2003-02-07

MJ recap

Well, you know, of course I watched the Michael Jackson thing last night and of course I ended up discussing it at length today, via email, with Paula and Aaron, and after sitting on it for several hours, I've come to a few conclusions:

• The man is clearly off his rocker.
• Having said this, however, I thought the program itself was horribly unfair. I'm no expert on documentary film, but I'm fairly certain that if I followed you around for 8 months, I could successfully edit all of that footage and make you look completely insane in under two hours.

At any rate, the whole thing was incredibly sad. After the inevitable jokes have made their way around the internet, the indefatigable truth of the matter is this: here's a guy that's more or less been able to buy his way into this completely delusional state. He's surrounded by people who either cannot (children, and fellow celebs who are similarly not playing with a full deck any longer, such as Liza Minelli and Liz Taylor) or will not (his staff, who are probably paid a mint to keep their traps shut) question his motives, whatever those might be. What was charming, if somewhat eccentric, in 1983 is now just plain creepy, no matter what kind of family values spin he flails about for. As Aaron noted, Michael Jackson is in desperate need of a serious PR overhaul, and I can't even begin to fathom where you'd begin with a situation like that, with someone who's managed to so utterly destroy himself.

I say this as someone who genuinely enjoys quite a bit of the music he's created. I still maintain that Off The Wall is one of the best pop albums of the past 25 years. But he's slowly but surely been losing his marbles since then, and watching the old videos and footage of him at his prime is like watching a ghost.

lisamcc at 9:43 p.m.

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