26
Jun
![A sickening cover story on Jackson in the March 19 Time takes as its theme that there is something wonderful about being an incompetent human being. “Jackson’s world of fantasy is easier to dismiss with malicious gossip than understand with sympathy,” Time scolds. It quotes Steven Spielberg: “He’s like a fawn in a burning forest.” Describing Jackson “chatting and swapping gestures with E.T.,” Spielberg reflects, “I wish we could all spend some time in his world.” Jane Fonda reports on a week ostensibly spent talking with Jackson about “acting, life, everything. Africa. Issues.” Her conclusion? “His intelligence is instinctual and emotional, like a child’s. If any artist loses that childlikeness, you lose a lot of creative juice. So Michael creates around himself a world that protects his creativity.” Time notes with approval: “His friends [sic] … help him keep life at bay and illusion near at hand.”
The only truly normal thing Time describes Jackson doing is listening to the soundtrack of Oklahoma. Of this, the magazine remarks defensively: “Jackson… can rise above embarrassment on such matters of taste.”
Yes, I know, it’s hard to feel sorry for Michael Jackson. Millions of dollars and zillions of adoring fans, a huge party in New York at which, says Rolling Stone, “a procession of CBS executives” rises to declare fealty. If he wants a duplicate of the Disneyland “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride built in his house (and he does), he can have it. But how many CBS executives or editors of Time would want their own child, at age 25, to want such a thing, to be babbling about misunderstood snakes, to be “like a fawn in a burning forest”?
[The Prisoner of Commerce, 1984]
The New Republic | Michael Kinsley
Via Andrew Sullivan
Photo via LIFE](http://30.media.tumblr.com/4TTqdMWvvp6ke5bkaUtmP6Mvo1_400.jpg)
A sickening cover story on Jackson in the March 19 Time takes as its theme that there is something wonderful about being an incompetent human being. “Jackson’s world of fantasy is easier to dismiss with malicious gossip than understand with sympathy,” Time scolds. It quotes Steven Spielberg: “He’s like a fawn in a burning forest.” Describing Jackson “chatting and swapping gestures with E.T.,” Spielberg reflects, “I wish we could all spend some time in his world.” Jane Fonda reports on a week ostensibly spent talking with Jackson about “acting, life, everything. Africa. Issues.” Her conclusion? “His intelligence is instinctual and emotional, like a child’s. If any artist loses that childlikeness, you lose a lot of creative juice. So Michael creates around himself a world that protects his creativity.” Time notes with approval: “His friends [sic] … help him keep life at bay and illusion near at hand.”
The only truly normal thing Time describes Jackson doing is listening to the soundtrack of Oklahoma. Of this, the magazine remarks defensively: “Jackson… can rise above embarrassment on such matters of taste.”
Yes, I know, it’s hard to feel sorry for Michael Jackson. Millions of dollars and zillions of adoring fans, a huge party in New York at which, says Rolling Stone, “a procession of CBS executives” rises to declare fealty. If he wants a duplicate of the Disneyland “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride built in his house (and he does), he can have it. But how many CBS executives or editors of Time would want their own child, at age 25, to want such a thing, to be babbling about misunderstood snakes, to be “like a fawn in a burning forest”?
[The Prisoner of Commerce, 1984]
The New Republic | Michael Kinsley
Via Andrew Sullivan
Photo via LIFE
