On Michael Jackson's Birthday

By Josephine Zohny
As published on EURWeb

Michael Jackson turns 47 years old today. As a preteen, he could brag about having four consecutive #1 hits. At a time when most are struggling to pay the rent and student loans, he’d recorded the biggest selling album of all time, Thriller. By his 30th birthday, he owned the publishing rights to the Beatles’ catalog. When middle age was still many years away, he was honored by the Grammy Awards for lifetime achievement. And now, with AARP membership inching closer and closer, he’s been charged, tried and acquitted of ten felony counts.

Growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I eagerly awaited every move that the King of Pop would make. I watched in amazement as he descended from the ceiling of a subway station in full buckled regalia, I begged my mother to let me stay up late and watch his prime-time interview with Oprah and I eagerly gossiped with my grandmother about the real reason he was going to perform in a wheel chair on the Soul Train Awards. His talent seemed limitless. Who else could sing like that? Tevin Campbell and El Debarge made noble attempts, but their falsettos lacked the grittiness that oozed out of MJ whenever he got just a little heated in song. Who could dance like that? Hammer and Bobby Brown tried, but they paled in comparison.

Michael Jackson was more than just an entertainer. To many, he was a superhero, mentor and best friend all wrapped up into one non-threatening package. If you were an ethnically ambiguous child coming of age right before it was popular to look “exotic,” you felt validated by the simple message of tolerance and acceptance presented in the song and video for “Black or White.” There’s no doubt in my mind that there are those who can trace the first time they realized that there was a world outside their doorstep that needed help to hearing “Man In The Mirror.” And, of course, who didn’t attempt the moonwalk (or in the case of the really daring, the crotch grab)? We were raised on Michael Jackson. We saw him when he was on top of the world and in the past several years, we’ve seen him at his lowest.

After the first allegations of child molestation surfaced in 1993 (for which Jackson was never charged), it wasn’t cool in certain circles to like Michael Jackson anymore. Many of the same children who gleefully bopped to “Billie Jean” and held hands and sang “Heal The World” were now adolescents consumed by angst-driven rock and rap. The second allegations came about and Jackson’s once intensely private world was ripped open, exposed for all the world to see. And it turned out that the Peter Pan of Pop had a serious penchant for porn. Although the trial ultimately pronounced Jackson “Not Guilty“ of any wrongdoing, it did little to win back the hearts of those aforementioned tortured adolescents (now 20-somethings), too jaded by life to fully embrace a man who admits, in all seriousness, that his favorite thing to do is climb trees. Could it be that Michael’s success was connected to his childlike persona and once that image was tarnished, the magic that had always been synonymous with him disappeared, as well?

If that were the case, we wouldn’t be grasping so hard to anything that vaguely resembles Michael. Justin Timberlake’s nasal faux-soul was embraced by many, proclaiming him the second coming. Usher’s gyrations excite crowds, though they lack the originality or inspiration of the Gloved One. R&B singer Omarion’s video for “Touch” is a trashier remake of “The Way You Make Me Feel.” Jackson-biting is such an epidemic that the comic-strip The Boondocks recently lampooned the imitators, reminding them that “Michael Jackson is an artist, not a genre.” We continue to eat up anything that has to do with Michael Jackson. His trips to Middle Eastern countries are cover stories on New York tabloids. Nancy Grace’s ratings during the first few months of her show could only be attributed to the public’s fascination with the Jackson trial, as they dropped significantly in the time following the case. We still want him, we just don’t know what we want from him.

Hidden on Jackson’s much criticized 2001 album, Invincible, is the pleading song “Whatever Happens” that chronicles a relationship wrought with turbulence. Whether Jackson is speaking of a personal relationship - or his relationship with us, the public -is debatable. Jackson sings “He's working day and night/thinks he'll make her happy/forgetting all the dreams that he had…” but then implores “Whatever happens, don’t let go of my hand.” Some 20 years earlier, on Off The Wall’s “Workin’ Day and Night,” a young Jackson told us that “You say that workin' is what a man's supposed to do/But I say it ain't right if I can't give sweet love to you?” Will Jackson always be wounded man-child, begging for our love, working and putting on a show to earn it? When I think of all that he’s accomplished in his life and all that he’s given to the music, entertainment and even cable news industries, I wonder if there’s anything left for him to give. He certainly doesn’t owe us, but because he’s been around for my entire life, I can’t help but feel that there’s something missing when he’s not in the public eye.

Perhaps Jackson’s talents will free themselves from the confines of the pop-culture prison the singer has occupied for the past ten or so years. Like the mischievous lost boy of Neverland whom Jackson is so fond of likening himself, I still see a certain spark of genius in his eye. But the music and the magic can come later. Today I hope he does something that he was never able to do as the little boy who worked so feverishly to entertain us - have some cake, a party and peace. After 47 years on this planet and 42 years in the spotlight, he deserves at least that.

Happy Birthday, Mike.

Download baby MJ singing "Let It Be" (right click save as)

The Kite Runner

Yesterday, at my friend Erin's urging, I picked up The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I wanted to read it before, but was temporarily side tracked when Danyel Smith didn't seem thrilled with it initially (I'm easily swayed by the opinions of others when it comes to literature).

There are few books that I've wept while reading (Christ in Concrete and Home and Father and Son from The Ways of White Folks for example) and this was one of them. I finished the entire book last night. I wanted to put it down because it made me cry so much, but it was that sort of compelling sadness that pulls you in again. You continue to read because you want the characters to be alright, but also because you want to know what other sorrow they could possibly bear.

My heart bled for the father and the son who met the same fate. The subplot about the taboo of male on male rape was a bit unsettling, but served effectively as a metaphor for the reality of both the Hazara underclass and Afghanistan itself. The novel drove home the point that life is harder in some places that any of us can comprehend, especially if we're Americans.

Honestly, I don't know what makes for a good book the way I believe I know what makes for good music, but I enjoyed The Kite Runner and eagerly await Hosseini's next book.

A&E left me on the cutting room floor

Alas, my cable television debut turned out to be anticlimactic since the editors of A&E's Growing Up Gotti decided that I wasn't the most important part of the show. On the episode that aired this week, you can see me for literally two seconds - walking behind Victoria and looking like I want to beat the photographers on the red carpet. Catch it when it reruns and witness my moment of reality TV fame.

**plug alert** If you haven't noticed, a scan of my first hard byline is available to the right. It's from Zink magazine's September 2005 issue, on stands now.

Beware of spikes and homeland security

My NYU insurance ran out on Saturday. Thinking I was slick, I scheduled a bevy of doctor's appointments last week so that I could make the most of what was left of it. On Sunday, I came down with the nastiest stomach flu I've ever had in my life. It might have been food poisoning, but I think that generally lasts about 24 hours and I'm still a little queasy. My new insurance doesn't kick in for a minute, so whatever malady I have shall remain a mystery. I do hope to go back to work tomorrow because I have a meeting with Wyclef's charity (and his publicist, my friend Erin) about Putumayo making a donation.

Anyway, this bug has left me exhausted, so I've been going to sleep at uncharacteristically early hours. Last night, I was peacefully dreaming away when I got a call on my cell phone. I looked at the time and figured it was some friends from overseas with no respect for time zones, so I didn't pick up. It started ringing again and I answered somewhat angrily. It wasn't anyone from overseas, it was my roommate.

"Josie, it's Kristina, I'm downstairs and I'm bleeding really badly, I need you to bring a towel quick quick quick...I think I'm going to faint, there's so much blood..."

What....the...fuck!

So, I raced downstairs without pants on. I had a big t-shirt on, but I'm pretty sure my ass was hanging out and if anybody was in our lobby, they would have had a nice view of my drawers. I found Kristina all bent over, with blood oozing...no, pouring out of her foot. It was seriously at least a cup of blood on the ground, all coagulated and whatnot. It turns out that as she was walking home from her friend's house, she tripped (as she's prone to doing), but this time she caught her shoe on a big metal spike and it punctured so deeply that it went through her heels and into the fatty layer on her foot.

We got her up to our apartment and put her foot in the tub while I called 911. They came with an ambulance and a ton of firemen (complete with an ax!). The firemen were looking around our apartment a little too much for my taste, or perhaps I took Cokie Roberts' book too seriously (her father was a fireman who used to steal from the people he was rescuing!). They took Kristina off and kept her at Bellvue for 8 hours and told her that she can't walk on it for at least a month, that she tore tendons and that she'll require physical therapy.

Of, course, Krisitina's insurance also ended on Saturday. Life's a bitch sometimes.
-------------------
George from negrophile.com and allaboutgeorge.com was kind enough to email me this excellent piece by Diana Abu-Jaber in which she speaks of being detained at an airport as a security risk.

Something in me snapped. "There isn't any legitimate reason that you've sent me
here -- it's just because of my name! You just grab anyone named Abu-Jaber or
Abdul-Rahman or Al-Hussain! Isn't that right?" The man smiled blankly. "I'm not
at liberty to discuss this case," he said. I wanted to scream, to jump on a chair and shout: "I'm an American citizen; a novelist; I probably teach English literature to your children." Or would that all be counted against me?

My mother and I often have pretty heated disagreements about the way homeland security handles the threat of terrorism. She thinks that they should do whatever they need to in order to keep our country safe. My retort is usually along the lines that she kept her maiden name and is white, so of course she would say that, she doesn't have anything to worry about.

I haven't traveled internationally lately, but my father has. Considering that his name is Ahmed and that, in my opinion, he bears a striking resemblance to Mohamed Al Fayed (shouldn't we be trying to cash in on Harrods?), he's an easy target. But it's ridiculous to yellow light us for flight because of our names. Too many of us have the same damn name. Most of them derive from the Koran, or from the place from which we came. There are a bagillion Zohnys, so one of us was bound to end up on a no fly list somehow and as a result, the rest of us get pulled aside. This name based profiling is a ridiculous solution - are white men given a background check anytime they buy manure, considering that more than a few have been known to make bombs with it? If, say, Asian people had a higher incidence of drunk driving violations than the rest of the population, would they have to undergo toxicology tests before buying cars?

De jure profiling on the basis of last name origin can only lead to de jure profiling based upon how we look (as several NYC legislators proposed doing in the wake of the London bombings - because we all "look a certain way). Now, you and I know that often times people in law enforcement aren't the brightest and you know what would be the result of such a move? A bunch of Sikhs and Puerto Ricans would be detained and then even more civil liberties would be violated. It's a vicious cycle. Diana Abu Jaber ends her piece saying "I had no idea that being an American would ever be this hard." I wonder when we'll actually be Americans. Do I even want to be?
-------------

In writing news, I'm interviewing Blackalicious for Zink magazine's special November music issue. I love, love, love the band, so I'm really psyched about this one. Yay. I can't wait.

My brain hurts today, so read these stories instead.

Catholic Priest defends Marylin Manson.

Mimi and Marshall hate each other.

Eminem's a girlie-man.

Lyor Cohen's getting pink slip happy.

Green Eyed Soul

I think I may love Smokey Robinson more than I love Michael Jackson. I've been known to admit (to a select few) that I actually think his falsetto is stronger than MJ's (I also think El Debarge's falsetto is better...blasphemy!). Oh, how I love Smokey. He's one of the most under-appreciated artists of the soul era. "Tracks of My Tears," "Tears of a Clown" and "I Second That Emotion" all occupy space on my top 30 favorite songs, ever. Singer, songwriter, producer - he helped cultivate the talents of The Temptations and Mary Wells. Bob Dylan even referred to him as "America's greatest living poet." In the early 70s, he took on the role of VP of the Motown corporation, a move unprecedented for an artist. Apparently he suffered from a cocaine addiction for about a decade, but that slipped under my radar until recently and it doesn't make me think less of him since talented people are often saddled with demons.

I can't concentrate on other tasks when a Smokey song comes on. I have to stop, listen and absorb. There's such clarity in his tone and no pretense in his lyrics. Even "Mickey's Monkey" stops me dead in my tracks and has done so since I was a little girl. I like the fact that he never fell into what has become a RnB cliche - using vibrato as a substitute for actual soul. He sang in pure, straight voice. Singers train for years to do that and he did it effortlessly. I dare anybody on the Hot 100 to try it, they'll fail.

np: "Just My Soul Responding"

Hair anxiety

So, my picture will be accompanying my piece in ColorLines and this means that I need to take one in high resolution.

I don't know what to do with my hair.

Now, the title of the piece is "Pass me the damn flat iron!" so it would make sense for it to be straight. However, sometimes bone straight makes my already broad cheeks appear broader. My mother tells me to wear my hair curly (Ha! Easy for her to say with her stick straight strands), but I think my hair looks like a rat's nest when it's like that (my curls aren't uniform...it's curl meets waves meets one inexplicably straight section of hair). And then there is the little fact that the whole article is about me straightening my hair and the implications of it. Maybe I should compromise and wear it wavy?

I understand that this is terribly trivial and superficial, but seriously - I need advice. Who votes for straight? Who votes for curly? Who votes for a hat?

Yee Haw!

Can you name one Italian American with a fondness for country music?

No? Well, let me help you out.


Tim McGraw, who apparently has an Italian American mother, is being honored by the National Italian American Foundation.

"With a name like McGraw, you don't think about (getting such an honour) very
often. But I do have strong Italian heritage, from my great-grandfather DONATO
AUGUSTO D'AGOSTINO, my grandpop GIOVANNI GIUSEPPI D'AGOSTINO - and my mom teaching me to make pasta and spaghetti sauce, which is one of my specialities."

Aw, I have no fucking clue how to make pasta sauce. But, yanno...I do kinda like Dolly Parton.

More sad news, a little happy news and some venomous hatred

On the heels of Peter Jennings' passing, publisher John H. Johnson has also passed away, at the age of 87. Johnson was the founder of Ebony/Jet publications and those magazines paved the way for virtually every "ethnic" publication you can think of. I remember throwing a Jet in our shopping cart every time we went to the grocery store because it was "kid-size" and often featured my beloved Michael, Whitney and Janet. Ebony irks me now because the writing caters to those with no more than a sixth grade education (and that seems insulting to the audience), but what matters is that his intention was great and he realized it. His passing definitely marks the end of an era.

Link to Chicago Tribune obituary.

While we're on the topic of ethnic publishing, I'm happy to report that ColorLines, published by the Applied Research Center, is printing an article I wrote about perceptions of beauty through the scope of ethnicity in their next issue. I'm excited. I enjoy the publication and have discussed articles from the magazine on this blog before. Keep an eye out for more details about the release date and such.

The next order of business - Jeanine Pirro.

-edit-

She's not worth the space on this blog. I retract my diatribe.

RIP Peter Jennings.

Sad news. Peter Jennings passed away yesterday from lung cancer at the age of 67. As a little baby geek growing up, I never missed one of his newscasts. He wasn't salacious, he wasn't over the top - he was honest. In recent years, my viewership had faltered due to inconveniently timed college classes and the rise of cable news, but he remained one of my favorites. He also was one of the only reporters who didn't vilify Arabs (and he even dated one of us - Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi).

Link to NYTimes obituary.

He'll be missed.

Sudan

Read this book. Now. You know nothing about the Sudan until you read this book. Favorite line from the book ... "I'll liberate Africa with my penis."

Not to speak ill of the dead (and my condolences to his family and those who admired him), but the passing of John Garang will hopefully prove to be a positive thing for the country. The Sudan needs a leader who is willing to acknowledge the reality of the situation - not that it's the big, bad, evil Muslim "Arabs" against the poor, impoverished black Christians - but that it's black people doing detrimental things to other black people. Calling one Arab and one black is a western tactic meant to further demonize the so-called Arab world. Some of you may be familiar with The Baltimore Sun's Gregory Kane - one of the few westerners who "gets" the situation in the Sudan and wrote extensively about it...he even won the Pulitzer. He's also smart enough to know that ..."Arabs come in all complexions. They range from the late Syrian President Hafez el Assad - who, if you put him in America, would look like a regular white guy - to those very dark with kinky hair. Put Sudan's Arab population in America in Western dress and you'd be hard pressed to distinguish between them and African-Americans." My own paternal grandfather, born in Khartoum in 1911, was a dark chocolate skinned man, only classified as "Arab" because he had a last name that smacked of Turkish imperialism. Definitions of color are a little different and more literal in North/East Africa, but he would certainly be considered black in America.

John Garang elicited sympathy from the American conservative hyper-Christian* right wing by playing into their intense dislike of Muslims. Now, I'd venture to say that most of these people don't particularly like black folks, either, but they're willing to "help out" blacks who love Jesus if it means that they could threaten the power of the evil Muslims. John Garang, of course, failed to address the fact that Christian missionaries inserting themselves into the Sudanese landscape were big contributors to the problems the Sudanese still face. They pitted the South against the North. They enabled someone like John Garang to prey upon those who had essentially been brainwashed. Do not forget - John Garang cared not of the Western Sudanese people who were being massacred because they were Muslims - he cared not that they "looked" more like him (this could lead to a longer discussion of why the situation in Dafur isn't exactly a genocide, although it is an atrocity...more problematic about the situation is that it's black people doing harm to other black people over a crappy, infertile area of land). Garang's fight for "independence" was not about black autonomy, it was about a power hungry man, who had been educated and highly employed by the very government he was now opposing, destroying any and everything in his path - manipulating public opinion and eventually winning the favor of President Idiot, George W. Bush who fell for the "poor Christians" schtick. Of course, people are quick to forget that Garang "was guilty of committing serious human rights violations in southern parts of the country [and] did not tolerate dissent and anyone who disagreed with him or the leadership was either imprisoned or killed," the very thing he was supposedly revolting against. This is not to say that the government of the Sudan isn't corrupt - it certainly is and has a horrible history of condoning the servitude of the lower classes (and not just southern Christians, poor Muslims, too) being a generally accepted way of life - but John Garang and his "vision" wasn't a better alternative.

*I'm not beating up on Christians. I'm Catholic, but I'll freely admit that many of Africa's problems stem from the church trying to "save and civilize the savages." My mother raised money for the "pagan babies" as a child in Catholic school in the '60s - if you raised enough money, you could name your own. She named her's Ringo.

Hotter than Hades

It's too freakin' hot in New York City. This is a problem because when it's this hot, I can't wear makeup. And when I don't wear makeup, I look twelve*.

Gods of meteorology, please make the weather temperate so that I can get all dolled up again. :(

*pic taken with my new camera phone - I heart toys.

Jermaine Dupri says MJ should flaunt his victory.

Why should you listen to Jermaine Dupri? Because he's sleeping with Janet Jackson and you're not.

"I was him, I would have gone on `TRL' immediately and said look, `Everybody who wanna say something about me, good, y'all could say whatever y'all wanna say, there's nothing you can say about me at this point, no more than what just happened," said Dupri While other scandal-plagued stars have launched the comeback route with a teary-eyed interview with Oprah Winfrey or Barbara Walters, Dupri scoffed at the suggestion that Jackson should be remorseful. "He don't have to do that, because he didn't do nothing wrong. Everybody else did something wrong but him. What did he do wrong? Why should he come back and cry?" Dupri asked.

Read more here.

You know, I was a little bummed that we didn't get a post victory SUV dance.

Jermaine goes on to say that as long as MJ can command attention in the room, he'll never be finished. I'm inclined to agree. Will there ever be another Thriller? No, of course not - not from Mike and not from anybody else. The nature of the industry is different now. Could Michael have a viable, artistically and financially fruitful career in the future? Yes, certainly. He will always have a fan base amongst Urban AC listeners. All he needs to do to appease and and win over that audience is keep churning out songs in the vain of Break of Dawn, Butterflies, Heaven Can Wait and even You Rock My World. That's an older audience, though. He might have a one-off hit on pop, but by and large, he isn't going to have the kiddies bopping anymore. That's fine, none of his contemporaries do, either. He could attempt a Mariah Carey style ressurection by embracing hip-hop more than he ever has in the past and then supplementing it with a couple of RnB-lite tracks, but that's contrived and I think the result would be much like the Jerkins tracks on Invincible. He may be the King of Pop, but his heart and his audience (at least in the US) remains Urban AC radio. Not CHR/Pop. Maybe CHR/Rhythmic and occasionally, regular AC. That doesn't mean he's over, it just means that his career is going into a different phase. Stevie Wonder isn't over. Smokey Robinson isn't over. Patti Labelle isn't over. Aretha Franklin isn't over. Michael isn't, either.

Eff the PoweR Girls

• Props to Sari Baez, who starts today as Rocawear Juniors' in-house PR guru
• Props to Kimberly Sinatra, who secured her first cover of WWD for Cynthia Rose NY

Fabulous!