Otherness and Power: Michael Jackson and His Media Critics is a rather short book by Susan Woodword but it does a lot to expose "progressive" hypocrisy in the media and academia.

It analyzes three works:
- A 1985 book by Dave Marsh called "Trapped: Michael Jackson and the Crossover Dream"
- Maureen Orth's MJ articles in Vanity Fair
- And a 2009 book entitled The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, edited by British music critic Mark Fisher
I went back to the latter part today because I heard Fisher's name again in a completely different context (he was also a philosopher) and it kind of ringed a bell, so I checked back if he was really the dude who wrote some horrible book about MJ?
Well, he didn't write it alone (he personally wrote only one chapter), but he edited it. As per Woodward the book is short on actual facts and research on MJ's life, but high on opinionated and dehumanizing hatred based on tabloid information and their perception of him.
What Woodward does is making lists of the adjectives the books' authors use of Jackson. That in itself shows the out of control, irrational hatred.
I guess anyone has the right to hate a celebrity (even if it is irrational), but I find enlightening in these lists is how it exposes these supposed "progressive" journalists, critics and academists as straight up racist, sexist and homophobic.
Here are some of those lists to illustrate that.
I guess the reason why MJ is such a litmus test in exposing "progressive" hypocrisy is because when it comes to him people suddenly don't have the same boundaries and caution as the mask of decency they would put on with anyone else.
Because he is not considered black by these people (I guess because it is up to privileged white upper middle class males to determine that) they can be racist towards him. Because they can't figure out his gender and sexuality, they can be sexist and homophobic.
They couldn't get away with describing any other person in terms like "inhuman", "weirdo girl-man", "drag queen puppet droog", "hermaphroditic James Brown", "auto-castrate asexual", "a never-man",
a "grotesque parody of whiteness" (that about a black man who never claimed to be anything else but a black man), "white woman pork face", "white lady", "slave master's wife", "never quite human", "monster", "abomination", "trash" and so on and so forth.
I am sure they critique white artists as well, but I doubt any white artist or anyone who fits their definition of what is "normal" ever gets this same dehumanizing pure hatred from them.

More from Book

Another thread on Whittle as a companion to this thread.


Here Stephen makes an impassioned plea for the rights of trans people not to be sterilised. I agree. Does Stephen know that we are now, effectively, sterilising “transkids”? Is Stephen speaking out about this?


Yes. I agree you have the right to be parents. You know many “transmen” who have given birth. What will happen to the kids put on #PubertyBlockers followed by Cross-sex hormones?


Makes a clear statement activists did not want to campaign on “surgical status”. #LeaveNoOneBehind. Also that they have the right to bodily privacy,
Just trans folks? Do women have the right to bodily privacy?
Is this what passing looks like? Ignoring women?
Congratulations


An impassioned defence of the campaign for Self-Identification. Make no mistake this was a demand that women accept male-bodied women in single sex spaces. That was significant over-reach and a massive blunder. Women only spaces, regardless of surgery, is my stance now.
People have wondered why I have spent 3 days mostly pushing back on this idea that "defund the police" is bad marketing.

The reason is, it's an example of this magic trick, the oldest trick in the book.

It's a competition between what I call compass statements. And it matters.


There are a lot of people who think "defund the police" is a bad slogan.

But it's a directional intention. A compass statement.

The real effect of calling it a bad slogan, whether or not intentional (but usually intentional), is to reduce a compass statement down to a slogan.

Whenever there is a real problem and a clear solution, there will be people who benefit from the problem and therefore oppose the solution in a variety of ways.

And this is true of any real problem, not just the problem of lawless militarized white supremacist police.

There are people who oppose it directly using a wide variety of tactics, one of which is misconstruing anything—quite literally anything—said by those who propose solutions—any solutions.

They'd appreciate it if you mistake their deliberate misrepresentation for confusion.

The reason they'd appreciate if if you mistake their deliberate misrepresentation for confusion is, it wastes time that could have been spend on the solution trying to persuade them, with different arguments and metaphors or solutions.

Which they intend to misconstrue.
दोन वर्षांपूर्वी जेव्हा मी ‘लीन इन’ हे पुस्तक वाचले होते तेव्हा मला कधीच वाटले नव्हते की ह्या पुस्तकाचा माझ्यावर कायमचा परिणाम होईल.
“खरोखर समान जग असे आहे की जेथे महिलांनी आपले अर्धे देश आणि कंपन्या आणि पुरुषांनी अर्धी घरं चालवतील. “
- शेरिल सँडबर्ग.


अध्याय वाचताना मला जाणवलं की प्रत्येक महिला जिला तिच्या आवडीनिवडींशी कोणतीही तडजोड न करता स्वत: चे करियर बनवायचे आहे, तिच्यासाठी हा manifesto आहे. या वास्तववादी पुस्तकाची लेखिका शेरिल सँडबर्ग आहे. प्रामाणिक बोलं तर मी त्यावेळी तिचं नाव कधीच ऐकले नव्हते.


काही खुलासे करणारे तथ्य शोधल्यानंतर मी तिच्या संदर्भात अधिक माहितीसाठी थोडा इंटरनेट सर्फ केलं. हार्वर्डमधून इकॉनॉमिक्सची पदवी घेतली व पदवी पूर्ण झाल्यावर तिला कॉलेजमध्ये वुमन इन इकॉनॉमिक्स नावाची एक संस्था स्थापित केली. एका वर्षासाठी वर्ल्ड बँकेत काम केले आणि कुष्ठरोगास आळा


घालण्याच्या एका कार्यक्रमाअंतर्गत त्यांनी भारतातही प्रवास केला. नंतर हार्वर्ड येथे एमबीए केले आणि वर्षभर मॅककिन्से आणि कंपनीबरोबर काम केले. माझ्यासारख्या भारतीय महिलेसाठी, तिने आपल्या पुस्तकात लिहून दिलेल्या कामाच्या ठिकाणी महिलांच्या वागणुकीच्या साध्या साध्या निरीक्षणाद्वारे

निश्चितच एक आदर्श म्हणून काम केले. मला वैयक्तिकरित्या कळले की पुस्तकात नोंदवलेल्या बर्‍याच अज्ञात, नकळत वर्तन तथ्य सत्य आहेत. त्यापैकी काहींचा समावेश आहे की महिला ज्या प्रकल्पात काम करतात त्या कोणत्याही प्रकल्पात पुढाकार अर्थात initiative घेत नाहीत,

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