The rubbishy cult of Michael Jackson

Even those rent-a-quote political pygmies, Gordon Brown and 'Dave' Cameron felt the need to lob in their twopenn'orth.

And so it went on. The once reliable BBC Radio 4 Today programme provided sickeningly reverential coverage. Jacko's 'genius' was compared to that of Mozart and Beethoven. How stupid!

Sky News' superficial 'Click' website-oriented news show was desperate to whip up reaction with a two-way interview with a singularly inarticulate paparazzi picture agency boss.

At least the pap guy gave the game away - rightly suggesting that Jackson wasn't as hot, even in the trashy LA celebrity stakes, as he once might have been.

Oh dear, that wasn't at all what the excitable Sky News wanted to hear.

The satellite channel was still endlessly recycling stale speculatation about the pop star by Sunday morning. It sent a tired and washed-out looking Kay Burley to do the usual reading of floral tributes and interviews with showbiz nonentities. Zzzzzzzzz.

And the fluffy news bunnies presenting BBC News 24 didn't fare any better. They seemed to be in a mild panic about the death - having to roll with a showbiz story; how very vulgar!

The BBC News 24 autocue-readers are clearly uncomfortable when they can't do their usual stuff of introducing safe package reports about Westminster village politics, poverty overseas, how horrid war is, feminism, racial harmony projects etc. plus all those toffee-nosed discussions about the real news gathered by genuine journalists who, of course, work for newspapers!

Let me tell the media wallies a basic truth. Not everybody on the planet was a Michael Jackson fan. Most people, including myself, didn't care much at all for his music.

Apart from one very good early solo album, 'Off the Wall' - produced by Quincy Jones and including the brilliant song 'Don't Stop Till You Get Enough' - much of Jackson's musical output was mediocre ... or worse.

Now, I don't want to speak ill of him so soon after his death. Indeed, I will be praying that his soul can now find the repose that eluded him during his troubled life.

But Jackson's music was aimed at his not-terribly-intelligent and rather naïve fans, so it was understandably ropey - lyrically at any rate.

And I remember being appalled by his performance at the 1996 Brit Awards of the overblown dirge, 'Earth Song'.

Dressed in Christ-like robes and surrounded by worshippers, Jacko warbled thus...
"What about nature's worth (Ooo,ooo) / It's our planet's womb (What about us) / What about animals (What about it) /We've turned kingdoms to dust (What about us) /What about elephants (What about us) /Have we lost their trust (What about us)"...etc etc.

The song is total b***ocks!

But the one immensely pleasing thing to come out of that appearance was a successful protest at Jackson's pretentiousness by Jarvis Cocker, frontman of the British indie band Pulp, who climbed on stage and, literally, showed his arse!

There are lots of criticisms to be levelled against Jackson - as a man and as a parent, but I don't want to go into those in any detail just now.

The singer clearly wasn't comfortable with himself or his appearance; and maybe not even with his racial identity,All of that must have been hard for him to bear.

Was it self-loathing that made him try to turn himself into a white man, or perhaps, more accurately, a disturbing parody of a white woman?

He certainly looked a lot like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? in his final years.

Jackson had a talent for showmanship, without a doubt, though it was at the coarser end of the performance art spectrum. All that crotch-grabbing during the dance routines - urgh!

He wasn't the first and won't be the last person to be ruined by the grotesque pressures of show business.

And towards the end of his life, he was a sort of zombie - such as those portrayed in his 'Thriller' video.

May he rest in the peace that he never found in life.