He was a great talent but I'm with you.

I turn to CNN or Fox I want to see news.

There are plenty of other channels carrying Michael Jackson.

It ain't safe yet. Better wait a month or two.

I was never a big fan of him to start with.

I so wholeheartedly agree that this is getting to overkill.

He's dead! Bury him and move on.

Try looking up a bio of Karl Malden instead. He passed away yesterday after a long and honorable life in the arts, surrounded by loving family.
Refreshing.

This will be the last one of these, I promise.

Liz Taylor was probably as big a star. But when she kicks it won't be as big a deal because [A] her fans are old too, and as people age they care less about celebrities and [B] as people age they die more themselves, and aren't even around to care about dying celebrities.

Thing about Thriller was, it wasn't a great album. It sold a lot of copies because Quincy Jones is brilliant, so it as least a good album; because MTV was the center of world fashion; because monoculture media had only begun their fragmentation; and because the market penetration for was peaking (i.e., Wal-mart and other superstore distribution points were coming online.)

So this may be an ugly week, but nobody as ugly and pathetic will ever again be as theatrically mourned as Jackson.

You can speed up the process with some E-Cards.

Oh, they dropped one. It said, "MJ might have been an anti-Semite, but he loved children."

Must have been too controversial or something.

The news coverage is disgusting. A week before he died they were calling him Wacko Jacko. Now he's a god. He was a tremendous talent, but let's not forget that he was a man who was having sleepovers with children on a regular basis. That is not sweet or normal. Despite beating the charges, I will never be convinced that he was not a pedophile. If they want to say he was a talent, ok, but enough with the friggin tributes.

i don't get why this bothers any of you. jealousy?

i'm not much of an MJ fan but he did put out some good stuff musically and some dreck. he has his fans and they should be allowed to mourn just like they did for Lennon and Elvis - it not up to me to tell them to shut up because i'm bored by it

as for his personal life - lots of men get accused of sexual misconduct and are convicted in the court of public opinion...until you find out the accusation was false

i don't know if he did it and neither do you

I get most of my world/national news online... I get through it all faster that way, too. Plus, prime time "news" isn't really reporting, anyway... it's Keith Olbermann or Glen Beck or Bill O'Reiley or Nancy Grace yelling at you. (no, I don't care if I spelled someone's name wrong; I haven't had but a sip of my iced coffee yet.) So much easier to just go to the Reuters or BBC sites and just read the actual NEWS. (By the way, a pet python strangled a toddler in Florida. Moral of the story: Don't keep a snake as a pet. Seriously.)

Regarding Flyne's point (and mine about how old people don't care about celebrities.)

I actually sorta shocked how little fanfare MJ's death is getting. The funeral footage shoud be interesting. Not Ayatollah Khomeini's funeral interesting, but still...

I don't get it and never did. When Diana died, you'd have thought it was Churchill himself. Jackson was an entertainer of dubious morals whose career was already over.

The problem started when mainstream news morphed into People magazine.

I wonder if anyone even knows the difference between accomplishment and aggrandizement anymore.

The media cover spectacles like Jackson 24/7 so they won't have to exert themselves going out and asking tough questions, such as just where are our government's policies leading us, for starters. Or, gods forbid, doing any independent journalistic investigation that involves more than tearing the latest press release off the fax machine and reprinting it.

Its not jealousy. More soldiers were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where's the coverage? If you want to talk about heroes or anyone being deserving of news coverage, how about them? MJ's coverage has gone beyond news coverage. It is the media building someone up once again. Watch after the funeral all of the exposes that come out to knock him down again. Its sick!

"Thing about Thriller was, it wasn't a great album."

*May be Crid's most controversial posting ever.

It may be starting to let up a bit. Yesterday some station got a bio of Farrah in edgewise.

independent journalistic investigation that involves more than tearing the latest press release off the fax machine and reprinting it.

That is so old fashioned. Its now:

independent journalistic investigation that involves more than copying and pasting the latest e-mail press release and reprinting it.

> commentcrid@gmail.com

Cosh cooked the meal, all that was left was a little cleanup: When he says no one "will ever pull it off again", I think he means "So no such tremendously incompetent human being will ever be allowed to bungle such a richly rewarded life."

BUNGLED!

Was responding to Snake....

I have a feeling that if he had lived, three months from now we would have been reading about what a dismal failure his "comeback" attempt had been. He was in no shape physically to handle the rigors of a concert tour.

It's sad to me that a man who basically killed himself with prescription drugs is being held up as though a god, when (as Kristen mentioned) two weeks ago he was an attractive black man turned ugly white (woman?) pedophile in drag. A sad end to a sad life. No genius there.

"So no such tremendously incompetent human being will ever be allowed to bungle such a richly rewarded life."

Amen, and amen.

Meh. Crid, Cosh's Thriller critiques are shallow. They read like the grumblings of a "sophisticated" music critic who favors aimless jazz and Phish.

Thriller remains a desert island album.

Criddo,

Didnt MJ and Janet have the little girl voice you always mention?

Anywas that was some fucked up family just look at the horrors of horrors many of them did to their noses cuz their daddy told them it was too wide.

> Cosh's Thriller critiques
> are shallow.

Sez you! I think there's no such thing as "aimless" jazz, only good or bad jazz.

I thought of writing about 900 words of Thriller critique, but what the hell... If you want to sit on a desert island with it, it's your own damn fault, and you deserve whatever happens to your immortal soul. We've heard every tune 300,000 times, even those of us who never bought it... What's left to enjoy?

> Didnt MJ and Janet have the
> little girl voice you always
> mention?

Maybe his voice was sincerely that hideous, maybe not: This guy's whole life was about posturing. Listen, I was going to harsh Laurie for writing this:

> A sad end to a sad life.
> No genius there.

Genius has nothing to do with 'sadness' in the judgmental sense. A lot of geniuses, certainly including musical ones, lead fucked-up lives.

But neither does being beaten senseless by a crazyshit father mean that your fuck-upedness should be forgiven.

There's no reason to think this talent, and everything he did that we enjoyed, wouldn't have happened if his family hadn't been abusive.

Go listen to the records he recorded between ages 10 and 13. (The tunes from younger times were just a child in vaudeville, and the ones from older years were all clicks and hiccups.)

Imagine that angelic child raised in a loving, sensible home of accountability and patience.

Thriller was all about Quincy: As noted in the Cosh comments, no better or worse than his other work from that period.

Loved MJ too. Realy I did but there comes a point to lets things die down. I wonder if the will ever have a MJ version of the bellow T-Shit

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1015381/Storm-Diana-T-shirts-say-Shes-dead--it.html

It's beyond bizarre, Amy. I was in Oregon & Washington for the past 2 weeks and was more than a little shocked at how much coverage was devoted to MJ's death. Soooooooooooo many important things are going on in America and around the world but the MSM isn't interested in covering any of it to any degree. Sad.

Hey, regarding something that's more important, here's an interesting little story that no news media will ever cover yet is very important to the people affected: http://www.bcdigitaldivide.org/?q=node/89

If you must read about MJ, go with Q.

I'm thankful we're not being treated to a Reagan-esque Corpseapalooza Tour '09.

Although they could make serious bank by charging to view the body, and double that by showing the nose simultaneously in a separate city.

He hasn't even been popular in two decades. He was already "out" when I was 12!!!! (two decades ago)

Michael Jackson never once wavered when it came to standing up for what he believed in why should we.