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Whew Willa, you offer some tricky psychoanalysis here.
None of us can say what the Jacksons were thinking on that stage with
Paris, or what they were trying to project to the YouTube audience.
What we can safely say is that despite being a dysfunctional family,
they are clearly a family in grief. I think it’s unfair to try to
interpret their intentions. Would it have been better, or more
believable, if they had not embraced Paris and just stood off to the
side and whispered to her to suck it up? Is it really that implausible
that with Michael now gone they would want to surround his children in
a protective cocoon? ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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So. That happened.
The bizarre spectacle of Michael Jackson's funeral was everywhere
yesterday, and the most talked-about moment was when Michael's
daughter, Paris Jackson, went up on stage and told the world,
"Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever
imagine. And I just wanted to say I love him so much." Her Aunt Janet
softly urged her forward and said, "speak up." Though I don't doubt
Paris's emotion was genuine, the thing felt creepily staged ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Sara, you said that childhood stardom
was such a destructive force for Michael Jackson, and you were right. But
the current issue of Vanity Fair has a cover
story on Heath Ledger that shows for a sensitive adult, stardom ain't all
its cracked up to be, either. This isn't a new idea: That's why "the price of
fame" is such a cliched phrase. But Peter Biskind's story of the Ledger demise
is particularly heart-stomping, since Heath was so young, so talented, and being
a movie star really did ruin every aspect of his life ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Now that Michael Jackson has gotten what always seemed to be his
wish for eternal youth, I expect participants in his secretive life
will emerge for a last reminder of the extremely gifted pop star’s
lifetime of sad dysfunction. The Jackson Family will surely have a
stake in resolving who will attain custody of Jackson’s offspring. Any
dispute will no doubt also involve Debby Rowe,
the dermatologist’s nurse who bore Jackson his oldest two, 11-year-old
son Prince and 10-year-old daughter Paris. Rowe seems to have upheld
her end of their strange bargain, but their businesslike marriage ended
in businesslike divorce. (He found a less personally taxing way to reproduce by using a surrogate to create his third child, also named Prince II, but nicknamed Blanket).
Speaking of mothers, I doubt we’ll hear again from the housekeeper at Jackson’s amusement park ranch, whose son testified he was molested by her ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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I was particularly touched by Emily Yoffe's remembrance of Michael Jackson
as the young, innocent, and extraordinarily talented boy he once was,
before his life went terribly wrong. Despite such cautionary tales,
parents continue to push their kids in front of the cameras long before
the age of consent. Just look at the children of Jon & Kate.
It's already too easy picturing the Gosselin brood all
grown up: the plastic surgeries to come, the TV specials of their
family "reunions" (complete with vicious sibling rivalries), the
"comebacks" for child stars who are famous merely for having always
been famous. Maybe they'll be lucky. Their fame,
after all, is diluted by ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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A friend told me last night the sort of thing that you only admit
when you’re standing in a bar where the entire room is grooving on the
18th song in a marathon of Michael: that recently, for no real reason,
he had read through a bunch of the coverage of Michael right after Thriller
was released. The general sentiment at the time, he told us, was awe at
what Michael’s music did to existing standards of “black” and “white”
music. Back then, Billboard had its top-10 mainstream chart, and a
separate “Black LPs” chart, and there was little overlap between the
two. Michael changed that.
I was less than born when Thriller came out in 1983, so for
me, it was strange last night to think of Michael as he once was:
someone who raised issues of race not by being some ever-changing
hybrid of black and white, but by being black. I remember ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Michael Jackson was blasting on the streets of New York City last
night, out of car windows, restaurants, bars, and radios set up next to
makeshift fruit stands. People were paying their respects, but also up
to something more. They were taking the first steps towards reclaiming
his music, turning it on, turning it up, and finally, finally, ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Tracking celebrities' final moments has become a kind of collective,
Internet parlor game. The e-mails start flying: Who's getting the best
scoop? Who can spot the first credible death announcement? I'm
currently standing vigil over Michael Jackson's Wikipedia page,
wondering if I can catch the moment when someone adds in a date of
death and all the verbs fall, like dominoes, into the past tense. ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Has there ever been a major celebrity who so wholly turned himself
into a freak? He destroyed his face (the tabloids loved to get photos
of him sans surgical mask, a prothestic tip taped to the end of his
ruined nose), he was involved in endless pedophillic scandals, and it
was awful to think of him as a father. What happens now to his
children, who have been trapped in his mansions, forced to live out his
fantasy of the childhood he never had? And don't you just wish you
could reach out to the beautiful, supremely talented boy he once was
and make it all ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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The Los Angeles Times confirms that Michael Jackson has died of cardiac arrest. Two pop icons down in a day, and to me their lives moved in opposite directions. After her flash appearance as a sex symbol, Fawcett spent the rest of her years backing away from that image, playing (and looking like) a battered spouse in the Apostle, making a video about her anal cancer, generally reminding us that body beautiful is fleeting, and we all go to dust in the end ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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