Michael and Barack

Michael Jackson helped give us President Barack Obama. At the tail-end of the tumultuous 1960s, Jackson (then about 10 – about the same age as the Obama daughters now) and his Jackson 5 brothers gave us the clean-cut “ABC,” just as 10 years later Bill Cosby gave us the clean-cut but irascible Dr. Huxtable on “The Cosby Show.” After a decade (the 1970s) in which radio divided along racial lines (even though I loved Jackson’s 1979 “Off the Wall” and its brilliant “Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough”), Jackson and his classic “Thriller” songs, dance moves, and videos (“Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and “Thriller”) (on which he collaborated with lots of white artists) helped integrate and make MTV a cultural epicenter for America’s youth. (See the ephemeral “Thriller” dance moves in the clip at the end of this blog entry: http://saintmatthewsstation.blogspot.com/2009/01/early-halloween.html ). Along with Prince and others, Jackson also gave us a metrosexual, racially ambiguous figure whose floating poetry (despite the insipid “We Are the World” lyrics which we can blame on Lionel Richie - although the song helped beget the wonderful Live Aid concerts) sometimes focused on – well – “hope” and “change.”

From 1987’s “Man in the Mirror”:

I’m starting with the man in the mirror.
I’m asking him to change his ways.
And no message could have been any clearer.
If you wanna make the world a better place
(If you wanna make the world a better place),
take a look at yourself, and
then make a change.

(See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zpTQCQEFhg .)

In the aftermath of Jackson’s death last week, it’s also clear that Jackson (like Obama, a fellow late baby-boomer, just a little older than me) has also been a great U.S. ambassador to the whole world, including the global South. From the walls of the prison in the Phillipines where prisoners for the second time reenacted the “Thriller” dance moves (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o ) to hot spots Teheran and Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where mourning over Jackson briefly threatened to eclipse political conflict there, it’s clear that Jackson (despite his last checkered two decades) has been that great ambassador.

Rest in peace, Michael. Thanks for helping give us the new president.

-- Perry