This may be a shocking revelation to all but the most avid news-followers, but it is apparently true: pop star Michael Jackson recently passed away.  A handful of media outlets found time to cover the story, and some of them have mentioned Jackson’s feud with Paul McCartney over Jackson’s ownership of the publishing rights to some of the Beatles’ biggest hits-rights acquired when Jackson outbid Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono in the mid-1980’s. 

People not familiar with copyright law might be surprised to hear that McCartney-one-half of music’s most-successful songwriting duo-must pay royalties to perform his own hit songs.  The fact certainly seemed to grate on McCartney, who frequently made mention of it in interviews.  But even more surprising, at least to those not acquainted with the intricacies of copyright law, is that Sir Paul will one day be able to re-acquire the rights to his music without even having to pay to buy them back.

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This month marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind.

Mr. Armstrong is still alive, and, as far as I know, in good health.  But alas, one day, like all of us, Armstrong will shuffle off this mortal coil.  When he does, his passing will no doubt be news – it will lead on all of the broadcast and cable news programs, and decorate the front pages of the daily papers.  He might even for a brief moment replace The Chosen One’s smiling visage on the covers of the etiolated news weeklies which grow thinner in size and substance with each passing week.

But will millions tune in to watch the funeral proceedings from across the globe?  Will thousands descend into the streets in tears, inconsolable at the loss?  Will there be a sports arena filled with famous and non famous mourners, gathered to celebrate his life?  Will models and preachers and sports stars proclaim his heroism? (more…)

I have been driving around the Midwest for the last six days with my son playing golf, watching baseball games, visiting old friends and doing a few shows. There are a lot of benefits to this well-timed vacation. The weather was perfect and I missed the entire hullabaloo known as the Michael Jackson memorial. I didn’t see a minute of the lead-up coverage, the “service,” or the postmortem, no pun intended.

I was listening to evil talk radio in the car and did hear and read a number of reports on the event.  Depending on whom I was listening to, it was a freak show/circus, a fitting memorial or “not as bad as I thought it might be.”

I always thought of Mr. Jackson as a talented singer/dancer/songwriter who had poor impulse control. I thought this was due to the fact that the leeches and toadies who depended on him for money never said one simple word to him: “No!” Apparently I was very wrong! Until I heard and read reports from his memorial, I was unaware of his role in our society as everything from a civil rights pioneer to basketball coach. Martin Luther King Jr. and Pat Riley, take a break, the king of pop has got your back. I heard he was quite the philanthropist too; although there isn’t a Michael Jackson Foundation, he did at one time donate a reported $22 million to a single California family. (more…)

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So if there`s one thing we learned recently, it`s that it`s not nuclear war that can wipe everything off the map. It`s the death of a pop star. Think about the things that mattered back in June: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, cap and trade, that insipid health care infomercial – and ask yourself what happened in regard to any of those issues in the last few weeks.

A. Nothing?
B. Anything?
C. A lot?

The answer is C, but we just didn`t see it.

We know that some of our brave troops died fighting for freedom. Protestors in Iran were violently silenced too, fighting for a glimmer of what we have. You can also be certain that the opportunity to actively undermine fascism in Iran has passed – our President choosing “wait and see” over “hope and change.” He also snuck a few hundred pages of climate-bill baloney past us in the dead of night. (more…)

To anyone paying attention, Michael Jackson died sometime before 1989. Tragically, in just a few years following 1982’s “Thriller,” this unbelievably attractive and talented young man had switched races, started down a grotesque road of self-loathing, disfigurement and, through a series of increasingly bizarre antics, lost his status as a star by perfectly meeting my definition of celebrity: One who doesn’t let dignity get in the way of fame. Everything that happened after 1989 was so increasingly off-the-charts those of us who made fun of Elvis probably owe him an apology.

Yesterday’s clampdown of the news media and worldwide outpouring of grief for a man whose narcissism was so complete he had himself buried in a 14-karat gold coffin like some demented, disfigured, predatory pharaoh was nauseating. Sure, celebrate the music, but defying explanation is the lamenting and hushed, effusive praise for the man, a man so indulgent he reportedly left behind $400 million in debt, a man who admitted sharing his bed with young boys, hired a gay porn producer as his personal videographer, dangled a newborn baby over a third-floor balcony and laid out millions for a settlement rather than clear his name of child molestation charges. But there you go. Such is life in Celebrityville where all is forgiven except attempting to hold yourself to a higher moral standing. (more…)

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In the unappetizing race to scavenge the remaining flesh from the bones of Michael Jackson, Joe Jackson, the star’s Daddy Dearest, is turning the singer’s death into a spectacle unimagined by Barnum & Bailey.

Joe, to whom his son left nothing in his will, is the architect of the star’s final world tour, putting him on display like a freakish piñata. Joe also disrupted a weird press conference this week to promote his record label, unable to resist waiting a millisecond to profit from what is shaping up as the biggest celeb death of the decade.

This is why Joe Jackson is my Celebutard of the Week – in keeping with my book, Celebutards: The Hollywood Hacks, Limousine Liberals and Pandering Politicians who are destroying America. (Kensington.)

In his life, the superstar was clearly damaged beyond repair, reconfiguring his face and allegedly sleeping with underage boys. You need to look only as far as Jackson’s relationship with his father to understand where it all began. Jackson has said in interviews that his father was a tyrant, beating him mercilessly if he missed a dance step, ridiculing his dark skin and wide nose. (more…)

While the President was pitching health care and the Speaker was rounding up support for Cap and Trade, the Late Nights were focused on Mark Sanford: a Republican governor that seemed like a comeuppance for Democrat Rod Blagojevich. In fact many of the hosts brought up the Illinois Governor in their jokes.

Craig Ferguson said after Spitzer and Blagojevich, the most normal governor was Jesse Ventura. He also said that a family values governor having a mistress is like Al Gore needing four SUVs to bring his lunch to him.(It was disappointing that Ferguson didn’t see the irony in his remark, because Al Gore DOES require multiple SUVs when he travels) Funniest line went to Conan O’Brien, who said the affair was a shock, because usually, Republicans don’t do well with Hispanic women. (more…)

And so I found myself awake at 2:29 Friday morning. Unable to sleep, thinking of Marc Lee. 

Marc Alan Lee, a brave young man, who made the ultimate sacrifice, on August 2, 2006, while serving with our troops in Iraq.  He was 28 years old. 

I had first learned of Marc, on Thursday morning, as I clicked onto Big Hollywood to get my daily fix of politics and pop culture. What I didn’t know at the time was that this was a different kind of day at my favorite website. The content and articles printed were dedicated solely to the military and their families. 

And so I found myself, reading a letter from one, U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Marc A. Lee. (more…)

**UPDATE** (7:36am PST): New of the World reports, “Mother of Michael Jackson’s children Debbie Rowe confesses he was not their father.”

Saturday night, Brian Oxman, former attorney to Michael Jackson told me that News of the World will report on Sunday that Debbie Rowe made claims just before Michael Jackson’s passing that he was not the father of her children and that she has made similar claims in the past.

Oxman explained that if Rowe has in fact made these claims that she is in violation of a confidentiality clause in an agreement that she signed which stated she would never talk about this issue.

“The contract says she would hold the birth of the children, the lineage, their parenting and how they were taken care of in confidence and not be disclosed in public to anyone,” said Oxman. “That agreement survives the death of Jackson. In other words, she’s still bound to keep all of these things confidential even though he’s passed away.”

Oxman, who handled the custody dispute between Jackson and Rowe said that Rowe has made conflicting statements about the lineage of her children.

“At one point she would say that Michael was the father, the next time she would say he was not the father. The number of contradictory statements coming from her was incomprehensible. I’d say Debbie, tell me straight is he the father and she’d say, yes he’s the father, and the next time she was upset she’d be yelling and screaming, he’s not the father!” (more…)

What exactly is the proper response to the news that the most famous and most talented accused-child molester in America has died? Talk about mixed emotions.

Like most shallow, self centered knuckleheads in show business, I place an inordinate importance on talent. I love talent! It’s the one thing I wish dearly I had more of (and, on many nights, comedy club audiences throughout the tri-state area have wished the same…)

I’m a great audience member. I laugh easily, I applaud heartily. I’m always impressed with performers who can do things I can’t (which is why I’m impressed with most performers). Show me the hackiest ventriloquist act in the business, and I’m just amazed they can talk with their mouth closed. I once sang and danced in a Broadway musical (I played Vince Fontaine, the libidinous deejay, in the 90’s revival of Grease – ramma lamma lamma ka dingidy ding da dong…). I can’t sing or dance. I love people who can, even those who can’t do it very well. (more…)

By happenstance, I was in Hugh Hewitt’s studio yesterday when the news about the one-time Prince of Pop (that’s all I’ll give him, sorry) broke.  We spent much of the next three hours talking about his death and what it meant.  You can scan through and hear me jousting – all in good fun – with Hugh, James Lileks and others.

I focused on his creative output and what it meant to musicians and culture as best I could in our impromptu conversation.  In other words, we didn’t dwell on the fact that it SURE seemed like he was a serial molester of male children.  His music will stand alone.  HUGE talent, obsessive artist, stratospheric career from childhood into his thirties.  Iconic images and motion pictures of him, dancing and performing unforgettably at his peak, will probably always be tainted for our generation by what he became, by what many of us now know he was for a long time.  His strange celebrity outran his music, but maybe now it will stop running… all this will be said better over the next few days and probably weeks by others. (more…)

I’m sitting at the desk in my hotel room after just completing our eight hour Troopathon at the Reagan Library. I’ve gone over and over in my head trying to figure out why this year, even though we had a better set, added celebrities to our line-up, and had better media coverage, our final funds raised to support the troops were half of last year’s.

I turned on the TV and clicked through the channels trying to find coverage of our event. I had heard earlier in the day that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett both had died. As I clicked through the channels, I found every single channel had coverage of Michael Jackson’s death, even Fox News.

As I am not an “Idol” worshipper, it always amazes me how engulfed people can get in the lives of celebrities. I had an “ah hah” moment and realized that could be part of the reason our event was not as successful as we had hoped. We had lost viewers to the “Breaking News.” (more…)

Michael Jackson’s shtick was simply a more sophisticated, well financed variation on the molester with an ice cream truck. When after paying millions to his young accuser, Jordy Chandler, Jackson was later found to have gay porn producer Marc Schaffel, an un-indicted co-conspirator in Jackson’s 2005 child molestation trial, as his PERSONAL VIDEOGRAPHER and close pal on the very private grounds of Neverland Ranch.

Michael Jackson (left) and Marc Schaffel (right) seen in photo with Warren Beatty (center)

When this scandal was exposed (but underplayed by the dysfunctional and enabling mainstream media), Schaffel was shown the door and Jackson’s people issued a press release acknowledging the impropriety of the situation but claimed not to have known of Schaffel’s mystifyingly inappropriate background — especially given the accusations against Jackson and his continued desire to present himself as a kid-at-heart.

Here is the statement by Jackson spokesman Dan Klores in July, 2002:

“The minute Michael and his advisers found out about Schaffel’s background, they cut the cord immediately. This was months ago. (Schaffel) has nothing to do with Michael Jackson, doesn’t represent him in any way, shape or form, and has been told this repeatedly by Michael’s attorneys.” (more…)

I met Michael Jackson just once back in 1993. It was only months before he was first accused of sexually molesting then 13-year-old Jordy Chandler. Like a lot of people before that scandal, I was an admirer of his music. I grew up listening to the Jackson Five and later Michael Jackson’s solo efforts. I wasn’t a huge fan, but I bought most of his CDs.

Coincidentally, I was living in Encino, California in 1993. The Jackson family lived not far from me. I would see Joe Jackson at the supermarket or Randy at the car wash. But I never expected to meet Michael. About once a week I would go over the hill to Golden Apple Comics on Melrose. It was owned by a friend, the late Bill Liebowitz, and I also had a bunch of friends who worked there. They told me Michael was a big customer. He would go there with a group of kids and buy them whatever they wanted. He would often spend thousands on those days. (more…)

Michael Jackson is dead.

I get why this is news, and on a very deep level, why it’s important to a lot of people. But I hope soon we all make room for the things that are equally as important. Michael Jackson’s death doesn’t mean we should forget Neda’s.

Millions of Iranians who were risking their lives – hoping that we might act in solidarity- are now temporarily rendered irrelevant and unwatched by the world, because of the coverage of the death of a superstar. (more…)

Musicians – like every American – have every right to say most anything they want.  The 1960’s gave rise to popular music as a powerful means of political expression and action.  But in the end, Michael Jackson may have moved the cultural political bar further than any performer.  He proved a black kid from the poor streets of Gary, Indiana could rise to become an international superstar.  His music enjoyed equal company with Eddie Van Halen or Berry Gordy — black or white didn’t seem to matter.  He received invitations, calls and letters from leaders as diverse as Republican Ronald Reagan, Democrat Bill Clinton and the Sultan of Brunei.  News of his death sent shock waves around the globe. 

He was friends with Al Sharpton and Elizabeth Taylor.  He was idolized by Justin Timberlake, Flavor Flav — and Madonna.  Even those who had slapped him with lawsuits — like Paul McCartney, Tommy Mottola and John Landis — praised him. Everyone from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Diddy issued public statements of their profound sadness.  In short, Michael Jackson transcended most boundaries set on Earth.  (more…)