Michael Jackson

Welcome to a new semi-regular segment on The Punch, where we try to extract something meaningful from the week that was.

In yet another week dominated by the carbon tax and financial turmoil, the other big story was the guilty verdict on Michael Jackson’s personal doctor, Conrad Murray, who slowly poisoned Jacko with a toxic mix of anaesthetic and sedatives.

Jacko wanted a cure for insomnia so he could rest up for his imminent comeback tour. The thing is, why did he need drugs at all? According to the man himself, dancing could solve all problems. Let’s examine the video evidence…

Continue reading "This week’s lesson: Dancing will not solve your problems" »

So the crowd cheers, euphoric, as the ‘guilty’ judgement of Dr Conrad Murray is read out.

Michael Jackson’s fans will now be able to remember him untainted – they will forget that he was a drug abuser, a consummate weirdo, they will forget the grim and disturbing pictures of his deathbed. He will be again the child star turned genius. In death, he will be perfect.

Meanwhile, the cardiologist who pumped him full of powerful drugs, who – the jury heard – committed numerous acts of negligence not big enough to have him found guilty of gross negligence, will have an uncertain fate in gaol.

Continue reading "Guilty verdict in Jackson case not black and white" »

Tell-all interviews usually reek of sex. Mostly adulterous, always complicated, sometimes violent and just like an old-school western – with the “goodie” and “baddie” laid out plain for all to see.

Tragedy, celebrity, victory, great wealth or misfortunes get a look in too. Ditto multiple childbirth, homosexual offspring and gender transformation surgery.

They’re trashy, melodramatic, addictive and moving. They can be tragic. But the best tell-alls give us something else as well.

Continue reading "Landmark interviews that changed the game" »

I felt nothing when Michael Jackson died. It’s not like I didn’t try to summon a tear but in the end the only emotion I could rustle up was ambivalence. This was surprising because usually when a celebrity dies, I do feel sad. Often extremely so.

When Natasha Richardson died, for example, I was deeply affected, even though I couldn’t name a single film she was in. When John Lennon died, I was terribly sad, even though I was only vaguely aware of The Beatles and I was only nine.

But when one of the world’s biggest pop stars died back in June, someone whose music had been the soundtrack to decades of my life, I was oddly unmoved. As much as I tried, I simply couldn’t connect to any great sense of loss or tap into that massive international out-pouring of grief.

Continue reading "This is an excellent piece of Michael Jackson propaganda" »

Rumour has it that if Katherine Jackson is granted permanent custody of Michael Jackson’s children, the brood could be raised by her eldest—and private—daughter Rebbie.

What a relief, when one considers the frightening prospect of Joseph Jackson playing a more permanent role in their upbringing.

Here is a man who has long been accused of ruling the famous clan with an iron fist and who, according to Michael, sat in a chair with a belt in his hand as the Jackson Five rehearsed.

Continue reading "Even in death Michael still a cash-cow to Jackson Snr" »

The King of Pop may be dead, but the controversy surrounding his untimely exit is far from buried.

The dust has barely settled since his globally-televised public memorial service last week, yet every day more pieces seem to be missing in the Jacko jigsaw about his life, his death, his final resting place and those he left behind.

The case has transcended from the mysterious to the macabre, with reports that his ghost has been seen walking the halls of his Neverland ranch to questions over who has possession of his brain. 

Continue reading "The web is alive with wacko theories on Jacko" »

NO Billie Jean. No Beat It. No-one was starting something, not even a moonwalk. Of all the unlikely things, it was often quiet.

Whatever your life had been, you’d probably want it mourned this way: solemn, plenty sad, and plenty of slow songs. But this was Michael Jackson, and no one expected it be as normal as that. So it was time to put aside your thoughts about the life being recognised and be surprised.
And perhaps nothing could have surprised a viewer more than a farewell that flipped the coin from crazy heads to solemn tales - the telling of gentle and kind stories that somehow did not leave you feeling conned, despite all we think we know about the man.

Continue reading "The quiet, dignified end to Michael Jackson’s mad life" »

I’ll be out door-knocking in Bennelong this weekend, talking to real people and listening to their stories. Nothing beats it for direct feedback on a range of fronts. Every time I do it I come away with a couple of reaffirming anecdotes – usually about people’s resilience, ingenuity, wisdom, and humanity. Real human interest stories aren’t hard to come by. You just have to listen. 

The last thing I’ll be doing this weekend will be switching on the television. I’m trying to avoid becoming an unwilling passenger on Michael Jackson’s final journey home to Neverland.

Despite my best efforts I suspect that, like death and taxes, celebrity death coverage will still prove to be inescapable. As we’ve seen across last week’s media landscape, dead celebrities are the undisputed rulers of the news cycle.

Continue reading "Drop the dead celebrity, I’ve got a good news story" »

With the beginning of the new financial year there are invariably small changes to our lives.

Many of these revolve around money. Things like tax cuts, rate changes and increases in family allowance benefits.

The middle of the year also gives us time for more personal reflection: it’s July and I still haven’t taken the bottles from my April birthday party to the recycling bin – just a random example.

But here is a list of ways that things have changed today and The Punch’s evaluation of whether we’re better off for it.

1. Crappy tax cuts introduced

Kevin Rudd committed to these tax cuts before the last election and now has to go through with them.

The promise was made in the heady days of economic boom time when we enjoyed daily joy rides in limousines with Paris Hilton and wore extinct animals on our heads. Now we’re dressing in possums and the best celebrity we can muster is Kochie giving some sage financial advice: “Here’s one folks, ever thought of knitting your dinner?”

Continue reading "For better or for worse: 10 things that changed today" »

Gifted comic Sacha Baron Cohen has shown misplaced restraint by snipping an inoffensive Michael Jackson joke from his upcoming moneymaker Bruno.

[Bruno in the early days. Clip contains strong language]

So what do we deduce from this? A public figure’s ripe for a skewering as long as they’re alive, but become off-limits on death?

When can we start forwarding those corny text message jokes about Jacko’s plastic surgery and questionable private life? How soon is too soon?

Continue reading "Bruno cuts Jackson scene - who’s the biggest loser?" »

I was bunkered down in 1997 finishing a book called Gotcha: Life in a Tabloid World when I was disturbed by a phone call. Something about a woman called Diana who’d died in a car crash the day before. I had no clue. The journo on the other end of the phone thought she’d accidentally called Mars.

Having lived through both the OJ trial and the Lewinsky/Clinton affair in New York I thought I knew what the eye of a celebrity death, sex or scandal storm looked like. I spent the next week fielding questions from the media about why the media couldn’t stop asking people questions about Diana.

The highbrow journos were all in deep shock about the public interest in a woman they saw as a dim blonde who liked disco dancing, enemas and psychics.

But they were equally transfixed by the level of public grief at her passing The only journalists who really understood what was going on were tabloid reporters – hacks in the minds of the ABC-types who’d previously seen themselves as gatekeepers of the news agenda.

Continue reading "Jackson’s death a study in tabloid human instincts" »

You have probably seen this before. But on the weekend after Michael Jackson left us, I thought it was worth another run. You can’t watch this video of inmates at a jail in the Philippines busting their Thriller moves too many times.

I’m not sure how many readers spend time in the Book of Common Prayer of 1662, but it contains a phrase that came to mind this morning: “in the midst of life we are in death”.

Three deaths made the news yesterday: the King of Pop, the blonde Charlie’s angel, and a Sydney truckdriver.

Michael Jackson seems to have suffered a medication-related heart attack just before his sold-out revival tour; possibly because of it. Farrah Fawcett Majors had been battling cancer for years, and had last rites administered to her yesterday as she prepared for the Beyond.

But the truckie, although in his sixties, was just doing his job, driving along Milperra Rd near Bankstown Airport, when suddenly his life was ended by a bullet he probably didn’t even see coming.

Continue reading "Is it better to know death is coming for you?" »

While we officially record our sorrow at the passing of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett - and anyone else who’s carked it in the past 20 minutes or so - it’s worth noting the terminal case of death-mania which has struck the media today.

Leading the charge was Richard Wilkins on Channel Nine who aired the hoax story that Jeff Goldblum had died, apparently from a fall. Nine boldly declared Goldblum to be deader than disco and ran with the story for a full ten minutes before airing new details which had come to hand, namely that the star of The Fly and Jurassic Park was considerably less dead than originally feared.

The official, pissed-off word came on Twitter from Kevin Spacey.

Continue reading "OK can everyone who isn’t dead raise their hand" »

There’s something about that line “Annie are you ok, are you ok Annie,” that goes on permanent rotation in my brain for days after each time I hear the song.

Maybe its because it came out when I was in year six, and I loved it then.

There’s so many other Michael Jackson songs that we’ll be listening to forever, but this is my favourite.

Continue reading "Smooth Criminal was the best Jacko song" »

The boy who never grew up is dead at the age of 50. Michael Jackson died this morning of a heart attack at his Los Angeles home.  TMZ reports that the singer was rushed to the UCLA medical centre where he was pronounced dead on arrival. His sister La Toya was seen sobbing at the hospital.

The world’s media is now cutting and pasting packages which condense several lifetimes of weirdness into the space of one bulletin. Jackson’s oddness has already been demonstrated with the roll-call of mourners - one of the first to confirm his demise was mystic Uri Geller who can bend spoons through mind-power alone.

Collating Jackson’s wackiness will take some time. The baby-dangling episode, the sinister stories out of the Neverland Ranch, his purchase of the bones of Elephant Man John Merrick, a chimp called Bubbles, a baby called Blanket, a brief and ill-fated marriage to Lisa Presley, an addiction to plastic surgery which saw his nose crumble and his black skin bleached white. To name a few.

Before we get to all that, listen to this song. And this one. And when you watch him above, and here, as a little 11-year-old kid, it’s hard not to feel real sorrow at the premature departure of a guy who with his abusive family background and his extraordinary musical genius, was probably always destined to be a screw-up. 

Anyway, the jokes have started. This one’s kind of nice though, from @davesag on Twitter:

#michaeljackson cause of death. a) Sunshine? b) Moonlight? c) Good times? d) Boogie.

All of the above.