treehouse said:

This post is going to suck for you....it's going to be a lot like learning there's no Easter bunny, but...

1) 99% of what you know about your favorite entertainers is marketing. It's make believe. It's image. It's not the truth.

2) What media outlet, books or TV are you talking about? Citation?

3) Nobody is arguing that Thriller was:

a) a poor selling record.

b) bad for the industry.

4) You don't "have to defend" a pop star from anyone. You chose to. You even chose to make up an argument on a Prince forum with people who aren't terribly interetested in Michael.

5) You're not making a compelling argument on behalf of Michael Jackson....nor are you picking a compelling reason to chose this as your battle in life.

You're not interested in MJ?
Liar!
I am sure that you are not a fan, it is possible hater, but your interest in MJ obvious (and many, many members of the forum interest / and the presence of MJ on the forum - eloquent proof).

Bad - bad song, so I'm glad they didn`t this duet.
I'm glad because there would have risen even greater flow of hatred: "MJ ruined the song," "MJ wrote a crappy song", "Prince totally eclipsed MJ in this song", "MJ is not have at least 10% Prince talents "(this is my favorite statement, and one of the most absurd).

I am sure that most members of the forum sympathetic to both artists, most grown on the music of both, etc.
Why you create this hatred? What kind of childishness?

treehouse said:

petes2 said:

I haven't called you any names by the way....but insulting people with the "purple kool aid" line is not just silly but very off base.

I don't respect anyone who thinks the history of rock n' roll involves a tangibility which required being saved by a popular figurehead.

I don't respect prosthelytizing fan worship of celebrities.

I don't respect revisionist history built around chart success or sales.

I don't respect music history that's written by marketing department press releases, centered around the business side of music.

This thread was an attempt to go beyond the media portrayol of both MJ and Prince and discuss oral history accounts of their relationship....if that was too much for you to handle, and it upsets you to learn there's more to life than money and chart success or that Michael had some demons... tough. Most of the posts about Prince on this forum deal with him in a realistic manner, honest about his shortcomings, and failures, but there's still a sense of appreciation for some aspect of his work that binds most of the posts. Advocating on behalf of Michael Jackson has no context here.

[Edited 1/5/12 0:02am]

you may not have called me names but there have been some insults thrown around on the last few pages just because people cannot agree. It's ok, I can do that with the best of them. At the end of the day there are things called facts and things called opinions and opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one. Now what I call a fact and you call a fact may depend on our opinions but in two hundred years time no one's going to care what either of us think and I promise you history will be written the way I've illustrated for you. And yes Michael had demons, all great artists do, they'd be nothing without them. Advocating on behalf of Michael Jackson is necessary when people want to use Prince over and over again to prove Mike just was a Justin Beiber type figure. Alot more to Mike than that, that is a huge insult to his legacy.

MJ discussion is on a sticky thread in the music: non-Prince forum.

reported MJ