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发表于 2009-11-26 16:46:11
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这是他的另一个回复。拜托楼主翻译,再另开贴。
link: http://floacist.wordpress.com/20 ... by-charles-thomson/
Susan,
I actually just wrote somebody an email about Michael Jackson, race and the media.
Here is an excerpt:
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I think that the media’s treatment of Michael Jackson stems from racism, although whether race is still a primary motivating factor in his treatment by the media, I can’t say.
I’m working on a piece right now comparing the life and times of Michael Jackson to those of Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight boxing champion. There are enormous parallels between their stories; the way they were both treated by the establishment and the media is uncanny, right down to Johnson facing two sets of trumped up sex charges, the second batch fabricated after the first accusers demanded cash and withdrew their allegations.
The treatment of Johnson by the media was unquestionably racist and the treatment of Michael Jackson has been unquestionably similar. And Michael Jackson, like Johnson, was a dangerously popular and powerful black figure. Just as Jack Johnson was a black world champion more than 50 years before the Civil Rights Act, Michael Jackson was a black man who outsold Elvis and owned the Beatles in an era when MTV still wouldn’t even put black faces on its TV channels.
The success of Thriller dictates that many forget Michael Jackson’s prior achievements. It is not often mentioned, but Off The Wall was the biggest selling black album of all time. It was a huge success but in the media’s eyes, he still knew his place – it was the biggest selling BLACK album of all time. He was already having surgery. His skin was already lightening. His voice was already high and his friends were already much younger than he was. But as long as he was only achieving within the boundaries of his own race, they didn’t care.
However, when Thriller was released and Jackson began toppling white-held records as well as black ones, all of a sudden the media cared about his high voice, his surgery, his skin colour, his young friends and so on.
I think that the vindictive attitude towards Michael Jackson was born out of this. While I think that in certain areas of the media it could still be a drving force behind the abuse that is constantly aimed at Jackson, in many cases it is simply tradition. Younger journalists have joined the media having grown up on the racist lies of their predecessors.
I am not a saucer-eyed fan who believes that Jackson was blameless. Of course, he behaved strangely and irresponsibly at varius stages throughout his career. But the point at which the media began gunning for him was long before the allegations hit and his eccentricites began to appear sinister. The media began gunning for Jackson when he became a black man who owned the world’s biggest white musicians.
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If Paul McCartney was accused of child molestation but all of the evidence strongly showed that he was innocent, do you think the media would tell us that? Of course they would. But they wouldn’t when it was Michael Jackson.
There have long been racial double standards in the media. In 1959 Chuck Berry was arrested over an alleged relationship with a 14 year old girl and the media vilified him. In the same year Elvis Presley began overtly dating Priscilla Presley. Priscilla was also 14 years old. Where was Elvis Presley’s media vilification?
Elsewhere, the media delights in telling us that James Brown was a wife-beater. However, his conviction for spousal abuse actually related to damage to an automobile, not to injuries inflicted on his wife. Meanwhile, John Lennon was a documented drug user and wife beater, but when was the last time you read about it in a newspaper or a magazine? In the case of James Brown, you would be hard pushed to find any article from a mainstream news outlet which did not include a reference to his supposed wife beating. But the same is certainly not true of John Lennon.
Racial double standards exist in the media to this day. Whether racism is still a motivating factor behind the consistent character assassinations directed towards Michael Jackson, I can’t say for sure. But you can trace it on a timeline with your finger; the moment Michael Jackson became a black man who owned the world’s biggest white artists, the media immediately started gunning for him. |
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