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June 30, 2009, 10:39 AM ET
Michael Jackson's Media Coverage: Racist?
I’m still trying to wake myself up from the groggy haze of Michael Jackson’s unexpected death — the coverage of which has become a global “media event” like none we’ve ever seen before. Not even Princess Di or JFK created this kind of immediate and mass-mediated mushroom clouding of fetishized televisual and cyber obsessions. That’s mostly because the media apparatus wasn’t nearly advanced enough to inundate us the way it can now: MJ updates through tweets and text messages and Internet pop-ups all day and night long. And then there are the 24-hour news cycles, the magazine covers, and the newspaper headlines. The saturation is surreal and science fictiony.
I’m one of the people who caught BET’s attempt to pay tribute to the “King of Pop” this weekend on its annual awards show. And maybe my expectations were pathetically low to start, but I wasn’t nearly as mortified by the broadcast as some detractors. One joke making the rounds this week (courtesy, I think, of Spelman College’s Jelani Cobb) has Obama being stripped of the presidency as a function of BET’s “embarrassing” program. They only had a couple of days to pull off their tribute, and I didn’t think the presentational schizophrenia (between their homages to MJ and the typically “ghetto” shenanigans of such BET fare) was all that surprising. Actually, one of the best parts of the night was the pre-planned tribute to the O’Jays, but that’s because they had time to really prepare the segment. However, I digress.
I really want to just flag the growing furor over the media’s coverage of MJ’s life and death. Many people have been calling it blatantly racist. The YouTubed FOX News clip above lays out the general parameters of this discussion, including a debate on the merits of the accusation. What do folks think of the claim?
Off to a McNair Scholars workshop. I’ll check back in later.
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