A Hollow Mourning
John Hinderaker at Power Line took a sensible position on the death of Michael Jackson:
I once did a post called “My Thoughts on Britney Spears,” which for some reason I can’t find in our archives, at a time when she was in the news. It set the record as shortest blog post ever. I don’t have anything to say about Michael Jackson, either; his career mostly coincided with a period in which I wasn’t listening to popular music and I never thought much about him one way or another.
I have been fortunate, I think, to keep company with Hinderaker in this regard and to be blissfully unconcerned about Michael Jackson throughout his career.
But that requires some clarification. It is Michael Jackson the musician and entertainer that bored me. In other respects, he aptly represented some of the most disturbing trends in modern culture, and we would do well amid all the wailing to consider the column by Linda Stasi: “Shed No Tears for this Twisted Sicko.”
OK, I said it — and it’s about time somebody had the nerve to say what millions of people must feel and believe about the once-talented black man who turned himself into a white woman before turning himself into a monster.
But you’d never know any of that if you’d listened for the past week to the endless prattle from the sickening, fawning media and all those Hollywood music phonies who were crying crocodile tears over someone they’d mostly avoided like, well, a pedophile.
Pop music stopped being interesting when it stopped being about music. As a purely social phenomenon, it has nothing positive to offer. Jackson’s life and career epitomize this shift as he moved from talented musician to carnival freak, foraging on an infantile indulgence of every urge.
In his defense, he probably didn’t reach the depths of his personal hell without a lot of help from his friends. The most troubling part, though, is that he had millions upon millions of such friends, fans, willing enablers, or whatever you want to call them.
Stasi concludes:
The King of Pop was a great entertainer — innovative beyond anyone the world had ever seen — but he turned into a disgustingly depraved man who hung an infant off a balcony and forced his kids to walk around with masks, veils, towels and even nets over their faces.
I take issue with the parenthetical. The world has seen innumerable innovators that far surpass Michael Jackson. Jackson will not merit even an honorable mention in the realm of musical innovation, and there is no honor in the other innovations that will define his legacy.
