Timmy84 said:

I love Michael because of his music and for the things that he did that were great for the music business AND for music as an artform.

THAT is the main reason why I will miss him. He is still my musical elder that deserves to be treated with Respect.

Jackson Family Issues Statement to Fans

The Jackson family issued a statement Saturday, conveyed by family patriarch Joseph Jackson. In full,

it reads:

i was over at the huffington post and read blog from earl ofari hutchinson about mj. one of the things he said surprised me.

apparently although the heal the world foundation ran into some problems starting in 2002, it had recently been infused with more cash in 2008. mj supported over 40 charities under its auspices. he said that's the mj he would remember.

not bad for a man who so broke he couldn't afford to buy balloons for paris' b-day (according to so-called interview with grace in the daily mail).

trueiopian said:

I can't watch this. Who is this guy? Weirdest intv ever

trueiopian said:

Damn.

kibbles said:[quote]i was over at the huffington post and read blog from earl ofari hutchinson about mj. one of the things he said surprised me.

apparently although the heal the world foundation ran into some problems starting in 2002, it had recently been infused with more cash in 2008. mj supported over 40 charities under its auspices. he said that's the mj he would remember.

not bad for a man who so broke he couldn't afford to buy balloons for paris' b-day (according to so-called interview with grace in the daily mail). [/quote

You know, this is why I don't believe everything that I read. I recently read an interview with Wyclef. He said, that it was Michael's scholarship fund, that made it possible for him to go to school.

2elijah said:

the man who jumped up on top of that van in defiance at the arraignment was not the same one who walked out that courtroom a little over a year later. he was half his size from before and after 4 years he never regained the weight that he'd lost. he was the walking wounded.

LA Times: Like Other Creative Geniuses Before Him, Michael Turned Isolation Into An Art
June 27


Of all the myths enshrouding Michael Jackson's too-brief life, none was more potent than his image as the isolated artist, the tormented creative soul cut off from ordinary mortals.

It's an archetype with a strongly American pedigree, as grizzled and hoary as Citizen Kane clutching his snow globe while he sits alone in Xanadu, brooding on happier days.

Thoreau took to his cabin in the woods. Howard Hughes hid out buck-naked in germ-free hotels. Elvis holed up in Graceland under the sway of drugs and a byzantine retinue of friends and false comforters. J.D. Salinger squats behind his New England stockade, emerging every few years to threaten some or other writer with a lawsuit.


And let's not forget Gatsby, vanishing into the mob scene at his own lavish parties, or Norma Desmond, sustained by her delusional grandeur as she rots away in her Sunset Boulevard mansion with her stuffed pet chimp. (What is it about celebrity seclusion and simian fellowship?)

But few have inhabited the role of the reclusive eccentric more fully than Jackson, who at the time of his death, although decades past his prime, was still big -- at least to himself and the millions of us who came of age grooving and lip-syncing to his songs. It's pop music that got small.

Close friends described Jackson as the loneliest person they ever knew, entombed in his own celebrity, prematurely embalmed in his own legend. The King of Pop, who favored faux-military outfits, complete with braids and epaulets, lived out his adulthood as the sovereign ruler of his own private realm, Neverland, where normal codes of behavior didn't apply and the laws and taboos of the outside world didn't necessarily obtain.

The most painfully self-conscious of superstars, Jackson skillfully cultivated his own aura of apartness. In his later years during public appearances he was surrounded by bodyguards, his face sometimes obscured by a surgical mask or shaded under an umbrella, like a figure in a Magritte painting, as if he might wilt in the mega-watt glare of the omnipresent paparazzi.

"In a crowd, I'm afraid," he said. "Onstage, I feel safe."

His willful isolation turned him into an obscure object of desire, a human tchotchke, apparently so delicate that it might break if mishandled. Contemporary sculptor Jeff Koons recognized the fact in his 1988 work "Michael Jackson and Bubbles," in which he rendered the singer and his primate playmate in ceramic, as if they were a Dresden shepherd and shepherdess. "Look," Jackson's persona told his adoring masses, "but don't touch."

A famous person's impulse to withdraw may reflect either arrogance or humility. It may be a misanthropic turning of one's back or a desperate attempt to shield one's vulnerability, as seemed to happen with Judy Garland before her death at age 47.

Whatever was Jackson's motive, his decision echoed in his songs. Earlier in his career, the theme from "Ben" (a movie about a boy whose closest friend is a rat) was superficially sweet but left a cloying, queasy aftertaste. At the height of Jackson's fame and influence, "Thriller" (the John Landis video more than the song) playfully hinted at a frightening alter ego lurking inside the handsome, charismatic performer.

A couple of years later, with "Bad," Jackson's push-pull relationship toward his growing celebrity versus his desire for privacy made him ditch the tuxedo-clad dreamboat image he affected in "Off the Wall" and the seductive cover shot of "Thriller." For "Bad" he wore a black biker jacket and something closer to a scowl than a smile while warning others to keep their distance in the late '80s hit tune "Leave Me Alone."

It was quite a change from the adorable little boy with an Afro and funky clothes pleading "I Want You Back," or "Human Nature's" lovely, gauzy yearning for contact with a warm female presence and a giant city beyond the bedroom walls.

Jackson himself never made any secret of why he felt the need to retreat into a labyrinth of solitude. His Rosebud, of course, was exactly the same as Charles Foster Kane's. It was the childhood that had been stolen from him. "I never had the chance to do the fun things kids do," Jackson once said. "There was no Christmas, no holiday celebrating. So now you try to compensate for some of that loss."

By far the most troubling aspect of Jackson's withdrawal was the issue of whether he ever abused any of the children he invited to visit his fantasy world. Fans and cultural historians will be debating for years to come whether Jackson's self-exile was more a case of pathos or pathology, a misunderstood man's involuntary retreat into his own psyche, or a predator's escape into a safe house.

For a great artist, which Jackson unquestionably was, cultivating a rich creative life doesn't have to mean dropping out of the human race. Thoreau, in actuality, was no recluse. He received visitors regularly at Walden and remained vitally engaged with the community around him and with the issues of the day. He maintained his hermetic equilibrium by keeping the emotional and physical clutter around him to a minimum.

Jackson's solitude was more like Kane's, surrounded by gilded objects and haunted by the specter of irrelevance. One of Jackson's great achievements was to prove that a black man could attain the accouterments of the American dream in extremis -- money, mansions, global adulation -- armed with little more than his own prodigious talent. His greatest personal tragedy was to discover how poorly those trophies compensate for whatever else may be missing in a human life.
[Edited 6/27/09 19:51pm]

shorttrini said:[quote]

kibbles said:

wow. you just never know. scratch that, we really did know this about mj. from we are the world to giving away the proceeds from the victory tour to neverland itself. we knew this about mj.

Even the youngest of fans are feeling the loss:

http://www.hindu.com/theh...271680.htm

wow
[Edited 6/27/09 19:50pm]

kibbles said:

True, that is when I noticed he started to look frail.

japanrocks said:

Yes, that is sad and that story is posted a couple of posts up. So far it's been reported 7 fans committed suicide over MJ's death. Very sad indeed.

Arnotts said:

Early 80's, or late 70's
[Edited 6/27/09 20:00pm]

TonyVanDam said:

That's the way it is for me, lol.

One of the saddest things I've seen so far is a reporter somewhere in Europe I think telling a group of men that Michael had passed...two of them walked away seemingly stunned, one kept asking if it was true but one dropped to the ground and I think I heard him crying or moaning. It was hard to see such an immediate painful reaction.

Arnotts said:

Yeah I'm only 25. I know you probably expected me to freak out and cry for days because of this but that's where I differ. Yeah I'm part of the "Bad"/"Dangerous" eras but my adoration don't go so far where I cry myself to sleep because an idol of mine's died. At the end he was a human being who just happened to touch lives with his music. And besides I have only good memories of him though I can't shake the bad. Knowing he's at peace, I find no compunction to cry nor feel like life ain't worth it. But I don't think it's age, there's people of all ages crying, I don't know if I'm a bad fan for not wanting to cry either.
[Edited 6/27/09 20:10pm]

JackieBlue said:

Where did you see this?

trueiopian said:

CNN.

heartbeatocean said:

Sorry, what do you mean?

Arnotts said:

Guess she's saying what era of a fan she was.

Timmy84 said:

Of course you're not a bad fan, everybody's different. As big a Prince fan as I am I doubt I'll shed tears if he goes before I do. I'll feel sad but I'm guessing that'll be it. I know what its like to really lose someone close to me, & celebrities don't fall under that umbrella in terms of feeling it personally. We're all different, just do you

CalhounSq said:

Thanks.

2elijah said:

They are still smearing him they are just doing it in a more hidden way. The "News of the World" a british paper, have already got two articles that are damaging; The Jordan Chandler case and the fact that Debbie Rowe has said Prince & Paris are not MJ biological children.

whatsgoingon said:

I know none of y'all expected anything different, did ya?

This thing is getting really ugly right now.

The sensationalism has already begun! Just watch Fox News.

suga10 said:

Uh hell naw. Ignore it. Y'all forgot that?

Front pages

http://www.newseum.org/to...ive=062609

Timmy84 said:

Yeah, I understand your sentiment. That's how I feel about the few other artists/celebrities I study and admire, including Prince. If they were to unfortunately pass away soon, or had left before MJ, I'd be sad of course, but I would not react the way I have with Michael. They are some of the most original and fantastic artists, but not Michael Jackson to me. I've loved him for more than just his pioneering art work and spectacular imagery....I can't say that about any other living famous person.

I'm starting to be able to listen to MJ's songs again though. Not all of them, but one in particular that I've been able to blast today on repeat without crying is "Another Part Of Me," (which is my second favorite song of all time). I've listened to that song with headphones, on my stereo systems, and in my car darn-near thousands of times throughout my life, and today it amazingly sounded better than it ever has before. Incredible.

I will always say this: Michael Jackson is the most superlative male singing voice ever recorded. That has been, and always will be fact to me. And I believe he still would have astounded the world vocally if he had been able to release new music in the future....