02/01/2005
Cry me a river. Michael Jackson’s father is blaming — what else? — American racism for his ghoulish son’s persistent legal and personal problems.
Joe Jackson reportedly told CBS News’s "48 Hours": "This is just the United States. All the rest of the countries, all over the world, are proud of Michael. It’s here we have the most trouble out of them. It is racism."
Who is "them"? After millions of American record buyers of all races propelled Michael Jackson to unimaginable heights of fame and fortune during the past four decades, we are now supposed to believe that this nation’s unparalleled societal intolerance for black people led to the King of Pop’s fall from grace.
Public revulsion over Jackson’s descent into plastic surgery madness?
"It’s racism," if you believe Joe Jackson.
The chimp and Elephant Man bone fetishes?
"It’s racism," if you believe Joe Jackson.
The abnormal man-boy relationships and sleepover parties at the Neverland Ranch?
"It’s racism," if you believe Joe Jackson.
Jackson’s burka-covered children and baby-dangling abuse?
"It’s racism," if you believe Joe Jackson.
Forget the Jackson family’s blindness. Ignore Jackson’s own bad judgment. Overlook the recklessness of star-struck parents who allowed Jackson to have such creepy, intimate contact with their children.
It all comes down to "racism." And it’s only in America. A successful black man in show biz just can’t get a fair shake in this country, if you believe Joe Jackson.
I wonder if Snoop Doggy Dogg agrees.
The big-pimping black rapper formerly known as Calvin Broadus is currently the hottest commodity in America’s entertainment industry. "Hot Dogg," crows the latest issue of Blender magazine. "Movie star, Pee Wee Football coach, bigger-than-ever hip-hop icon, Snoop Dogg has left his thugsta days far behind," the feature article raves. [Hot Dogg, By Rob Tannenbaum, Jan/Feb 2005 ]
"His career is smokin'," the Los Angeles Times muses in its glowing profile of Snoop topped with a tasteless headline making light of the rapper’s infamous marijuana-puffing habits.
Every one of Snoop’s albums during the last 13 years has gone platinum. He has been nominated for two Grammy awards this month and is currently on a nationwide concert tour. The gang-banging, crack-dealing, pot-smoking ex-convict has graduated from making gangsta rap and porn videos to video games, MTV specials, a best-selling autobiography, several cameo movie appearances and executive producing and starring in his own family-oriented feature film ("Coach Snoop").
Snoop’s got his own youth football league. On Saturday, the first youth league "Snooperbowl" is scheduled in Jacksonville, Fla. (The last time Snoop made news with youths was when he settled out of court with two teenage girls who claimed he broke a promise not to use a photo of them baring their breasts for his "Girls Gone Wild" porn flick.) He’s even got his own 12-inch doll, "Snoopafly," which is "loved by everyone from the kids on the scene to the grandmas."
Only in America could a cop-hating former crack dealer transmogrify into an intergenerational plastic party toy (complete with "Doggystyle" clothes). And only in America would a music reporter fawn over that lovable figure’s lyrics threatening to kill police officers. From the Blender article by Rob Tannenbaum:
"Where other rappers bark threats, he purrs warnings with a feline dispassion. '1-8-7 on an undercover cop,' he cooed on 'Deep Cover,' the Dr. Dre-produced song that began Snoop’s career in 1992 — though he sounded so stoned, the talk of murder seemed more like a hazy daydream."
Only in America could a thug from the 'hood become such a phenomenal commercial success that he could demand, as the New York Post’s Page Six reported, a concert contract rider guaranteeing "high-grade marijuana" along with a backstage Sony PlayStation and cases of Hennessy cognac and Moet champagne.
If American bigotry is to blame for black entertainer Michael Jackson’s trial, what explains black entertainer Snoop Dogg’s triumph? What kind of country elevates mortal entertainers — regardless of skin color (or lack thereof) — into higher beings whose celebrity rests on sabotaging social norms?
The lesson of Jacko and Snoop Dogg’s America is not that this nation is too intolerant, but that it is not nearly intolerant enough.
Michelle Malkin is author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin’s website.
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