Topic: Michael Jackson dead

[Touti]

According to most recent news Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest today.......................don't believe that..............I saw him this afternoon, he was having a beer with Elvis.

[Jimmy]

I know that normally we aren't suppose to badmouth the dead, but...

Good riddance. Don't count on me to feel bad for the death of a child abuser who had used his fortune to abuse a lot of kids and escape the justice.

[Rogmeister]

People often say death comes in threes and it's happened again.  We've lost both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett today and Ed MacMahon just a day or two ago.

[Achim]

While I was definitely not a fan (liked a few of his older songs) and have similar feelings as Jimmy towards him I was a little suprised to get a liitle shock when I read the news. He was only 50!

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The first thing I had though was also, that little boys are a little safer again. ...oh bad me... bad, bad.

[Najemikon]

I've never been a huge fan either, but the child abuse allegations were bullshit. Plain and simple, Michael Jackson was not a paedophile, but the tabloids would love it if he was.

There was a very high profile interview in the UK which I saw and the overriding impression I got was that Jackson was just a big kid himself; he still wanted to play games and have sleep overs when he was in his 40s. Loads of kids stayed with him at Neverland (basically one huge playground) and very few complained. More like parents thinking they had an easy target for compensation.

For me, Macaulay Culkin put paid to one allegation. They claimed he shared his bedroom with kids, except as he said, that bedroom was bigger than most peoples houses! And that's "bedroom" not "bed"...

He made a lot of stupid mistakes and bad decisions, but I do not believe he was the sick minded criminal you do. Interestingly, our tabloids are normally ready the rip the shit out of anyone, but they went quite on the "child abuse" bollocks a long while ago. There's no story there. He was a genuine talent who desperately needed someone to guide him.

[Kathy]

I also never thought that he was a pedophile but one will never know. I remember someone commenting that he was a man when he was a boy and now he is a man being a boy. He never had a childhood and I think he tried to buy one attempted to fill some void.

It always bothered me the obsession he had to change his appearance over the years. He changed himself from a beautiful boy into something hideous. Some of the photographs of him were walking advertisements on what can go wrong with plastic surgery. I could never understand it and feel enormous sadness that, in my opinion, he hated himself so much.

On the other hand he was one of the most remarkable artists I've ever seen. He came to Buffalo twice over the years and he put on a great performance each time. I enjoyed his music and voice ever since the beginning. But it was control he had over his body while he danced that was something unworldly. I loved his dancing.

It would not surprise me if they find he died of a narcotic overdose. He had several injuries that resulted in chronic pain and, at one point, became dependent on narcotics to control that pain. Unless he was being treated by a pain specialist I think his care might have been to blame in his death. He was quite thin and had minimal body fat which would require careful consideration in the type of medication and dosage he received. No healthy 50 year old should die of cardiac arrest. Such a shame.

[Najemikon]

Could be, Kathy. I just heard the Jackson family lawyer on the radio and he's said he wouldn't be surprised if it was prescription drug abuse, because he warned the family and also said he told them, "should Michael perish [because of this], he would not keep quiet". Wasted no time, that's for sure. 

I feel genuinely sorry for him. It makes me sad to think that someone could be so rich, so powerful, that those around him seemingly didn't dare give him a reality check and keep him relatively grounded. At his height, he was magnificent.

[Touti]

When I heard the news of his death the first thing that crossed my mind was "How long is gonna take before people start saying that he faked it to get out of his public life....hence the joke about seeing him having a beer with Elvis. I'm sure some people will believe it, after all he was married to Elvis' daughter so it shouldn't be long before some idiots get convinced that Elvis is still alive and showed him how to do it.

The reason I'm saying this is because becoming so much bigger than themselves is exactly why one would want disappear.....either by committing suicide or changing his appearance.  Obviously MJ was a troubled person but I wonder what were his true motivations for doing that to himself.  Did he really hate himself so much that he wanted to be someone else ?

Maybe somehow he felt that changing what the world saw would protect his true self.  Something like "It's not me that the world is watching it's the character I present to them".  In any case he was obviously troubled and needed help that doctors didn't give him because they were too busy taking his money.

I wonder what he'll be remembered for the most ?  

[Najemikon]

I was surprised to hear on the news that his doctor may have been helping him too much. He lived with Jackson, providing doses of painkiller everyday and now no-one can find him.

They just played a clip from the interview I mentioned before as well, which is a fascinating insight. By this time his face was completely reconstructed, yet when asked what he thought about what people said, he denied he'd had anything done!

[Dragonfire]

I wasn't a huge fan, though I did like his earlier stuff..like Thriller. 

He had a lot of troubles in his life...but he was also a very talented musician.  People just don't become as famous as he did anymore.  Though perhaps that is good since that type of fame could be oppressive.  Even before he ..well...got a bit weird.. he couldn't do anything without being mobbed.  That has to get to a person. 

I was shocked when the stories started coming in yesterday, probably mostly because he wasn't that old and I really hadn't heard that he had been sick.  I know he'd had some health issues, but I was still surprised.  I just read a story about how the police impounded the car of the doctor that was at the house and are looking for the doctor.  If nothing...fishy was going on, you'd think the doctor would have already gone to the hospital or police or somewhere to share the information he had instead of disappearing.  I guess I had somehow missed some of the stories about him using lots of prescriptions over the years, but I wouldn't be surprised if that caused his death.

[Jimmy]

People just don't become as famous as he did anymore.

The American medias create this kind of celebrity everyday... Seriously this guy had made a couple of good songs 25 years ago and listen to the public reactions it's like a real talented singer like Paul McCartney had died yesterday. The media as usual are gone over the top with this. I know that I sound wrong, but my reaction will be the same when it will be the turn of Gary Glitter (someone who is more talented in my book) to die.

[Najemikon]

People just don't become as famous as he did anymore.

The American medias create this kind of celebrity everyday... Seriously this guy had made a couple of good songs 25 years ago and listen to the public reactions it's like a real talented singer like Paul McCartney had died yesterday. The media as usual are gone over the top with this. I know that I sound wrong, but my reaction will be the same when it will be the turn of Gary Glitter (someone who is more talented in my book) to die.

Jimmy, it's the same with any media, remember I'm in the UK and the response is just as massive. There are very few if any left who would create this Elvis/Lennon scale of reaction and I doubt there'll be any more. You implied it yourself that Jackson has been in the public eye for a very long time. You think there'd be such a reaction to Britney Spears? No way. Big, yes, but this massive? This global? McCartney wouldn't even have this. No, the media cannot create this through headlines alone. There has to be something solid in the middle of it all.

The reason is simple. Pure, magical talent. People respond honestly to that, and I think throughout all his troubles of the last few years, millions of fans had their fingers crossed: just once more, lets see him as he was, just one more time. That feeling carried him way beyond his last release and it's pretty special.

And if Gary bloody Glitter is ahead of Michael Jackson in your book, no way am I reading it! The guy was a tit from day 1, who dropped lucky with Leader.

Check out the Beat It video, or one moment from Smooth Criminal live. And you prefer this "thing"?

[Jimmy]

Check out the Beat It video, or one moment from Smooth Criminal live. And you prefer this "thing"?

Yes. You need a lot of talent to write something simple, ageless and addictive like this or this. Jackson had mostly wrote fast food pop music that hadn't age well for the most part, honestly when was the last time you have listen anything on Thriller and said "WOW that's awsome ".

[Touti]

He's gonna remain an icon no matter what.  I don't think it's really about his music but more about his dancing and his genius for entertainment.  He was really fucked up in the head but that doesn't take away his genius as a performer.  He did bring a lot to pop music.

As for the rest I can tell you why Michael Jackson is way way way bigger than Gary Glitter.  Everybody in the world knows who MJ is but I bet I'm not the only who has no fucking idea who's Gary Glitter...................that alone says a lot.

And I disagree that he's the last whose death will be the last with a reaction of this scale................wait until Madonna and/or Celine Dion dies.

[Najemikon]

honestly when was the last time you have listen anything on Thriller and said "WOW that's awsome ".

Now you have to be kidding! Thriller is timeless. Most successful album of all time. 

Eric, Gary Glitter at his height was a joke. A UK 70s novelty act that came in on the back of the glam rock genre, like Queen and David Bowie (proper musicians!) with two, may be three, catchy, but very cheesy songs. I'm surprised Jimmy has heard of him as an artist. He will have mentioned him because of his notorious second life as a fully convicted, card-carrying paedophile. He was convicted in this country for child porn, served a prison sentence and ran away to Vietnam and Thailand. There, The Sun tracked him down and got pictures of him with a bald head and a very young girl; I don't imply suggestive pictures in themselves, but there was only one reason he'd be there. Vietnam (I think) were seriously unimpressed and they dumped him in prison for several years. When freed, I believe the deal was that he comes back to the UK and is never allowed to leave again, so there was a farcical episode of him plane hopping across Asia. He wasn't allowed to leave the airports, but they couldn't force him to get on the plane marked "One Way to Blighty"! Eventually he resigned to the fact, probably because that's the only ticket the UK would pay for. So, lucky us, he's back home.

And everyone thinks he's a prat. 

EDIT: Just realised Eric mentioned Celine Dion in the same sentence as Madonna. I am officially in The Twilight Zone.