Now, for several weeks there has been a firestorm amongst MJ fans with a lot of heated words aimed at both ladies. Whilst I understand where these fans are coming from, I have a confession to make......drumroll please..........I actually admire both women!
With Lisa Marie, like I said in my first post, I was delighted when she married Michael and so disappointed that their marriage didn't last.
I really feel for her when she cops flak from MJ fans. It just seems so short sighted - don't these fans realise Lisa Marie has done more to dispel the myths about Michael being gay than anyone else? I wonder if these same fans are the first to point to Michael's marriage to Lisa when they are confronted with haters...
We all know how ridiculed Michael was. And despite the sceptism, contempt, sarcasm and disbelief that the media heaped on Lisa's assertions that their marriage was a "sexually active" one, she has never wavered on that point in any of the interviews I've seen her do.
Some have argued that Lisa was, and still is, using Michael to further her own music career. I totally disagree with this. She has always struck me as being genuinely in love with him. Even any negative comments she has made about him further re-inforces this. Isn't it normal for an ex-wife to harbor some ill feelings after a failed relationship?
In the Rabbi Schmuck tapes (oops! used the nickname instead of the real name) Michael relates how he hardened his heart towards Lisa when they began to experience difficulties in their marriage. This is what he says:
"After we got divorced, she would hang out with my mother all the time. I have all these letters she sent: 'I'll give you nine children. I'll do whatever you want.' And, of course, the press doesn't know of these stories. And she just tried for months and months, and I became too hardhearted at that point. I had closed my mind on the whole situation."I love the fact that she still has intense feelings for him, even now some 14 years after their divorce. It almost validates my admiration for him in a way. Sometimes with celebrities you admire you wonder if they are really as wonderful as you imagine them to be. Would they truly be as special to you if you got to know them personally?
Oprah is a bit of an enigma to me and a different proposition entirely. On the one hand, she has a humanitarian streak that is very, very commendable, but her other half – that of media persona is an aspect of her personality that I do not care for at all. Coming from Australia, in 1993 Oprah was the most prominent and visible African American we got to see on a daily basis.
Now, back then vitiligo was a disease I had never heard of before. So when her MJ special aired it confused me when she asked about the bleaching creams right after MJ had explained to her about his condition.
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| Source: moonwalkerx3 click here to see her blog |
MICHAEL JACKSON - OPRAH INTERVIEW (1993)
OPRAH: It has caused a great deal of speculation and controversy as to what you have done or ‘are’ doing, are you bleaching your skin? Is your skin lighter because you don’t like being black?
MICHAEL: Okay, number 1. There is (as I know of) NO such thing as ‘skin bleaching’, I have never seen it, I don’t know what it is.
This is the situation, I have a skin disorder that destroys the pigmentation of the skin, it’s something I can not help. Okay? When people make up these stories that I don’t want to be who I am, it hurts me.
It’s a problem for me, I can’t control it, okay?
But what about the millions of people (let’s reverse it), What about all the millions of people who sit out in the sun to become darker, to become other then what they are?
Nobody says nothing about that.
I took Oprah’s scepticism as cause to think that maybe he chose to be white (I am so ashamed of this now that I know better). But I could see no other reason why she did not appear to believe him about the vitiligo.
For me, this is what I find objectionable about her. I can forgive the lack of support for Michael, I don't like it, but I can forgive it. I would have loved her to be more vocal in support of Michael - especially when it came to claims that 'he wanted to be white'. Her support could have made a huge difference in turning the media tsunami around. And if that had occurred, Michael's life would have been so much better...perhaps even preventing his death?
That's what I mean by the title of this posting - Oprah is someone who is in the position to change the public perception - the pop culture. But she didn't. She chose not to. And that saddens me.
The TV interview left me with the impression that JayZ was a drug dealer from the age of 13 and he was extremely proud of that. I felt Oprah let her "friend" JayZ down by not stressing that his pride is due to removing himself from that situation. A fact which I had to learn by tracking down other articles and interviews. (I like Beyonce a whole lot and was concerned for her!) It was only for the purpose of this posting that I glimpsed through the O magazine article. It seems to be a fairer picture of JayZ but I have only skimmed it so far...
On a personal note, it angered me that Oprah had no problem with JayZ's drug dealing confession yet was lukewarm at best when it comes to anything to do with Michael Jackson...
The second Oprah story I wish to share occurred around Michael's birthday in 2009. Yep, at that time I was still looking to the mainstream media for Michael news and was watching 'The Insider". Samantha Harris was interviewing Oprah and they discussed Jaycee Lee Dugard, that poor woman who was abducted as an 11 year old, and kept imprisoned for 18 years by her kidnappers. And Oprah said how she would love to “get” that interview. I would have thought that a former child abuse victim herself would have looked at it as not just another story!
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