1) I've become one of those ghoulish people who repeatedly refresh a celeb's Wikipedia page when they're on their deathbed to see how quickly their death date goes up. I'm not a proud man.
2) I'm not feeling the Ed McMahon/Farrah/Michael celebrity hat trick everyone's ooohing and aaahing over. One everybody probably thought had been dead for years, and another one we've been waiting to die for weeks now. Michael's death was the only real jarring one.
3) One thing that I find myself surprised at throughout the years every time it comes up is the fact that Billie Jean was the first video featuring a black artist on MTV. 1982 is not really set into the consciousness as a year that could include policy-driven racism by such a successful commercial entity, but it was. Pretty amazing.
1 comment:
Well, it took MTV--which started in Aug. '81--a year to play any black artists and they chose Michael due to his stature AND his record company threatening to otherwise pull all videos from their artists. But the big thorn in their side was actually, Rick James, who had been demanding more of a black presence in the channel's video clip programming. In choosing MJ MTV hit a double whammy: they could STILL keep Rick James out in the cold, while acquiescing to those who wanted to see more black artists on the channel.
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