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Post by Jaga on Jun 25, 2009 19:50:57 GMT -7
Everybody probably heard about Michel Jackson death today. He was a great artist, whatever will be said about him and he really made a difference.
Here is a famous performance from beginning of 80-es by many artists as a charity to Africa. I remember when I saw it and it was not long after the Martial Law I felt the unity with the rest of the world, although it that time it looks like we are far apart from Western Europe....
but this all changed by now
Here is a famous video:
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Post by pieter on Jun 27, 2009 3:37:26 GMT -7
Jaga,
I saw a phantastic documentry about his life on the Dutch cultural
Broadcast Corporation VPRO, which told the story from his childhood
until the time just before his death. This talented man never had the
opportunity to be a child, and tried the rest of his life to find these
missing years of childhood and his teenage years.
In fact he never became an adult. Only in his work he was an adult,
he was a perfectionist, a very talented human being and someone
who touched the hearts of many people all over the world.
In the Netherlands, Poland, Africa and Asia as much as in the US.
He could sing, he could dance, het could write very good songs and
he could make choreographies him self.
My favorite song is:
Pieter
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Post by pieter on Jun 27, 2009 3:38:47 GMT -7
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Post by tuftabis on Jun 27, 2009 4:50:07 GMT -7
Jaga, I saw a phantastic documentry about his life on the Dutch cultural Broadcast Corporation VPRO, which told the story from his childhood until the time just before his death. This talented man never had the opportunity to be a child, and tried the rest of his life to find these missing years of childhood and his teenage years. In fact he never became an adult. Only in his work he was an adult, he was a perfectionist, a very talented human being and someone who touched the hearts of many people all over the world. In the Netherlands, Poland, Africa and Asia as much as in the US. He could sing, he could dance, het could write very good songs and he could make choreographies him self. My favorite song is: Pieter So often the deeply complicated, misunderstood or unhappy persons are the most talented. And Michael Jackson, apart from being a pop-music king will also be probably remembered as the inventor of something we call a video clip. I was not a great fan of Micheal Jackson's music during the last 18 years, but I did like some of his earlier songs. The two I really liked are here Give it to me Man in the mirror |
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Post by dbkaczor on Jun 27, 2009 5:15:02 GMT -7
i was saddened to hear of his death. a talented human being. somewhere along the line in his remarkable life, something went amiss. sometime in the early 90's when he started with the plastic surgery. what a tragedy. he was a handsome young man before all that. funny, how much money so many of these people have and it just doesn't matter. but, he had to live his life in the spotlight constantly and i am sure that would make anyone crack after awhile. be careful what you wish for...money and fame can't buy happiness, health or friends. RIP michael jackson.
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Post by kaima on Jun 27, 2009 10:20:55 GMT -7
One more life completed. I think of the talent I run across in people every day, and it is astounding. I do have to wonder at the time and attention his death gets.
The catchiest headline I have seen is "Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him"
With Farah Fawcett kicking off the same day we have been exposed to the overused words 'talent' and 'unique' faster than we can change channels.
PS. As a matter of principle I only recognize one King, and that is Nat King Cole. All others, be they entertainers or 'royalty', are pretenders.
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Post by tuftabis on Jul 1, 2009 2:39:18 GMT -7
One more life completed. I think of the talent I run across in people every day, and it is astounding. I do have to wonder at the time and attention his death gets. The catchiest headline I have seen is "Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him" With Farah Fawcett kicking off the same day we have been exposed to the overused words 'talent' and 'unique' faster than we can change channels. PS. As a matter of principle I only recognize one King, and that is Nat King Cole. All others, be they entertainers or 'royalty', are pretenders. Well, Kai I think you underappreciate the role Michael Jackson and his talents have played during alomst all of his life in order to make possible the impossible - for the black person to become the president of the United States of America. |
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Post by kaima on Jul 1, 2009 7:47:50 GMT -7
Tufta,
the commentary is typical of me. The press spends days (or in this case weeks) on praising people in entertainment and the loss of the talent, and more time in praising politicians. The productive individual who dies stands a good chance of getting no attention or recognition at all.
I look upon a human life as a human life, and one not being more valuable because they were famous, a beauty queen, or a politician. I feel the talents and contributions of the normal person are quite unrecognized, so my neglect of the famous is a result.
There are generations of black politicians and leaders who have contributed more, to my perspective, to Obama getting into the white house, than Jackson did as a simple entertainer. Well, Bush helped a lot with his extreme incompetency too.
Kai
Yes, Jackson was an international talent, no doubt about that.
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Post by tuftabis on Jul 1, 2009 9:21:03 GMT -7
Kai I like your distance towards 'given reality'. My remark was only aimed at pointing that pop-culture- if we like it or no - is the driving force nowadays. Sometimes more than we imagine. People in their majority generally don't spend time reading or thinking or... discussing. Millions of young American literally loved M.J. in their teenage years or early youth. They are now grown up and make political choices.
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Post by gideon on Jul 1, 2009 20:44:56 GMT -7
Tufta, the commentary is typical of me. The press spends days (or in this case weeks) on praising people in entertainment and the loss of the talent, and more time in praising politicians. The productive individual who dies stands a good chance of getting no attention or recognition at all. I look upon a human life as a human life, and one not being more valuable because they were famous, a beauty queen, or a politician. I feel the talents and contributions of the normal person are quite unrecognized, so my neglect of the famous is a result. There are generations of black politicians and leaders who have contributed more, to my perspective, to Obama getting into the white house, than Jackson did as a simple entertainer. Well, Bush helped a lot with his extreme incompetency too. Kai Yes, Jackson was an international talent, no doubt about that. One of the most sensible and honest things I have read in recent months. Welcome to the United States of Entertainment. Yay... |
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Post by kaima on Jul 1, 2009 22:57:35 GMT -7
People in their majority generally don't spend time reading or thinking or... discussing. Millions of young American literally loved M.J. in their teenage years or early youth. They are now grown up and make political choices. You are on to something. This idea matches up well with President Obama being written up as the "First Sesame Street President": www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1902845,00.html Monday, Jun. 15, 2009 Tickle Me Obama: Lessons from Sesame Street By NANCY GIBBS Most presidents are easy to pin down on our cultural maps. Ronald Reagan was raised in Dixon, Ill., but we placed him in Hollywood, telling America's story on the big screen. Bill Clinton may have been the Man from Hope, Ark., but the mischief of nearby Hot Springs was in his blood. George W. Bush was practically born on the Yale campus, yet Texas was his true terroir. Which brings us to Barack Obama, who belongs ... where exactly? Kansas? Kenya? Hawaii? Harvard? None of these quite fit our blender in chief, but it struck me recently that Obama does have a cultural home: he's the first President from Sesame Street. (See pictures of Barack Obama's family tree.) When Sesame Street founder Joan Ganz Cooney met Obama at a fundraiser last year, she was prepared to hear what she always does. "I'd have bet you a million dollars," she says, "that [Obama] would tell me how his kids watched Sesame Street." But instead the President-to-be told her that he and his little sister watched the show. "I realized that this is the first President young enough to say that." The Obamas clearly have a deeper personal connection to the show than their White House predecessors did; it was aimed, after all, at kids like them. (Full disclosure: I have a personal connection too; some of my friends work on Sesame Street, and they aren't furry.) When Michelle Obama visited the set in Queens, N.Y., to talk about "healthy habits" a few weeks ago, she was practically fizzing. "I'm on a high," she said. "I never thought I'd be on Sesame Street with Elmo and Big Bird." Let it be noted that this visit came after she'd met the Queen of England at Buckingham Palace and welcomed Stevie Wonder to the White House and enjoyed all kinds of other not-too-bad perks of being First Lady. "I think it's probably the best thing I've done so far in the White House." The President is every bit as much a product of the show, but it's not just his age and mastery of the alphabet that make Obama the first Sesame Street President. The Obama presidency is a wholly American fusion of optimism, enterprise and earnestness — rather like the far-fetched proposal of 40 years ago to create a TV show that would prove that educational television need not be an oxymoron. Unlike Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans in their idyllic Treasure House, or the leafy land of the suburban sitcom, Sesame's characters were colorful, their milieu was urban; there was noise and grime and grouches, and they hung out on the stoop, not the porch. Parents who were not white, not rich, not able to afford a fancy preschool knew this show was designed for them. Maybe it would level the playing field a little. (See pictures of Barack Obama's college years.) It wound up doing much more. Sesame Street is now the longest street on the planet. It runs from Harlem to Honolulu; on to Obama's childhood home in Indonesia, where Jalan Sesama celebrates unity through diversity; through South Africa, where one Muppet is HIV positive; through Israel and Palestine and Egypt, where girls are told how important it is that they keep reading and learning. It creates citizens of a highly globalized, post-racial world. "The only kids who can identify along racial lines with the Muppets," genius puppeteer Jim Henson observed, "have to be either green or orange." And yet for all its empathy, Sesame Street has been highly cerebral as well, the perfect hatchery for the Empirical Presidency. It is the most heavily researched children's show ever, conceived by an experimental psychologist, incubated in a Harvard seminar room, vetted by linguists and nutritionists and child-development experts (who once vetoed a segment in which Elmo crawled inside the letter O because they feared that a toddler might see it as permission to climb into a toilet). Obama famously prizes intellect over instinct; he says he wants to see the data and for the data to drive the decision. Sesame writers test-drive their skits on focus groups of young children to see how long they can hold the kids' attention and how well the writers deliver their desired message; if the kids drift, the segment dies. The same can be said of any number of Obama's dreamier campaign promises. Sesame Street's genius lies in finding gentle ways to talk about hard things — death, divorce, danger — in terms that children understand and accept. The polls can tell a President what the American people want to hear, but after so many years of sandbox politics and childish games, there comes a time to grow up. Given the hard choices, does the President think we're ready to handle complexity and delay gratification? If not now, when? Professor Obama has at least talked to us like we're adults. The question remains whether President Obama will govern as though he believes it. |
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Post by sciwriter on Jul 7, 2009 15:41:43 GMT -7
His death was quite sad, but I disliked his influence on young people to take drugs. He made a lot of older people, especially some women, who don't care about wisdom feel young, but I prefer wisdom. I doubt that most oppressed people needed Michael Jackson to resist martial law.
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