, "Thriller" was all over the airwaves, or at least on the radio that the little construction crew I worked on listened to.  During one coffee break (with the radio on) I was making my usual dismissive comments about commercial radio (radio on), and this new Michael Jackson sound in particular, when a co-worker said, "Say what you want about him, but the guy's got talent."

Wellsir, he had me there, but I turned up LKJ's "Bass Culture" a little louder during the half-hour drive back to town after work that night.

Interesting story in The Guardian with excerpts from an interview with the woman who was the nanny of MJ's children:

(...) She said the singer's lavish spending was out of control, and that he led an increasingly nomadic lifestyle, moving from country to country and hotel to hotel.

She was dismissed for a final time last December but still visited the children. When she saw them in April she claims Jackson was so broke she had to buy "happy birthday" balloons for Paris on her own credit card.

On an earlier occasion the singer had sent her to Florence to buy antiques for $1m. "We didn't even have a home to live in. So we had to put the antiques in storage," she said.

Rwaramba, who flew from London to Los Angeles yesterday in the hope of being reunited with the children, could potentially find herself at the centre of a billion-pound custody battle. There are conlficting reports as to whether the mother of the eldest two, former nurse Debbie Rowe, is seeking custody. The Jackson family are reported to be offering Rowe visitation rights.

"I took these babies in my arms on the first day of each of their lives. They are MY babies," Rwaramba told Barak.

She claims she was sacked by Jackson because she was getting too close to the children but had fully expected to be reinstated soon.

She said he would regularly fire her then beg her to return as he was unable to look after the children or himself.

She told Barak: "These poor babies ... I was getting phone calls that they were being neglected. Nobody was cleaning the rooms because Michael didn't pay the housekeeper.

"I was getting calls telling me Michael was in such a bad shape. He wasn't clean. He hadn't shaved. He wasn't eating well. I used to do all this for him and they were trying to get me to go back."(...)

There may be the indication of a new pattern here: rich or relentlessy combative men getting custody - or essentially buying children from surrogate mothers as MJ did - and then not knowing or bothering to care for them.

In an astonishing interview Debbie - mother of Prince, 12, and Paris, 11 - said she was artificially inseminated by an anonymous donor.

And she told how, despite Jackson's death, she does not WANT custody of the children and NEVER expects to see them again.

from here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/28/debbie-rowe-michael-is-no_n_222027.html

Rexdale_Punjabi wrote:

really MJ was a real brotha and I dont even think he molested those kids notice how it was all just white kids goin after the brotha with the deepest poccets. The fact that he had been the butt of jokes for so long didnt help. RIP u know

 

and fucc madonna she cant sing

R_P, you cannot possibly be saying that these small little boys went after Jackson because he was black. For christ sake, MJ admitted he liked to sleep with little boys. This is nothing new.

And I do not believe that you aren't supposed to speak ill of the dead. But you also believe OJ was innocent - which I definitely don't, and it has jack shit to do with his skin colour.

Not everyone is a racist because they acknowledge the past behaviour of a black man., We do it to all celebrities, all the time.

Polly_B - the first source to print the article referred to above was News of the World so I'm not so sure it has mucg validity as I read that she wanted custody of her kids and said, in fact, that she should have custody.

remind wrote:

I would like to see the autopsy report in iits full detail, as I remember well the allegations of nutering to keep his voice.

I don't think I'd heard of this before. But it might provide an explanation as to why he couldn't use his own sperm to father the children.

The poor bastard led such a tortured life. Musically he was a genius, and socially a cripple. Even if the allegations against him are true (and given the giant target he was, I think it's impossible for anyone but those involved to know for sure), it's hard not to feel sorry for the man.

edited to say

For the record, I think that at least some of the allegations must be true. Too much smoke for there to be no fire. And that said, I still feel sorry for the poor bastard.

Tommy_Paine wrote:

I dunno.  I have a friend who overdosed on heroin, and came within a whisker of dying. I think if you take that drug long enough, sooner or later you get a batch that's less dilluted than you think, and suddenly you are asleep and not bothering to breath.

Lot's of factors tie into overdoses, not just more pure.

In Janis's case, there is much more to the story, that just does not make sense, at least to me! ;)

Quote:

I was talking to another daughter about the merits, or lack of them, of today's generation of rock/pop artists.  And I was struggling to put my finger on something, and finally came to realize that the difference between the music of the 50's, 60's and early 70's is that artists were constantly experimenting.  There seems to be a lack of that today.

Micheal Jackson, if I can say something nice, was an experimentor in that tradition.

Excellent point regarding experimenting.

In respect to MJ, the last time I really listened to anything of his was "I'll Be There",  favorite waltz tune at school dances,  and then we discovered, Led Zep, Procol Harem, Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, and the "Canadian" bands.

Good Luck, Cassia.

I remember when Elvis died.  I was working as a summer student in a copper tube factory, on nights.  This was my first exposure to this kind of overblown media hype.

By those standards, we have a ways to go yet. 

Anyone starting a pool on the date of the first claim of someone seeing Micheal Jackson at a convenience store?

If we're about to start with the MJ jokes, I received this from a friend this morning:   Due to the fact that Michael Jackson was 99% plastic, he will be melted down into LEGO's , so kids can play with him for a change.

Groan.

I suspect there's 100's more out there.

And check out the link from The Onion I posted in the obituary thread.

Weird Al Yankovic-Fat

Michael Jackson - Thriller

remind wrote:

I would like to see the autopsy report in iits full detail, as I remember well the allegations of nutering to keep his voice.

This might answer it:

His family suggested in court papers on Monday that he had died intestate.

Oh, wait . . . .

I can't find a reputable source for Debbie Rowe claiming Jackson wasn't the father.  Infact, I recall hearing earlier on the news her lawyer stating she didn't say that.  Most of the sources aren't really reputable sites.  Huffington Post links to some site and it's not even there.

As for the allegations against him, many say he was a pedophile.  I'm not sure I would go that far based on the two legal incidents.  In both those cases, the parents really brought into question whether the charges were accurate or not.  The father in the first case was caught on tape that made the case sound like extortion.  The second parent had a sordid history.  And the first thing she did was contact the lawyer from the first case before even going to police.  All of this brought more than a reasonable doubt to any charge.

That said, I think he was very odd and that included his behaviour with children.  But pedophile?  No.

I think MJ was either out of touch with reality, or perhaps had a distorted view of reality - there's a famous interview being shown over and over again on all the networks, with Barbara Walters where MJ says, yes, he sleeps with visiting children in his bed as if it is the most normal thing in the world, and he asks Walters if she does the same - and she answers very strongly "no" and is quite shocked at the idea, and indeed points out to him how inapprpriate it is to do so, and he appears surprised at this.

ETA: my guess is that MJ did not have suitable role models while growing up, nor any kind of parental guidance - just pressure to perform, perform, and perform, for:

I'm not really surprised he died young. he went through so much stress since literally from age 5-50. this huge comeback may have just pushed him over the edge.

Also, i read that about 12 people committed suicide over the news of his death. saddening.

I hate the fact that he gets a pass on pedophlia because he is wierd and sick and rich and famous.

I'm not sure he got a free pass on that. 

Personally, I don't quite know what to make of those allegations.  I think the tale of Fatty Arbuckle should give everyone a caution regarding this kind of stuff.

Or, if Micheal Jackson was indeed some kind of pedophile, then it certainly casts some parents in the role of pimping out their own child, in either a premeditated or postmeditated way.  I think, particularly in the first case that was settled out of court, that makes me want to vomit.

I tend to think, pedophile or not, Micheal Jackson was also the product of a phenomena for which I borrow the term "Ceasar Madness."  Normally, we exchange ideas and notions with friends and aquaintences (or message boards)  and we take in how they are recieved, either rebuked, complimented, etc.   It's what keeps us sane.  Micheal Jackson, and a good many others, have probably been  surrounded by people who tell him every idea that he has is a good one, that he can do no wrong. (everyone around him just wanting to keep the money fountain flowing, or in the case of Roman Emporers, one's head connected to one's neck)

Eventually, that just drives a person crazy.

It's a shame that in the end MJ was probably more famous for being famous than he was for his music. My teenagers know who he is and that's about it - they liked Thriller when they were younger because of the plot much more than the music and dancing.

And his legacy, right now at least, is a bunch of very bad jokes involving young boys.

On the subject of MJ's alledged pedophelia his brother said he was "probably" guilty but decided to support him in court because MJ wouldn't last in prison.

 http://www.hiphopmusic.com/inane/archives/2006/03/jermaine_jackso.htm

 and his brother in law said he was positive he was guilty

 http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/brother.in.law%20says%20jackson.s%20guilty

 Take those statements for what they're worth.

Yep abnormal you are correct.