Business…this week, the column’s running on Monday, and it’s on Kanye’s employment of a ghostwriter.
I would also like you to peep this joint on PopMatters.com from Josie Zohny, who discusses Michael Jackson from an interesting–though decidedly subjective–perspective. Subjectivity isn’t a bad thing necessarily. Ralph used to make that clear, and his word is to be taken.
The funny story, though, is how I met this Josie…
So, a few years ago, I skewered Mike on Salon, basically saying that racism wasn’t the cause of this tanked career. I blame the fact that his last two albums have been wack. Now, after reading this, it seems Josie and the rest of the Michael Jackson nation got pretty heated with me. In a routine Google search of my name–which I do to see who’s not putting links with reproductions of my work–I came across something that said, “look at what this punk ass bitch said about my man!”
OK, in my line of work, you let most things slide. People say a lot of stuff, and you can’t get caught up in it. Doing so will drive you batty. I’ve been called a token, “color commenator,” and a few other interesting things on message boards, and I let those slide. Being called a bitch is where I draw a line.
So, I sent her a rather polite e-mail and further explicated my stance on Mike, much of which I think she missed in her fanatical anger. She gave a rather thoughtful reply, and she made some points I hadn’t fully considered. What struck me was that she was really good with those words, too good to be wasting them on angry message board posts, and brilliant considering she was all of eighteen at the time. In my subsequent reply, I let it be known that she had one more time to call me a bitch, but even that was taken well.
Whaddyano, more than two years later, and we’ve gotten pretty cool. She reads my stuff, passes it along, and all kinds of other things. She turned out to be pretty cool folks, and she even listened a bit when I told her she really should be writing for a living. Now, she’s a colleague, it seems, even if only for one piece. So, I say congratulations to her. Maybe she’s not as thrilled as I was the first time I got a piece run, but I’m thrilled for her, so read it, dammit.
I’ll have something on Mike in the column as the trial approaches, in case you’re curious, and I know that even money says that you’re not.
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Carolina/Dook tonight. I can’t wait.
1 thought on “Ladies and gentlemen, meet Josie Zohny”
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Hmm…she’s interesting…but what made Mike so damned successful, more than any other child star in history, was that he seamlessly grew with his audience. His music gotten progressively better as he got older, along with his audience.
I think what hindered Mike was the time period after the first allegation and right when Pac came out of jail. It seemed that fans became split into 3 groups:
1. the folk that grew up listening to Mike as a boy
2. the folk that grew up listening to Mike after the Thriller album
3. the folk that didn’t know a thing about Mike until Dangerous and the first allegations..
now the folk in group one look at Mike like “that’s a damn shame, but he was tight back in the day.”
group two would say man he fell off since bad
group three would say…he sucks
i guess what i’m sayin is…perception of Mike depends on the generation and how well-schooled you are on Mike’s music