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The Political Legacy of Michael Jackson

Posted by TONY CAMPBELL, Columnist in Arts & Entertainment, Politics.
Jun 26th, 2009 | Comments

the-moonwalk

Barack Obama’s presidency was partially built by the moonwalk of Michael Jackson. The Political Pop Star owes a debt of gratitude to The King of Pop. How so? Take a few minutes and let’s rewind the clock 25 years before President Obama announced his candidacy.

1982 – Ronald Reagan was entering his first full year in office, “Hill Street Blues” was a top rated TV hit, and MTV was segregated in their programming. Michael Jackson released “Thriller” and the world would never be the same. Not only did Jackson break MTV’s color barrier; he did something far more important – his celebrity opened the doors for other people of color to enter the mainstream of American society.

Michael Jackson’s crowds of fans in Germany would be the predecessor of Obama’s a quarter century later. Just as Jackie Robinson’s celebrity opened the eyes of white America to the equality that would be personified by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr two decades later; Michael Jackson’s celebrity (along with Bill Cosby – TV; Magic Johnson – Sports; and Billy Dee Williams – Movies) would plant the seed for the political careers of Jesse Jackson, Colin Powell, and finally President Obama.

“Moving On Up” in American society has always been an uphill climb. The strands between celebrity and politics are sometimes hard to cleanly separate. For a time, Michael Jackson transcended those boundaries and was as influential as any head of state while making more money than all of their salaries combined. Sadly, Michael Jackson went as far as he was fated to go. Even if he had completed his 50 concert tour schedule, he would have never regained former place in the social fabric of America.

We all stand on the shoulders of people who came before us. Barack Obama is no different. While I don’t expect the President to moonwalk anytime soon, I think that he should acknowledge that Michael Jackson changed America for the better and that he is a direct beneficiary of that change.

  • AustinRoth
    All these top-level posts on Jackson and Sanford, and almost nothing on the new, substitute Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill being rammed through Congress without review; the ongoing Rangel tax evasions and lack of action by Congress; the economy significantly under-performing White House estimates; Bernanke's testimony to Congress; etc.

    You know. Politics.
  • It's not surprising that blogs follow the lead stories of the day, AR, but I agree with you that there are far more pressing issues of the day. I support the clean energy bill, but am conflicted on "cap and trade." Personally, I think a true emissions tax would be a more honest way to disincentivize bad carbon behavior. Sadly, we have so demonized the very concept of taxation that it's a nonstarter. The problem with cap and trade, in my opinion, is that it furthers the exodus of dollars from the country, because many of the carbon reduction schemes involve tropical rain forests and other overseas efforts. I do agree these are important, and paying not to cut the forests down, rather than paying to do so, is a good idea. The other problem is that money would be made by traders of carbon credits, who themselves do nothing to actually reduce emissions. On the other hand, it does monetize the kinds of emission savings that I think are key to our long term survival, both economically and physically. I know. off topic, but...
  • AustinRoth
    GD - it is, in essence, the Enron-ization of CO2. No real value add, just a numbers game pretending to be commodities trading that will make some people very rich, cost a lot of people a lot of money, make a few people smug they are helping Gaia, and in the end be exposed as just another shell game, but this time government sanctioned.

    IMHO.
  • AR, I think I'm with you. I've soured on cap and trade, as, more specifically the Golman-ization of CO2. I still think CO2 is a pollutant (as SCOTUS agreed recently) and needs to be controlled, but the "carbon market" is increasingly scary to me. Anyone who wants to learn way more about Goldman, the "bubble machine", and their designs on creating and profiting from the next bubble, take a look at this painfully long article by Matt Taibi.

    http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldman-s...

    Here's the, er, money quote from the article:

    Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.

    And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is carbon credits - a booming trillion-dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a ground-breaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade.

    The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.


    Comment moved to Climate change thread
  • DLS
    Actually, this thread (addressing Michael Jackson, apparently more important than other things others such as I and here, Austin Roth havs listed) could tie Jackson to Obama but it doesn't make the correct connection.

    Both Jackson and Obama, in different fields, have hordes of groupies. (Or at least Obama had them during earlier months; the rush to do too much too quickly with too much government makes even some of them now apparently have concerns or misgivings.)
  • DLS
    " I still think CO2 is a pollutant (as SCOTUS agreed recently) and needs to be controlled, but the "carbon market" is increasingly scary to me."

    It's not a _real_ pollutant, a toxin, etc., but it can be regulated if the feds (the EPA) choose to do this.

    Yes, cap-and-trade is a scam. It's not merely the earlier analogy I gave, weeks or months ago (review below). It's worse than that because there's a lucrative opportunity for insiders to make money off this oppression of the energy users (that's us).

    (The analogy, that compares cap-and-trade to a plain fuel or emission tax, is this: Say we want to reduce smoking. Rather than just putting a tax on tobacco products, cap-and-trade is like granting privileged Soviet-type production quotas along with permits for the production of these products, and controlling the total amount of smoking that way instead.)

    (What comes next, automobile production quotas and permits???)
  • oh, oops. thanks DLS, I'm on the wrong thread.
  • DLS
    Don't worry -- I already said more than enough on the biggie green thread today. Your turn(s) there.
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