June 25, 2009

Yes, Michael Jackson is Dead

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I can’t believe TMZ was right. Michael Jackson, King of Pop, is actually dead at age 50, reports the Los Angeles Times. From reports looks like he was in a “deep coma” when LA Fire Department picked him up, and then died. Sad news.

My personal MJ memory: carrying around a battered cassette tape of Thriller for years, to be played mostly on my sky-blue boombox. Yes, I was a child of the 80s. My mother wouldn’t let me watch the Thriller video (too scary, and un-Christian), so I secretly danced to it at my friend’s house who (blessedly) had both MTV and a VCR player. As someone who took years and years of ballet and other forms of dance, I will say the man was an amazing dancer. If any of you are interested in seeing some of the art he collected (some is legit, some schmaltzy), check out the auction of property he held last month at an LA auction house here.

THE BIG PICTURE

You expect the big picture, and it's our job at Mother Jones to give it to you. And right now, so many of the troubles we face are the making not of a virus, but of the quest for profit, political or economic (and not just from the man in the White House who could have offered leadership and comfort but instead gave us bleach).

In "News Is Just Like Waste Management," we unpack what the coronavirus crisis has meant for journalism, including Mother Jones’, and how we can rise to the challenge. If you're able to, this is a critical moment to support our nonprofit journalism with a donation: We've scoured our budget and made the cuts we can without impairing our mission, and we hope to raise $400,000 from our community of online readers to help keep our big reporting projects going because this extraordinary pandemic-plus-election year is no time to pull back.

THE BIG PICTURE

You expect the big picture, and it's our job at Mother Jones to give it to you. And right now, so many of the troubles we face are the making not of a virus, but of the quest for profit, political or economic (and not just from the man in the White House who could have offered leadership and comfort but instead gave us bleach).

In "News Is Just Like Waste Management," we unpack what the coronavirus crisis has meant for journalism, including Mother Jones’, and how we can rise to the challenge. If you're able to, this is a critical moment to support our nonprofit journalism with a donation: We've scoured our budget and made the cuts we can without impairing our mission, and we hope to raise $400,000 from our community of online readers to help keep our big reporting projects going because this extraordinary pandemic-plus-election year is no time to pull back.

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