Michael Jackson Jokes

by N i c o_

I met a 78 year-old man who told me that he thought he’d die before Michael Jackson. We’d met across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theater while watching the crowd of people stand in line to see Michael Jackson’s Walk of Fame star.

I hadn’t planned to be there to visit Michael Jackson. Nora and I had planned a trip to see some LA landmarks — Grauman’s was one of them. Until Michael Jackson died yesterday, the last time I’d thought about him was when Matt Ruecker and I proposed the theory that a DJ can resurrect a dying dance party by playing “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough” no-matter what age group or demographic is attending. This theory is true 100% of the time.

When Nora and I got off the exit toward Grauman’s, the route was blocked by police barricades, and the alternative route was wall-to-wall gridlock. “They’re all going to see Michael Jackson’s star on the Walk of Fame,” a friend from LA who knew the score told us over the phone, so we parked and walked.

Black (or White) Comedy

Twenty-four hours ago Michael Jackson died, and Nora and I disagreed on what jokes, if any, were appropriate for the moment. She took the traditional funerals-are-for-frowns view, and I took the contrarian, nihilistic view that humor is acceptable even during the apocalypse.

I argued that accomplished people who touch the hearts and lives of others die every day. I said it was only incidental that Michael Jackson happened to touch 109 million hearts with Thriller and 32 million lives with Dangerous. I thought that he should be shown the respect of anyone else who dies suddenly and leaves behind three children and lots of friends — no more, no less.

People made careers out of telling jokes about Michael Jackson before he died. The bad jokes — remarks about his cry-for-help plastic surgery and his acting-out-due-to-childhood-trauma personal life — were inappropriate even when he was alive. It’s hard to defend anyone who makes an easy joke at an even easier target. But why shouldn’t the good ones be allowed to continue?

People rarely showed Michael Jackson any of the respect in life that they’ve been showing in death. The mob of public opinion that was so quick to revere a dead man and make even tasteful jokes about him off-limits was the same mob that killed him at 50 years old. If he was under less pressure to succeed and less scrutiny by the media, maybe he would’ve lived a full stress-free life without a drug problem or a heart condition. Maybe if people treated him more like a normal person, he would’ve had less reason to act out like someone entirely abnormal.

I made abstract arguments about how humor is a healthy reaction to traumatizing situations, and theoretical ones about how when humor is made off-limits, it neuters one of the most important parts of the human experience. Why can’t someone laugh at a funeral?

The only part that we couldn’t agree-to-disagree on was my opinion that you can only mourn a man who is a complete stranger for so long. “He’s not my dad and he’s not your dad,” I said.

The Pilgrimage to the Star

When we turned the corner onto Hollywood Blvd, it looked like a neon Calcutta. There were fleets of carts selling sausages and bacon wrapped hot dogs. All along the strip, we ran into street vendors fueling the mourning machine selling $10 and $15 “RIP King of Pop” shirts. There were little boys selling roses and grown men selling bootleg Michael Jackson CDs.

People were everywhere, mostly going one direction: marching toward the Grauman’s Theater in some bizarre version of a Hajj. Every age, race, nationality, ethnic group made some sort of showing which isn’t strange for LA, but is strange to see on just one city block.

Nora and I never saw the star. The line was too long. We were stuck under a closed “Build a Bear Workshop” and probably would’ve been there for another hour. After getting a picture with “sidewalk Spiderman,” we crossed the street, to admire the scene from behind a barricade. That’s where we met the 78 year old man with the cane.

The Old Man With the Cane

The Old Man, Nora, and I watched the line of mourners flanked by police, news vans, and flood lights, leaving flowers and wreaths and boomboxes at the star.

He told us a story about how he’d been talking to a friend about Michael Jackson’s death and without thinking, he’d said to the friend, “It’s like family died, you know?” He said he didn’t know why he’d said it; all he knew was that it felt so natural for him to say it.

Then I thought about it. Lots of people know Michael Jackson better than they know their real friends — if they even have any real friends. Michael Jackson might not have been your dad, but some people saw his image on album covers, Pepsi commercials, and music videos more than they ever saw their own fathers. Some people have the misfortune of not even knowing their fathers in the first place.

The Way You Make Me Feel

Celebrity deaths remind people about their own mortality. In the case of Michael Jackson, he reminded the entire world that people can die, and they do die — suddenly. Watching Michael Jackson grow up on TV, hit puberty the same time that you did, and then die in his sleep must have been a strange feeling. That could’ve been you, and there’s nothing funny about your own death at all.

With all of the negativity surrounding Michael Jackson’s life, there’s only positivity in death. The media and public opinion might have made joking off limits, but people can still celebrate. People are reconnecting with their loved ones for the first time in a long time just to tell them that Michael Jackson died. A 78 year old man gets to reminisce with a smile on his face about where all the time has gone. People are driving their cars with the windows down singing “Pretty Young Thing” into the streets at the top of their lungs. I’ve seen it.

People are enjoying great music again: MJ’s albums are set to take at least 4 and maybe even 9 of the top 10 spots on the Billboard 200 chart. How many non-post-humous Michael Jackson comebacks would it have taken to sell those numbers? Those of us who are still alive have managed to exploit Michael Jackson for our own benefit one more time even in death, all without telling a single disrespectful punchline.

We get everything and Michael Jackson gets nothing. Jerry Reisman, lawyer for the Hit Factory, the studio where Jackson recorded Thriller said exactly what his death means for the rest of us: “Quite frankly, he may be worth more dead than alive.”

No joke.