Bad

In the case of Michael Jackson’s death, I was listening to the radio when it happened, and the radio announcer was literally crying while announcing it. It was pretty wild.

Memorial

am live-tweeting the Michael Jackson Memorial as it is being broadcast live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Tweets will be in reverse order, with updates at the top of the article as they are posted. Refresh screen for updates:



*This concludes the memorial service for Michael Jackson at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
*"We pray this moment will not be forgotten. . .as a reminder that we, too, can make a change."
*"Even know the King of Pop must bow his knee to the King of Kings."
*"Let us stop judging people by the color of their skin and the accent of their voice." (prayer)
*Closing prayer, pastor asks everyone to join hands.
*"My prayer is that this is more than a memorial, but a remembrance of what he means to us."
*"We should all look at the man, or the woman, in the mirror. . .and make that change, starting today."
*Pastor Lucious Smith, who opened the service, is making closing remarks.
*Music to "Man in the Mirror" (without MJ vocals) being played as casket exits with pallbearers.

The transcendent performer

Do we remember Michael Jackson as the transcendent performer, who, as a former Sony music executive said, “fused R&B and pop to create what became a world culture?” Or do we remember the other side of Jackson’s legacy: the accusations of pedophilia and the radical plastic surgery that destroyed his face and seemed to deny his race?According to musicians he collaborated with, Jackson displayed the comportment and disposition of a sweet child. Former Beatle, Paul McCartney (who may be one of the few people alive who can relate the heights of fame Jackson reached) called Jackson, "the massively talented boy man with a gentle soul."There is a haunting corollary to that first question: Did our strange society, its expectations and the pressures of extreme fame “create” the other side of Jackson’s legacy? Is the Jackson duality a reflection of us? (“I am talking about the man in the mirror.”)That is, of course, a trite and obvious question. Yes, to some degree fame contributed to his eccentricities; he was a superstar since he was 10 years old. But he would never have been so popular if his product weren’t so appealing, so magnificent.

Moon Walker

As a kid who grew up dancing, Michael Jackson loomed larger than life. At school, every talent show was capped by the best Jackson impersonator and every playground dance battle ended with someone busting out a full MJ routine. Even a mimic, wearing a white kitchen glove, could throw the packed school auditorium into palpitations with the right display of Jackson’s trademark moves, especially the moonwalk, which Jackson first debuted on March, 25, 1983, one day after I was born.Michael Jackson didn’t invent the moonwalk, but he did make it his own, performing it with such technical mastery, and to such a wide audience, that the move and the man became inseparable. The legendary first performance occurred during a live television special, Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, which drew a one-night audience of 47 million people. The move comes late in the performance of his hit single “Billy Jean” and is, in essence, a simple back slide. The same move had been demonstrated by countless performers, from Cab Calloway to Fred Astaire, and was a standard among tap dancers for decades. Yet something about the way Jackson performed it that night made it stand out for the ages.

Black or White

In the grab bag of oddities that is the second half of Michael Jackson’s biography — the seclusion at Neverland, the child molestation charges, the short-lived marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, the dangling of an infant over a balcony parapet, the illnesses, the addictions, the money problems, the unlikely friendships with Arab sheikhs — none is weirder and more troubling to some than Wacko Jacko’s increasingly deracinated physical appearance.As the young star of the Jackson 5, Jackson — the enigmatic and reclusive megastar who died yesterday of cardiac arrest at the age of 50 — began his career with medium-brown skin, African features and a flowing natural hairstyle, the very picture of a handsome young black male. Sometime in the early 1980s, however, Jackson’s skin began to grow lighter, and within a few years he appeared as pale as Robert Pattinson’s vampire in Twilight. At the same time, he underwent a series of plastic surgeries, including several rhinoplasties — which whittled away his nose until, by the end, it barely existed — and the addition of a cleft in his chin. His lips grew noticeably thinner, and his brow and cheekbones also appeared to have been surgically altered. For many, the overall effect of these changes was to make Jackson appear more Caucasian than African American. It was difficult not to suspect that his ongoing physical transformation reflected a desire to escape his racial identity. This was particularly disturbing to many blacks, for whom the specter of internalized racism remains an ongoing concern. Fats Waller’s 1929 jazz standard “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue,” later featured in the musical Ain’t Misbehavin’, was a pointed and poignant reminder of how the racism from outside can turn inward: “I’m white inside / but that don’t help my case / ’cause I can’t hide / what is on my face.” In Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama — a close contemporary of Jackson’s — writes about being shaken by a Life magazine article featuring a black man who had tried to bleach his skin white.Jackson knew exactly what was being said about him, and he went out of his way to refute it. In his 1988 autobiography, Moon Walk, he admitted some of the plastic surgeries but denied others, attributing his evolving facial structure to, among other things, hairstyle changes and stage lighting. Far from bleaching his skin, as was widely rumored, Jackson later claimed to suffer from vitiligo, a condition that disrupts skin pigmentation; his paleness, he said, was caused by treatments for the disease and makeup used to even out its blotching effects. In addition, he said, he had been diagnosed with lupus, which, combined with the vitiligo, resulted in a vampiric sensitivity to sunlight.

Then to Now

The seclusion at Neverland, the child molestation charges, the short-lived marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, the dangling of an infant over a balcony parapet, the illnesses, the addictions, the money problems, the unlikely friendships with Arab sheikhs — none is weirder and more troubling to some than Wacko Jacko’s increasingly deracinated As the young star of the Jackson 5, Jackson — the enigmatic and reclusive megastar who died yesterday of cardiac arrest at the age of 50 — began his career with medium-brown skin, African features and a flowing natural hairstyle, the very picture of a handsome young black male. Sometime in the early 1980s, however, Jackson’s skin began to grow lighter, and within a few years he appeared as pale as Robert Pattinson’s vampire in Twilight. At the same time, he underwent a series of plastic surgeries, including several rhinoplasties — which whittled away his nose until, by the end, it barely existed — and the addition of a cleft in his chin. His lips grew noticeably thinner, and his brow and cheekbones also appeared to have been surgically altered.

King of Pop

The King of Pop is Dead. I don’t know of anybody that is really surprised. Think of any other celebrity and you’d at least register a blip on the emotional surprise meter. Not here.
Jackson was talented. He was also, obviously a tortured soul, regardless of the reason. From my experience in show business, being a child star is a tough road to travel. Being a child star in what has widely been reported as a dysfunctional family, then add all the pressures of superstardom, and throw in a bizarre addiction to plastic surgery, and you have formula for an unhappy life and a premature death