From one of my favourite political blogs, A Tiny Revolution, some belated but incisive reflections on ‘humour’ about Michael Jackson and by extension other tormented celebrities:
Anybody who runs for President, much less does what it takes to win, is just as weird as Michael Jackson was. They simply hide it better. Here was a guy so terrorized by his father that he’d vomit at the sight of him; a guy whose talent robbed him of his own childhood; a guy who spent the rest of his life mutilating himself and possibly mistreating others in an utterly doomed attempt to find release from his pain. Apportion the blame however you like, but what the hell is funny about that? The moment you stop to think about it–for one second–it no longer becomes fodder for humor. So when we laugh at a Michael Jackson joke, we should know: that’s not laughter, that’s keeping yourself dead inside.
Read the whole post.
Me fail? I fly! 
Michael was a legend, and the world is a much more joyous place because of his music.
I got to see him shopping once, and he bought a Green Goblin statue:
Godspeed Michael, the music will live forever.
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And the moment one thing or person ceases to be an acceptable subject of discussion, humorous or not, then so must everything and we must all be silent.
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True franzy, but I don’t think Mike Gerber is trying to close down discussion. On the contrary, he’s expanding it. There’s a world of difference between banning cruel jokes on the one hand and failing to find them funny or wondering about their repercussions on the other. The kneejerk Wacko-Jacko discourse over the last decades effectively marginalised or silenced serious (or humorous) discussion of what his life suggested about internalised racism, Gay oppression, etc.
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The article was actually a wonderful articulation of that and I very much enjoyed it (just also read Greer’s obiturary, also v. good). But I think it was a step too far to claim that laughing at a Jacko joke makes you “dead inside”.
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Yes, I suppose you’re right that “dead inside” is an overstatement, but there is something dead about “comic” invocation of certain celebrities’ names, not just because the jokes tend to have a ready-made feel about them (like the Chasers MJ jokes last week, and just about any reference to one of those deperate young women with drug problems) but because they are so lacking in compassion.
I liked Germaine Greer’s piece too.
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