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How Michael Got Gangsta With Sony Music Over Black Music & Racism Davey D
quote: This is what I liked about Michael Jackson. Call him weird, call him eccentric, but the man was no dummy and he would step if needed to.. I am including a story we covered the day after Michael Jackson was in Harlem where he called out Tommy Mottola and Sony Music. He said Mottola was a racist which was bold given that at the time Motola was one of the industry’s most powerful executives in the industry..
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Oh please. He only said this after whites started rejecting him like they did OJ. By this time his sales were down and some of his white friends in the entertainment industry were distancing themselves from him. If anything this shows MJ as an opportunist who has the ability to play blacks like a fiddle.
Posts: 4254 | From: dasein | Registered: Jun 2009
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Michael jackson was a good business man despite his over the top spending habits. Most of his assets would cash in hundreds of million dollars when liquified (he was no where close to get broke), the man owns all the rights of Beatles music, everytime their music get played in radio or other avenues, Michael always cashed in, not even mentioning his own timeless productions. Michael was temporarily "indebted" because he refused to liquify his assets. The "this is it" project at O2 arena in London would have easily covered his negative cashflow he accumulated through out the years without him touching his long term investments, just the merchandise salesment would be enough. The man had total control of his business and his spending habits is a testimony of him never loosing his cool. He's afterall the one who created the successfull trademark "Michael Jackson".
Posts: 1554 | Registered: Jul 2006
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quote:Originally posted by shemale Jenkins: If anything this shows MJ as an opportunist who has the ability to play blacks like a fiddle.
Are you serious??
With all of his fans worldwide, in East Asia, the Mid East, Europe, etc, your caterwauling ass singles out American blacks?
We don't need your or anyone elses moral pitty.
You seem ignorant so i'll let you in on the fact that more than i'm proud of did indeed harp on and get upset over his skin color.
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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(I will comment later what you wrote Bogle, and Yonis, Michael lost the rights of Beatles(worst music ever! oh how much I hate to listen their music) songs by Motola.
Posts: 2198 | Registered: Jun 2006
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quote: Q: You were there to witness the strange evolution in Michael's appearance. Did you ever step in and saying anything about it? A: Oh, we talked about it all the time. But he'd come up with, "Man, I promise you I have this disease," and so forth, and "I have a blister on my lungs," and all that kind of b.s. It's hard, because Michael's a Virgo, man—he's very set in his ways. You can't talk him out of it. Chemical peels and all that stuff.
Q: Did you believe him about the disease? A: I don't believe in any of that bullshit, no. No. Never. I've been around junkies and stuff all my life. I've heard every excuse. It's like smokers—"I only smoke when I drink" and all that stuff. But it's bullshit. You're justifying something that's destructive to your existence. It's crazy. I mean, I came up with Ray Charles, man. You know, nobody gonna pull no wool over my eyes. He did heroin 20 years! Come on. And black coffee and gin for 40 years. But when he called me to come over to see him when he was in the hospital on his way out, man, he had emphysema, hepatitis C, cirrhosis of the liver, and five malignant tumors. Please, man! I've been around this all my life. So it's hard for somebody to pull the wool over my eyes. But when somebody's hell-bent on it, you can't stop 'em.
Q: But it must've been so disturbing to see Michael's face turn into what it turned into. A: It's ridiculous, man! Chemical peels and all of it. And I don't understand it. But he obviously didn't want to be black.
Q: Is that what it was? A: Well, what do you think? You see his kids?
Q: Did you ever discuss it? Did you ever ask, "Michael, don't you want to be a black man?" A: No, no, no, please. That's not the way you do it.
Q: But he was beautiful before? A: Man, he was the most gorgeous guy.
Q: But he seemed to have some deep-seated issue with how he looked? A: Well, that comes about a certain way. I'm not sure how it happens. I'm just a musician and a record producer. I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't understand all that stuff. We all got problems. But there's a great book out called Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart. Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin' about what's wrong, because everybody's had a rough time, in one way or another.
Q: I've heard you say that you wanted Michael to sing "She's Out of My Life," the great pop ballad from Off the Wall, in part because you felt like he had to deal with reality. A: I just wanted to hear him deal with a romantic relationship with a human being rather than a rat. I'm saying that facetiously, but it's true. I saw him at the Oscars very emotional about "Ben." I wanted to hear him get in touch with a real human relationship. "She's Out of My Life" was written by Tommy Bahler from a very bad ending to a marriage. So it was very real. I was saving it for Sinatra. But I gave it to Michael. And Michael cried during every take, and I left the tears in. ... Q: At root, what do you think killed Michael Jackson? A: I don't know, man. I'm a musician. I'm not a psychiatrist. I would think that the pressure of the concerts and the debt and everything else . . . look, I've been in the hands of Nobel doctors for the last five years, in Stockholm, at the Karolinska hospital, which you can't even pay to get in. I've learned so much about the human mind and the body, and the doctors talk all the time about how you become your thoughts. It's true. With one thought it starts, you know, and if you sit there and just stay hung up on one negative thought, you will become that thought. I know that Lisa Marie Presley said that she always thought he was going to die like Elvis. You sit and think about that stuff, it'll happen to you. If you start thinking about darkness instead of light, or fear instead of love, you'll get in trouble. I really believe that.
Q: With so many people asking you about Michael Jackson, is it hard to find the private space in which to mourn his death? A: Yes, it is. It's surrealistic. I don't know how to process it at all. Because everybody's reacting to it, and making up their own answers.
Q: You've said that you don't attend funerals anymore because you've lost so many friends. Do you plan to attend Michael Jackson's funeral? A: No, not at all, not at all. Because it's going to be, like, 9 million people there, and it's not what I want to see.
Q: You're not going to be there? A: No. I can't be there, anyway. I'm going to Wales the day after tomorrow, I go to Montreux, I go to Marbella, I go to the south of France. My condolences and love I've already sent to the family. But being there with 10 million people is not my idea of a tribute to somebody you were so close to—who's got a part of your soul. Our souls were joined, you know. And a piece of it goes with him.
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^ EXACTLY. Well i won't make any statements about Quincy or who he's banged or fathered, but i just don't see any of us crucifying Michael and being classy at the same time.
This whole society is full of people who envy others (you won't believe the amount of envy we - black guys - get unless you've grown up in our shoes, although it's not always all that heavy), not to mention the white-centric "image" that's advertised anyway coming from a white society.
Just observation -- When Michael was growing up as a teen for a minute his nose sort of started to stick out wierdly, someone told me he had got it broken or something. HE said his father ridiculed his nose. After this he had a rhinoplasty or two (and more after the hair-fire incident), but his nose didn't yet look skeletal like it does today, at least after the first. It was a normal round nose.
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I think the tacit point Quincy appears to be making, is that Michael's kids were not "really" his [whereas Quincy's own are actually his], and with that kept in mind, that Michael's choices here should perhaps serve as fitting into the broader picture of his deep-seated psychological grappling with being 'black'. I say this was the context of his point, because he was questioned on both the skin pigment issue and his facial transformation; recap:
Q: Did you believe him about the disease?...
Q: But it must've been so disturbing to see Michael's face turn into what it turned into....
Perhaps one might argue that Quincy suffers from the same social pressures on the psych that Michael had fallen victim to -- based off his own marital choices, but in any case, his did not manifest to the extremes that Michael's had.
-------------------- The Complete Picture of the Past tells Us what Not to Repeat Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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If Quincy were said to have suffered from self-hatred, what are we to make of the fact that up to 30% of African Americans' paternal ancestry is West European from slave era America times?
Self-hating [socially] powerful whites or self-hating [presumably socio-economically] unempowerd blacks? The world may never know.
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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James Baldwin (from his Collected Essays : "Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood") wrote about Michael Jackson and foretold his struggle on what it means to be Black Male in America. You need to read the whole assay and the above link gives a lengthy quote, but here is a short quote:
quote:James Baldwin wrote in an essay on Jackson, originally titled "Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood," originally published in Playboy in 1965 and later retitled "Here Be Dragons." "The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all," he wrote. "All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; the blacks, especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair. Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated in the main, abominably because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires. Refusing to be boxed-in, to be controlled, to remain the same, freaks destabilize. They also release something. If we let them. Something, in many of us, that's longing to be free, or just a bit freer than we feel right now. So thanks to Michael, and to freaks and transformers everywhere.
quote:With the English publication of Abnormal, 1 Michel Foucault turns the tables once again. In the previously published lectures, Society Must Be Defended (Il faut défendre la société), one is left asking “Should society be defended?” (Faut-il deféndre la société?). In Abnormal, Foucault explores the grotesque and shows that the truly grotesque is actually the way in which people understand abnormality. He explains how psychiatry is in its own way a monster, and has gotten away with a pseudoscientific coup of the criminal court system. Another thinker who is good at turning tables is James Baldwin. Although Baldwin’s works have not yet been fully philosophically appropriated,2 his 1985 Playboy article “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood”3 (sometimes anthologized as “Here Be Dragons”) describes the hypocrisy of the American hatred of androgynous “freaks” who actually reveal the truth about the defunct and false heterosexism (and racism) of American culture. By sharing episodes from his years as a young writer in Greenwich Village, Baldwin reveals the grotesque nature of gay-bashing and racism.
At the end of his essay, Baldwin turns his attention to Michael Jackson, who Baldwin describes as “having turned so many tables,” a paradigm freak. In light of the recent Jackson court case and the similarities between Baldwin and Foucault’s idea of the truth of the grotesque, this paper offers a Foucauldian/Baldwinian understanding of “the Michael Jackson cacophony.”
quote:The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all. I hope he has the good sense to know it and the good fortune to snatch his life out of the jaws of a carnivorous success. He will not swiftly be forgiven for having turned so many tables, for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring . . . All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; and blacks, especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair . . . (B 828)
In light of the explorations made in this essay, anyone who follows the news from a Foucauldian or Baldwinian point of view is interested in the Michael Jackson case, given that Jackson is the epitome of abnormality (Foucault) and one of the most interesting freaks in popular culture (Baldwin). I will end this essay with some comments about the case.
It is interesting that Jackson is allegedly guilty of being all of the three types of abnormals described by Foucault. First, Jackson is a monster in both the ancient and modern senses. His nose and skin make him appear monstrous: he is black and white, gay and straight, male and female; he is a gentle lover of children, yet sings songs of sex and violence. Also, if the allegations are true, in the modern psychiatric sense, qua sexual predator, he is a monster who preys upon young boys. Second, Jackson is a masturbator. He grabs his crotch while dancing, which is clearly a masturbatory gesture, and, according to the 1993 allegations made against him by a different boy, Jackson masturbates his victims and then requires that the victims masturbate him. Finally, Jackson is incorrigible. The thrust of public concern stems from the simple question, “Didn’t Michael learn anything from the 1993 allegations?” He still had boys over to spend the night and sleep in the same room (sometimes in the same bed) with him. As a result, Jackson is already “guilty” for being such an Antiphysis. He is guilty either way, either of a crime or in the court of public opinion. His abnormality will count against him in a psychiatry driven court system where Jackson will not really be judged for his crime but for his monstrous moral character, which is itself a crime waiting to happen.
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As Baldwin predicted, race is also front and center in this trial. Jackson, who used to think that it did not matter if one were black or white (as his song goes), in light of the allegations has returned to the black world. In his January 14, 2004 Village Voice article “I Believe I Can Open My Fly,” Richard Goldstein shows how R. Kelly, referred to in the article as “the Pied Piper of R&B,” is unharmed from the allegations (21 counts) of child pornography, including the statutory rape of a female minor, whereas Jackson suffers incredibly from fewer counts. The reason behind this discrepancy, Goldstein tells us, is in a racist heterosexist depiction of black men:
quote:Why does Jacko rate contempt while the Pied Piper gets a wink and a nod? The answer lies in the widespread assumption that “awakening” a young lass is the mark of a potent man. When combined with the racist fantasy that black men are repositories of unbridled lust, sex with girls becomes the ultimate credential for a playa. But Jacko will never qualify as a stud. He’s violated the rules of both racial and gender identity by transforming himself into an alabaster androgyne . . . If [Jacko] wants to save his career, he’ll have to start fooling around with 14-year old girls.
Simply put, Michael Jackson has performed a “white” crime; black men are usually guilty of statutory rape of young girls; Jackson is a sodomite who victimizes young boys. Race and sexuality mix together in the Jackson case to monstrous consequences. Jackson is primarily a monster because he breaks the “rules” of being black; in fact, he does more than that—he transgresses them. Add the question of Jackson’s sexuality, which is always already incorporated into the rules of race, and we have an even larger problem. Which brings us to another monstrous mixture: the Nation of Islam and their attempt to reestablish Jackson’s blackness. In his January 6, 2004 The Guardian article “Back into the fold,” Gary Younge writes that this union of forces is odd. However, in its oddness, he writes, in similar terms as Baldwin, the following:
quote:Quite how a celebrity who has been in flight from his racial features, let alone his racial identity, ended up in the arms of an organisation that is defined by race is a moot point. Why a socially conservative institution committed to racial uplift should open its arms to a man charged with child molestation is similarly baffling. At the heart of it, however, lies not just Jackson and the Nation [of Islam] but three of America’s most intense obsessions after terrorism: race, crime and celebrity.
By aligning with the Nation of Islam, Jackson (oddly like O. J. Simpson) moves from one kind of monster to another, a monster that is more tolerated than the sexual predator in American society. To use Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks from January 28, 2004, Michael Jackson is entering a process of “re-negrofication.” Of course, these moves will not keep Michael Jackson from being a monster, given that he will still be one as a black man if he “re-negrofies.” He cannot escape the grotesque because he is part of a grotesque society; a society that is fascinated yet repulsed by monsters. Baldwin and Foucault show us how this is possible, and why the case is interesting from a philosophical point of view. http://myweb.lmu.edu/bstone/abnormals.pdfPosts: 2198 | Registered: Jun 2006
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"The world is jealous of Africa for many centuries because it’s natural resources is phenomenal. It really is. And it is the dawn of civilization. The history, a lot of our bible history is right there in Africa. And King Tut, all those great civilizations – that is right there in Africa. Egypt is in Africa!!! And they always try to separate the two, but Egypt is Africa!!!"
(just yesterday, I was watching CNN and they constantly talked about Obama's first trip to Africa, when it was not long time ago he made a speech in Cairo )
"In my heart, deepest of heart, I really love Africa and I love the people of Africa. We love the African peoples and we love the environment. Topographically, one of the most beautiful places on the surface of the Earth. They never show the sandy white sugar beaches, and it’s there! And they never show the beautiful, you know the landscaping, never show the buildings, the metropolis and urban – Johannesburg, Cape Town, Kenya, ur, you know the Ivory Coast ur, you know, Rwanda, how beautiful the place is! And it’s really stunningly beautiful!"
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^I thought he knew something, given the symbolism he or somebody directing or involved appeared to have catch onto in his "Remember the Time" video.
Not that praising Africa or its history wipes a person of all possible sins.
I just don't see this case as being as black and white as some make it out to be.
MJ is a lover of humanity and beautiful living, that much is clear. He obviously had self-esteem issues that were caused by all the racism around him and he had the freedom and money to harm himself.
That doesn't change the fact that his orientation is towards "good". There are two types of people in this world: those who are oriented towards doing what appears to be best for themselves and their loved ones and those who are not. Doesn't mean they won't make mistakes though. Everybody does, it is part of growing up.
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^ you really don't need a PhD to understand that Michael Jackson is a product of the society he came from. Who does not want to be included into the established 'group'?
Posts: 2198 | Registered: Jun 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Arwa: ^ you really don't need a PhD to understand that Michael Jackson is a product of the society he came from. Who does not want to be included into the established 'group'?
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So chemical face peels explain his apperance? Let's look at the situlation with logic instead of emotion. What methods did Jackson use to alter his apperance? Copious use of bleaching creames donot have such effect;unless somebody can prove otherwise. .
Posts: 8675 | From: Tukuler al~Takruri as Ardo since OCT2014 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Well, I haven't really payed much attention to BET ever since it was bought by Viacom, but I did see some clips of the awards show and frankly it was nothing unexpected. One could say their tribute to Michael Jackson was shabby cuz it was last minute but you think that 80-90% of the artists who won or were presenting would give props to the King of Pop to whom they desperately owed their style to. Jaimie and the OJs were all its worth.
Posts: 26243 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Whatbox: If Quincy were said to have suffered from self-hatred, what are we to make of the fact that up to 30% of African Americans' paternal ancestry is West European from slave era America times?
Whites raping black women during slavery is completely different from blacks marrying whites and adopting white children that will soon inherit his riches. With all the "love talk" about Thomas Jefferson and Sally, her descendants today still cant get official recognition. Besides, I don't think Quincy suffered from the same level of self hatred as Michael.
Posts: 4254 | From: dasein | Registered: Jun 2009
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quote:Originally posted by ausar: So chemical face peels explain his apperance? Let's look at the situlation with logic instead of emotion. What methods did Jackson use to alter his apperance? Copious use of bleaching creames donot have such effect;unless somebody can prove otherwise. .
quote:Originally posted by Bogle: Whites raping black women during slavery is completely different from blacks marrying whites and adopting white children that will soon inherit his riches.
Exactly. Not only was this rape, an animalisic act in and of itself, but with a person thought to not be a person nonetheless.
quote:With all the "love talk" about Thomas Jefferson and Sally, her descendants today still cant get official recognition.
I'm aware.
quote:Besides, I don't think Quincy suffered from the same level of self hatred as Michael.
Thanks for the enlightenment.
Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006
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Arwa, do such skin altering pills exist? Does the science exist to make such pills exist? The only plausible explanation is either comestic surgery or a skin disease.
Posts: 8675 | From: Tukuler al~Takruri as Ardo since OCT2014 | Registered: Feb 2003
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EXACTLY. Well i won't make any statements about Quincy or who he's banged or fathered, but i just don't see any of us crucifying Michael and being classy at the same time.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
If Quincy were said to have suffered from self-hatred, what are we to make of the fact that up to 30% of African Americans' paternal ancestry is West European from slave era America times?![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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