King of Pop Michael Jackson has died

Evolution

Why is it that when someone is poor abuses their body with drugs to the point that they die young this is seen as a criminal act, but when a rich guy does it, everyone comes over all sympathetic ?
 
DominiConnor said:
Why is it that when someone is poor abuses their body with drugs to the point that they die young this is seen as a criminal act, but when a rich guy does it, everyone comes over all sympathetic ?
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Well, ...,er, ..., um, ... red face, ..., shuffling of feet, ..., because he was this staggering musical genius who was the zeitgeist of the age, and who was the epitome of all that was tawdry (oops, I meant touching).

We live in a culture of unrelenting mediocrity and the epicentre of this must surely be the US of A. In the Soviet Union the politburo maintained a collective silence of five minutes when the Russian mathematician Pontryagin died. Utterly inconceivable in the USA.
 
bigbadwolf said:
Well, ...,er, ..., um, ... red face, ..., shuffling of feet, ..., because he was this staggering musical genius who was the zeitgeist of the age, and who was the epitome of all that was tawdry (oops, I meant touching).
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Are you in a way accepting that he was a musical genius?
 
Aditya Chitral said:
Are you in a way accepting that he was a musical genius?
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Absolutely. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Albinoni, Shostakovich? Mere amateurs. Dwarves compared to the towering genius of Michael Jackson.
 
bigbadwolf said:
Did he have any "talent?"
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Do I see a contradiction here? Or was it just a part of a verbose post?

Ohh, by the way would you want these names too to be added to that list?

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, George Frideric Handel, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Francois Couperin, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Pachelbel, Franz Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Hector Berlioz, Fryderyk Chopin, Giuseppe Verdi, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Johann Strauss I, Richard Wagner, Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Edward Elgar, Aaron Copland, Joaquin Rodrigo, Sergey Prokofiev, Carl Orff
 
Aditya Chitral said:
Do I see a contradiction here? Or was it just a part of a verbose post?
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Not at all. I just thought "talent" was too weak a word. "Genius" would be more appropriate.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, George Frideric Handel, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Francois Couperin, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Pachelbel, Franz Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Hector Berlioz, Fryderyk Chopin, Giuseppe Verdi, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms, Georges Bizet, Johann Strauss I, Richard Wagner, Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Edward Elgar, Aaron Copland, Joaquin Rodrigo, Sergey Prokofiev, Carl Orff
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There are a few names here I don't know. But I know most of them (Grieg, incidentally, was Norwegian). Pile them one on top of the other and they don't reach even the shoulders of the titanic Jackson.
 
bigbadwolf said:
I don't know where pop culture begins. Why not take an earlier figure like Elvis Pressley, for example, and say that it began with him? Or a few years later with the Beatles, who were also a global phenomenon? As for record sales being related to "quality," I am lost for words. That means Eminem, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Fifty Cents are also producing "quality." Not to talk of Madonna and Britney Spears.

As is clear from my posts, I loathe the modern entertainment industry and its icons.
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bigbadwolf said:
Did he have any "talent?" I don't know what the fuss is about: he was on the front page of the New York Times. Entertainers like him, Madonna and Britney Spears are responsible for the downward spiral of American culture.
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bigbadwolf said:
I'm not a creature of this age: I don't understand celebrity culture. I don't understand celebrity worship. Here in Norway, all the newspapers have had Jackson on the front page. My friends in Argentina are telling me he's on television to the extent you would think there was an election on and he was running for president. I doubt Pressley got this kind of coverage when he died in 1977(?). Seems the culture industry -- and it is an industry -- has strengthened its global sinews.
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I don't think any of your posts reflect that you feel he was a genius.

bigbadwolf said:
A piece in Alternet about the kind of towering genius that Jackson was.
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How about this thing, to quote for people who did not click on that link, the headlines said, "Michael Jackson's Death Was Tragic, But He Was Little More Than an Icon of Mediocrity".

I fail to understand your admiration for Michael Jackson.

Also, comparing him to the other geniuses in the list. I am not sure how well will that be supported.
 
Well, ...,er, ..., um, ... red face, ..., shuffling of feet, ..., because he was this staggering musical genius who was the zeitgeist of the age, and who was the epitome of all that was tawdry (oops, I meant touching).
Yes. Mr. Jackson was good at his job, big deal.

He was a sexual predator on children as well as the drugs.

But he was a celebrity, so that's all right then.

I liked his music too, but I'd preferred to have seen him die in jail.
 
bigbadwolf said:
There are a few names here I don't know. But I know most of them (Grieg, incidentally, was Norwegian). Pile them one on top of the other and they don't reach even the shoulders of the titanic Jackson.
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:D I can see the sarcasm. ;)
 
doug reich said:
Is that what that is? All along I thought he was playing us, and was in fact a huge MJ fan!
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My world came to an end in August 1914. I am a complete anachronism in the modern world, adrift in a soulless place. My taste in music -- and I do mean music rather than cacophony -- runs towards the classical.
 
bigbadwolf said:
...My taste in music -- and I do mean music rather than cacophony -- runs towards the classical.
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Classical as in classic pop music? e.g. MJ, the King of Pop :)
 
Anyway I prefer the Pet Shop Boys.

Proof you can be great musicians without the trappings of a drug dealer or the sexual morality of a catholic priest.
 
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