The Liz Smith Column | 07/02/2009 11:00 pm
Liz Smith: The Beginning of the Jackson Afterlife Saga – But Leave the Kids out of It!
From fans and non-fans, the pleading question is already being asked: ‘Will there be no end to this?’
Image: Fabio Ikezaki/Flickr
"Fame is the mask that eats the face," wrote John Updike. Updike was not referring to Michael Jackson, though a more apt quote I cannot imagine.
***
From fans and non-fans, the pleading question is already being asked: "Will there be no end to this?" "This" being the wall-to-wall coverage of every little Michael Jackson-related bit of "news."
The answer is no. Whatever Jackson’s oddities, he was a worldwide star, iconic figure and groundbreaking artist. He died suddenly and still mysteriously. He joins Marilyn and Elvis as a tragic figure whose life after death becomes endless fodder for the media. (Now, I’m asking: When do the conspiracy theories that he’s not really dead begin?!)
I’ll only say – again – leave the children out of it. No matter how they were conceived or by whom, Michael Jackson was their legal father, and so far we have no evidence that he wasn’t a loving parent, despite his strange ways in dealing with his fame, his own unsatisfactory youth and his issues about race.
Rake through his medicine cabinets, drag out every sordid detail of his intimate relations, publish his will. But leave those three beautiful children alone to now live a totally different and perhaps frightening life – they have been so shrouded and cosseted by Michael. I’d like to say that now they’ll live a "normal" life, but being any part of the Jackson family doesn’t seem to encourage stability. (I think the Diana Ross idea, if mom Katherine Jackson won’t or can’t raise them, is very smart. She has been an exemplary mother to her own family of five.)
Let the kids off the hook, and then Michael, Marilyn and Elvis can sit around up there laughing over our foolish obsessing. Fame is a circus and we, the media, not the stars, end up as its primary clowns
***
Of course not everybody agrees that Michael will join the immortal pantheon. Filmmaker and author Charles Casillo, while giving due credit to Michael’s genius says: "I’m going to call this one, perhaps wrongly … but I don’t think Michael Jackson will be in the league of Elvis or Marilyn five years from now. No one can come close to the level of the stars that died before, say, 1990. When they went, they took tons of mystique and unanswered questions with them. Because they weren’t scrutinized and analyzed daily in such a way; 24 hours of talking heads … blog blasts … Twitter commentary. After this feasting frenzy of Michael, in six months – after the shocking revelations, the shocking books, the shocking documentaries – he will be laid quietly to rest along with his legacy. Not because he is any less stellar, but I think the 21st century burnout factor is – you should pardon the expression – an icon killer."
Hmm … I’m not sure I agree that Michael’s legend will be cast aside so swiftly. He was involvingly unique.
***
So, how terrible was Michael Jackson’s childhood?
Well, to have heard him tell it, there was not one moment of happiness. He was an abused and overworked "golden child" – as he self-reverentially referred to himself.
But there are some who grew up in Encino, CA, where the Jacksons settled after fame hit, who remember a happy Michael Jackson, going to pizza and ice cream parlors with his four brothers, and acting just like any other kid. People even remember him stopping in at the local Sunshine Records Shop in Encino and thrilling over the Jackson Five albums.
***
From fans and non-fans, the pleading question is already being asked: "Will there be no end to this?" "This" being the wall-to-wall coverage of every little Michael Jackson-related bit of "news."
The answer is no. Whatever Jackson’s oddities, he was a worldwide star, iconic figure and groundbreaking artist. He died suddenly and still mysteriously. He joins Marilyn and Elvis as a tragic figure whose life after death becomes endless fodder for the media. (Now, I’m asking: When do the conspiracy theories that he’s not really dead begin?!)
I’ll only say – again – leave the children out of it. No matter how they were conceived or by whom, Michael Jackson was their legal father, and so far we have no evidence that he wasn’t a loving parent, despite his strange ways in dealing with his fame, his own unsatisfactory youth and his issues about race.
Rake through his medicine cabinets, drag out every sordid detail of his intimate relations, publish his will. But leave those three beautiful children alone to now live a totally different and perhaps frightening life – they have been so shrouded and cosseted by Michael. I’d like to say that now they’ll live a "normal" life, but being any part of the Jackson family doesn’t seem to encourage stability. (I think the Diana Ross idea, if mom Katherine Jackson won’t or can’t raise them, is very smart. She has been an exemplary mother to her own family of five.)
Let the kids off the hook, and then Michael, Marilyn and Elvis can sit around up there laughing over our foolish obsessing. Fame is a circus and we, the media, not the stars, end up as its primary clowns
***
Of course not everybody agrees that Michael will join the immortal pantheon. Filmmaker and author Charles Casillo, while giving due credit to Michael’s genius says: "I’m going to call this one, perhaps wrongly … but I don’t think Michael Jackson will be in the league of Elvis or Marilyn five years from now. No one can come close to the level of the stars that died before, say, 1990. When they went, they took tons of mystique and unanswered questions with them. Because they weren’t scrutinized and analyzed daily in such a way; 24 hours of talking heads … blog blasts … Twitter commentary. After this feasting frenzy of Michael, in six months – after the shocking revelations, the shocking books, the shocking documentaries – he will be laid quietly to rest along with his legacy. Not because he is any less stellar, but I think the 21st century burnout factor is – you should pardon the expression – an icon killer."
Hmm … I’m not sure I agree that Michael’s legend will be cast aside so swiftly. He was involvingly unique.
***
So, how terrible was Michael Jackson’s childhood?
Well, to have heard him tell it, there was not one moment of happiness. He was an abused and overworked "golden child" – as he self-reverentially referred to himself.
But there are some who grew up in Encino, CA, where the Jacksons settled after fame hit, who remember a happy Michael Jackson, going to pizza and ice cream parlors with his four brothers, and acting just like any other kid. People even remember him stopping in at the local Sunshine Records Shop in Encino and thrilling over the Jackson Five albums.
Read more about: Charles Casillo, Children, Diana Ross, Elvis Presley, Entertainment, Ethel Gumm, Family, Gerold Frank, Gossip, Joe Jackson, John Updike, Judy Garland, Katherine Jackson, Liz Smith, Liza Minnelli, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, News, Relationships, The Liz Smith Column
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Here is an interesting comment from Howard Jacobson in the London The Independent:
If we want a huge emotion, the company of a hugely famous person is indispensable. The death of Michael Jackson meets our requirements perfectly in that we don’t only get a famous corpse, we get famous people mourning it. The latest word is that the funeral will be held next Tuesday, and broadcast live on television. This is good planning because we wouldn’t have wanted it to clash with Wimbledon. Imagine being Katharine Brown and not knowing whether to be in a floral frock for the final of the men’s singles on the Centre Court or veiled in black for Michael Jackson’s funeral cortège in Los Angeles. This way there’s just time to cheer the one, jump on a plane, and sob your heart out at the other.
It is barely even worth saying that the outpouring of grief for Michael Jackson is disproportionate to his gifts. Stuff the gifts, we want to mourn a god. The King of Pop. Not a great name as names of divinities go. Sounds like an ad for Schweppes. But then he wasn’t a great man, in fact scarcely a man at all. That is not meant as a moral judgement. I have nothing to say about Michael Jackson’s assaults upon his own body or his reported assaults upon other people’s. Other children’s, yes I know. We are all scoundrels in our own way. And as has been said until we’re sick of hearing it, his was not an upbringing best calculated to yield a happy or a balanced individual. Though what it did yield was precisely what those who loved him wanted – infantilism set to simple tunes.
Some decent, humane sorrowing over that – a life gone nowhere, for all the fame; a life lived in desperate confusion – would not be inappropriate. And a little soul-searching, as well, on the part of those who must idolise before they know they are alive. This, too, has been gone over and over all week – the hellish compact between a star and those who worship him. We destroy those we inordinately admire. That’s the cliché. I would put it differently. Those we inordinately admire destroy us.
It has been said that Michael Jackson changed the lives of millions of his fans. But I have yet to read an account of what he changed them to. Yes, he gave them songs to sing. Few of them remarkable. And he gave them a dance to dance. I can see with my own eyes that he moved unusually. So let’s say he taught others to move unusually too. Perhaps we can say he liberated them into a bodily vitality they hadn’t known before. That’s not nothing, if it’s true. But if it is true, you wonder where all that bequeathed vitality has gone to. After you’ve done your moonwalk, then what?
If we’re simply talking giving pleasure then why aren’t we planning a state funeral for Mollie Sugden who also died the other day? She played Mrs Slocombe in Are You Being Served? and contributed, or at least her pussy did, to the nation’s stock of innocent entertainment. What is more, she was capable of irony. But maybe there’s your answer. You can’t be a god and have a sense of the ridiculous.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-were-in-search-of-a-new-messiah-ndash-whether-its-murray-or-jackson-1731281.html
Some photos of Debbie with her children (also click on the link at the top of the url to see even more photos, showing Debbie as a happy, relaxed mother - and her children are happy and relaxed with her. Compare the less relaxed looks they have when they are alone with Michael):
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/showbiz/michael_jackson/390944/The-astonishing-Michael-Jackson-family-pictures-that-could-blow-custody-battle-apart.html
[Sorry, cannot get link tool to work, so you will have to copy and paste it into your browser address field]
I read somewhere that Debbie Rowe might actually stand a better chance of gaining custody than some think. I believe it had to do with the fact that, even though she relinquished her parental rights, she had not been determined to be an unfit parent by authorities. Therefore, since she is the birth mother she still may have some rights under the circumstances. Please don’t quote me on that, though! I’ve read and heard so much about this that my head is reeling.
They are lovely children, aren’t they? I just hope that it turns out for the best for them. Not knowing any of the people involved personally, it’s hard to know what that is. I would hate to see the youngest separated from his older siblings.
Agreed! Hopefully, all of the adults will keep that in mind.
John Niven has:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/michael-jackson-bad-and…
in an article called "Michael Jackson: Bad! And very dangerous"
[Sorry, still cannot get the link button to work, so you will have to copy and paste the above link into your browser address field. Must need a PhD in IT to get that link tool working, and I note that some other people on this site have got it working…]
Linda Stasi from the NY Post:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07022009/news/columnists/shed_no_tears_for_this_twisted_sicko_177187.htm