Edward Moore Kennedy, senior Senator from Massachusetts, left us this morning. To say he will be missed is not enough. We need his force and conscience. It is left to us to learn and to practice his cunning, his wisdom, his strength. Open Letters mourns with America.
The House on Sorority Row film
Now is a good time to recommend Margo Jefferson’s nonpareil On Michael Jackson
. She does what the past two afternoons of blog posts have been trying, she puts her finger on it:
Think of Michael Jackson’s mind as a funhouse, and look at some of the exhibits on display: P. T. Barnum, maestro of wonders and humbuggery; Walt Disney, who invented the world’s mightiest fantasy technology complex; Peter Pan (”He escaped from being human when he was seven days old”); a haggard Edgar Allan Poe (he was the only character besides Peter Pan that Michael Jackson planned to play in a movie); the romping, ever-combustible Three Stooges; a friendly chimpanzee named Bubbles who has his own wardrobe of clothes; and a python lying coiled between white llamas.
One Night with the King movie full
Jefferson recalls watching the pre-teen Jackson thrust and roll on the Motown stage at exactly the point in his life (as in any boy’s life) when he was half man and child, half androgyne. He was also a high-pitched, non-threatening sex symbol for women, many of them white women. Because he was a charming boy, he was an innocent (think “I’ll Be There“). Because he grew up on the Motown stage, surrounded by screaming girls in the front of the house and burlesque acts in the back, he was never innocent.
Made for Each Other movie
So he was a beautiful freak, a dangerous innocent, an aggressively masculine drag act. He was wonderful. And, of course, we’re free to remember him that way, now.
For the past few years, fans of his music have felt a little ashamed. I’ve been one of them. I jog to “Billy Jean.” I always play “Bad” on the Jukebox. But it had that rare whiff of the verboten that didn’t make it feel extra fun or extra good. It felt a little awful. I felt a little awful for enjoying it.
Andrew Sullivan wrote that Michael Jackson “died years ago.” It’s a good line but it’s hardly half true. I was shocked to hear the news, like everybody was, and I came home and found some of the dance scenes from The Wiz
on You Tube and thought about his trademark breathlessness—his moves were nervous. I thought, like we always do, about phenomenal success, and how “the rich don’t have friends, they only have butlers.” Elvis also had a posse that kept him hopped up, and let him keep acting like an asshole.
A Perfect Murder Afro Samurai: Resurrection video But they’re playing “Smooth Criminal” and “Blood on the Dance Floor” today—which I always want them to do and which they never do—and of course both the songs and the videos are really good. (You know what else is good? “We’ve Had Enough” from The Ultimate Collection
. Really.) Oh and “P.Y.T.” too. And “This Place Hotel.” And “Dirty Diana.” Am I missing any?
We can go back over it all now. We can remember him (ironically? with relief?) at his best.
— John Cotter