Is O'Reilly Right?
My stomach churns at writing the headline above but there is some truth to O'Reilly's statements about Michael Jackson and the black community's response to his death. Of course the whole truth is complicated and right now it is fitting to focus on the family's grief and the undeniable power of his lifetime making music.
However sometime soon it would be nice if we in the black community would more closely examine the tragedy of the most famous black man in the world burning off his blackness and hacking off his African nose. Of course he's not the first black person to try to pass for white but he is the first dark-skinned one to take it to such Frankenstein extremes. His pathology was existential.
*** UPDATE *** My father had vitiligo and didn't believe Michael's claims for a second. Part of Michael Jackson was absolutely convinced that he was a young, white boy. He felt compelled to surgically deracinate himself, altering his nose, his lips, his hair. When he chose to become a father he used white surrogates. Someone close to the production of the Jacksons's miniseries told me that he suggested that the filmmakers cast, as a young Michael, a boy who was blue-eyed and blond.
The black community's closing ranks around Michael right now is both understandable and compassionate. As crazy and as tragic as he became, he's certainly still family. That's why we call him by his first name. As a kid four years younger than him, I often pretended I was the sixth Jackson. I never missed the cartoon, wore my afro big under my brown velour apple jack hat and begged my parents for a snake. Later, despite his jheri curl and nose jobs, his albums were the soundtrack of my college years.
I don't know when exactly he convinced himself that he was a perpetually twelve-year-old white boy. However, I grieve knowing that some combination of his upbringing and a racist society convinced him that you couldn't be both black and excellent.
Compare Michael with our president, a man who actually is bi-racial but chose to identify as black. Obama seems supremely at peace inside his own mixed skin while Michael was so tortured he tortured his own body, and traveled with a personal anesthesiologist to take away the pain.
I guess the world is changing for the better. Obama and Michael are only three years apart but evidently Michael came of age too soon.
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Bill O'Reilly isn't 'right' on this subject.
Although he has taught me, and many others, that being loud is the next-best thing to being correct.
It is shameful of O'Reilly to put the death of Michael Jackson in a racial context. Jackson had millions and millions of fans from all racial groups and citizens around the world. i celebrated Michael Jackson's incredible talent, but at the same time was saddened by the fact that he had no childhood and most often seemed in a child-like state. Of course, it was terrible judgement of his to sleep with other's children in his bed. But I think at the time of his death it was a moment to celebrate Jackson's talent and sensitivity to others.
Bill O'Reilly needs to pay millions for the company of a woman. It would seem he can't do it no other way. Billo the Clown real women in you own studio despise him. Billo, maybe a few operations are in order since you are clowning people to follow you. Might as well enjoy life with your ill gotten gains. In your skin you are simply a disgusting fellow.
I clearly do not understand the claims about Michael Jackson having any issues being an African American man, the height of his fame came at the time when his skin complexion was brown, what would racial manipulation gain him? He was already at the top. There is nothing else anyone could have given him to be bigger or better. I have heard Michael say many times that he is proud to be black and that he loves being black. He spoke up for black artists specifically who are often mistreated in the music industry. He donated much money to the UNCF, he spoke out on racism. Unlike Obama who cut funding for historically black colleges and universities, Michael gave money. Read his charity list. I have heard nothing of the contrary except for when journalists such as yourself and Bill O'Reilly bring up their perspective. Michael Jackson has said he has had work on his nose, not his lips or anything else. I believe Michael's claims of vitiligo are true. Imagine if you had it (God forbid) and were the world renown performer Michael was. How would you cope? In every instance Michael took a weakness and turned it into a strength. He was burned. He donated equipment and time and charity to burn victims. Michael also vehemently denied wanting a white child to play him in a life story in the 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey. Are you essentially calling him a liar?
Typical SHOUTING MATCH! Who ever speaks LOUDER wins! That's INFO-TAINMENT
That's why I rarely will listen to these types of shows, regardless of who is talking. The rude interruptions and talking over each other is not something I choose to support with my viewership whether it is on Faux News or the Today Show or The McLaughlin Group.
That said, I was impressed with the guest's ability to make his points on this clip in spite of O'Reilly's persistent interruptions. The disturbing conduct makes me not care much about their points.
Thanks Trey for your honesty. Extreme fame makes people crazy, it's as simple as that.
The Jackson needs to file a law suit against Peter King for defamation slander.
3/15/07 Prince Frederic Von Anhalt one of the men claming to be the father of
Anna Nicole Smith baby was royally pissed over a few choice words that Bill
O'rielly used to describe him on the air and now he wants 10 millions to ease
his pain, requestng a Jury Trail.
People do not agree with him, but i do because what other way are we going to
stop people from saying untruth thing about people, like Peter King just did.
SUE PETER KINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
>>I guess the world is changing for the better. Obama and Michael are only three years apart but evidently Michael came of age too soon.
I don't think it was a matter of time so much as who the parents are. Barack Obama's family let him be himself while Joe Jackson lived vicariously through his children, prodding them and molding them into his own vision. It isn't any wonder that Michael Jackson couldn't accept himself given that his father couldn't.
Trey, it is too simple to say Michael didn't want to be Black, or adult or male. He was a sweet, loving train wreck, made all the more fascinating since we watched the crash for his entire life.
At least the man sang with soul instead of sounding like Pat Boone.
I'll grant you the soul part. It was the falsetto part that wore out it's welcome on me so fast. I never could stand a falsetto no matter WHO was doing it, though.
Pat Boone took black songs and massacred them, like most American born whtie singers (except for Michael McDonald) do. Now if Paul McCartney, Rick Astley or Steve Windwood covered black songs, I'd have no problem with that because they are talented.
Paul McCartney DID cover "black" songs... Long Tall Sally, etcetera...
pat boone is talented. he was adapting black music to his style. he had a nice voice and sang well in the traditional style. I prefer the authentic music but PB was a good singer in his idiom
Rick Astley? Are you high? He can't hold a candle to Windwood or McCartney.
I never considered Michael Jackson to be an appropriate role model for ANY children -- black, white or brown.
It was distressing to observe what happened after he died. The media seemed to lead crazed fans into a frenetic period of bereavement that lasted several days (although it seemed like weeks.)
It is not proper to speak ill of the dead, but it also is not right to adore - even worship - an individual who, personally, did not to merit such adulation.
I read an article that Michael's father used to make fun of his nose all the time. Maybe this is where it started. He was an adorable child and a good looking man until all this started. I only wish someone would have helped him see this.
I believe it. All the eating disorders started in my family cuz as soon as a girl hit puberty, she got teased for being fat.
The logic this man is using is like since I straighten my hair, I must be denying my blackness. As Michael had repeatedly said, he had Vitiligo, and however he chose to handle it especially with the treatments available twenty years ago was his business.
Race had nothing to do with it. You did not know Michael Jackson and from listening to people close to him speak about him at his funeral I have come to the conclusion that very few of his fans, however devout ; knew the private Michael Jackson.
I think there is something strange how almost all the professional basketball athletes who have tatoos everywhere. Do I have any validity in describing what their reasons for that is? NO!
This is America, when it comes to your personal appearance, Do Your Thing and let everybody else do theirs. It's that simple.
You must be part of the 1% of Americans who have never made fun of Joan Rivers' facelifts. She even makes fun of them.
Straightens hair; check
Via plastic surgery, whittles nose to a stub; check
Bleaches skin; check
Surgically adds cleft to chin; check
Chooses caucasion DNA donors for his children; check.
You are right, this sounds like the proudest man of his black heritage EVER.
"Is Bill O'Reilly right"? NO! Bill O. is NEVER right - except for his party afiiliation - THE RIGHT!
Actually, he is one of the few newscasters who doesn't have his head so far up Obama's posterior that he can actually see what's going on.
Claiming Bill O'Reilly as a bastion of rational grip on reality is perhaps the most absurd thing I've heard in quite a while.
Of course, the liberal media is covering up the story about how all the left leaning, ACORN loving leaders of all the big banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms have nearly destroyed the countries economy.
Trey:
You are aware that MJ had a skin disease called Vitiligo, right? And that, despite the rumors, he wasn't trying to bleach his skin to be more "white".
And should the black community disown him because he has white children? What type of article would you write if the white community disowned a white person who had black children?
And I'm also not sure that he thought he was a "12 year old white boy" either. He may have thought he was a kid while being an adult in age, but that sometimes happens when children are made to be adults at a young age. We have our youth for a reason.
And what does it mean to act like a "12 year old white boy"???? I always thought that environment helped dictate behavior, not race. Or at least that's what I've been arguing my entire life...that being black does NOT mean you have to ACT a certain way.
ditto
Did you even read the column? --Trey talked about that.
I did, and the part you are referring to is an UPDATE that was posted AFTER I made my original comments. But thanks.
Michael Jackson was a genius but he was disturbed. What Michael did to himself was probably caused by many inner conflicts that we will never fully understand. We can try and guess why he did what he did it or assign blame to society or his father but we'll just never know.
Van Gogh cut off his ear. Hemingway and Nietzsche committed suicide. Beethoven became a raving lunatic. Yet we still read Hemingway, admire Van Gogh's paintings, quote Nietzsche, and listen to Beethoven symphonies. It seems that the same artists who have a spirit that produces beauty often are also haunted by demons. We just have to accept the mystery and give thanks for the gifts they brought us. Such is life.
Farewell Michael and may the better angels of your nature and the gifts you left behind be an inspiration for years to come.
concur
Well said.
I think he was a good dancer and a very good singer (although as a child, his singing voice was excellent). I haven't seen any evidence that the music he performed as an adult was engendered specifically from his own creativity or "genius." I think the true genius was (and is) Quincy Jones. "Off the Wall" & "Thriller," Michael's best two adult works (some would even argue they were his ONLY two good albums) came about mostly under Jones' creative guidance. How much songwriting & composing did Michael even do? Could he even actually play a musical instrument? As a producer, writer/composer, recording engineer, etc., practically everything Quincy Jones has touched has almost literally turned to gold. The same cannot be said of Michael, post-Thriller, and the stuff he did with his brothers immediately prior to "Off the Wall" was kind of lame too. Jones would never admit it (He has too much riding financially and emotionally on perpetuating the Michael Jackson-genius image), but he was almost certainly the man behind the curtain.
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