WHERE'S THE ARGUMENT?

I used to make a living looking for an argument. I made a good living. I made good arguments. Lately I am less than eager to spoil for a fight. Even about Michael Jackson. But wait – there are limits to my patience.

“Mozart was a real screwball but we judge him by his music. Michael Jackson may have been a strange man but his music will live on.” This comment from someone who has a an academic grounding in “serious” music. I was aghast. Can anyone compare Jackson to Mozart? Jackson may have had all the “moves” but he did not write the Requiem Mass.
Beethoven may have been an uncaring, sometimes cruel man, but he pushed the limits of music. I don’t want yet another argument about the merits of classical music versus pop music. Michael Jackson fans will outnumber Beethoven fans no matter what I say.

So I held my tongue. Bit it, it fact. I don’t judge musical merit by the kind of person who made the music, I do not care to judge the difference between simple ballyhoo and hype music and the profound music that requires virtuosity and talent
Jackson was, to me, a freak. Talented yes. Maybe even brilliant. But to suggest that he will be revered in 200 years is preposterous.

So it has been with some dismay that I find a public appetite for all-Jackson all-the-time to be just a trifle wearing. I was in Texas last month and I was watching MSNBC when it was reported that he had stopped breathing. I was treated to endless (and breathless) renderings of Jackson-mania. The cameras we focused on an intersection close to the entrance to the hospital in Los Angeles. The story went on and on, every morsel of “news” being dissected for something new to say. Tiring of it I tried CNN. Same picture. Same breathless hoping for a break. I tried FOX. Same again. Up and down the dial was hysteria about Jackson. It was a wonder anyone was watching Judge Judy. Worse still, the endless coverage continued and even today MSNBC is consumed by it.

I don’t have to catalogue all this for you. If you are a Jackson fan then there is no such thing as too much. If you believe that other stories have a larger bearing on our lives, you turned off the TV or switched to The Food Network.

If I were still on the air I would succumb, just as all the U.S. networks have, to the overriding appetite of my audience. I would have talked about Jackson. I would have said that I don’t understand the level of hysteria; that I don’t understand the grief junkies leaving flowers at the entrance to Neverland; of the whooping with joy of people whose internet application brought them a ticket to the Jackson memorial in the arena in L.A.
I have not looked, nor will I, to see how many of these coveted passes to the “celebration” will be offered on EBay.

It would be superfluous of me to comment about our fascination with celebrity, just as it would have been futile for me to have entered the argument about who was nuttier – Mozart or Jackson.