On the Death of Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson was an exceptionally gifted singer and dancer. He brought an intensity and joy to his performances unlike any performer I can think of. And because he brought so much joy to so many, I never understood it when the media turned on him with hysterical outbursts when, for example, he held his baby over the railing of a hotel balcony somewhere in Europe, something he did in response to fans yelling up that they wanted to see the child. Did they really believe he was going to drop the infant? The thought is ridiculous.

Jackson became a freak in the eyes of the media, and the Lenos and Lettermans knew they could get a guaranteed laugh if they made fun of him. How could people become so hostile toward someone who had given joy to so many? Why couldn't people be grateful for his astounding gifts as a musician and dancer and leave the person alone?

But what about the charges of pedophilia against him because he slept in the same bed with children? What no one wanted to examine was why did the American mind instantly equate sexual acts with sleeping in a bed with a child? People projected onto Jackson their own prurience. I am reminded of a case in which a father took film to be developed. On the roll were photos of his daughter, naked, in the bathtub. The camera store owner called the police, and the man was arrested!

In his relationships with children, in the fantasy world he created at his Neverland Ranch, Jackson was attempting to retrieve what his father had deprived him of -- a childhood. There was something pathetically courageous in Jackson's efforts to have a childhood. But just as Americans projected pedophilia onto him, he projected his need to be a child onto actual children in an attempt to live through them. Some of the children may have been uncomfortable with this, and perhaps their expressions of discomfort were translated by adults into pedophilia.

Jackson did not understand that he could not give himself the childhood his father had deprived him of. The love and play of childhood would always be closed to him as long as he carried resentment and anger at his father. And the greatest paradox Jackson did not learn to live with was that he would not have become the entertainer he was, that he could not have amassed the wealth he did if not for the tyranny of his father.

Jackson lived in pain, excruciating pain as evidenced by the $100,000 pharmacy bill he amassed over a two year period. He wanted to numb the pain, but the only way to rid himself of the pain was to go through it. This was not possible for someone who probably felt most comfortable when he was on a stage, performing.

As for the plastic surgeries Jackson underwent, the changes in his skin color from dark brown to an unnatural whiteness, these were interpreted as expressions of self-hatred, that Jackson wanted to be a white man. Last week, Deepak Chopra was interviewed by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, and Chopra said that Jackson had had lupus as well as a skin disease, and it was this that led to the plastic surgeries and the wearing of ghostly white make-up.

The Michael Jackson story is a modern American tragedy that touches other young people who become world famous. I find myself thinking of Michael Phelps and athletes in general. Americans idolize youth, especially in sports and entertainment. Michael Jackson, Michael Phelps & Britney Spears were applauded all over the world for the joy their performances gave so many. And yet, the public turned against them when they transgressed the bounds of the social norms. Opprobrium was heaped on them for something that was not entirely their fault. No one had taught them how to live when they were not performing on their respective stages. Each had their childhoods taken from them by ambitious adults, and each reached a point of rebellion, sometimes self-destructive rebellion.

Learning how to live is a lifelong process. The exceptional abilities of these young people were focused on to the detriment of their minds and their emotional lives. None of them were given books in which they might have seen something of themselves and their lives. Books help us to see ourselves, something we cannot do alone, especially when we are surrounded by sycophants. When I learned that Michael Phelps's life up to the Olympics consisted of swimming, eating pizza, playing with his dog and watching television, I was saddened. But the values of our country have become mired in celebrity and wealth. When many children today are asked what they want to be when they grow up, all too often the answer is "Famous and rich." Our society expects multimillionaire teenagers to be role models, but having a society which wants children to aspire to be heroes/heroines, well, heroes and heroines are confined to books. And adolescent celebrities don't read.

Michael Jackson was a man whose childhood was taken from him, and he tried to have that childhood when he was no longer the age of a child. It was sad to watch. While I am stunned and saddened by his death, a part of me is also relieved that perhaps now he has the peace that seemed to be so very absent from his life.

Saddest of all, however, is that Americans are now expressing their love for him and their gratitude for all that he gave us. This would have meant so much more if it had been expressed while he was alive instead of the contempt and derision heaped on his valiant attempts to learn how to be a person.

Julius Lester
© 2009

A Speech I'd Like to Hear

I called this press conference because I understand a newspaper is going to print something about my personal life, and I want the people to hear it from me. What the paper is going to report is that I am having an affair. And that is true. Which makes me no different than at least fifty percent of married Americans. Husbands and wives stray from their marriages. The reasons are irrelevant.

Now, I know that I'm supposed to stand here and say how sorry I am for hurting my wife, children, friends, and, for good measure, my dog. Well, part of me is sorry, but another part of me isn't. The relationship I have with another woman is a good and caring one. I am not ashamed for loving her as I do. I knew what I was doing when the relationship became sexual.

It annoys the hell out of me that the press is so eager to report on the sexual lives of politicians but who is going to report on the sexual lives of newspaper reporters and editors? How many of you in this room holding your microphones and scribbling notes are involved in adulterous relationships? It is hypocrisy of the highest order for you to put your noses into my private life, but your private lives are not held up to public scrutiny.

So, yes, I am having an affair. No, I will not resign my office. What I do in my private life does not impinge on my responsibilities to serve the people of this state. I am merely one of millions of people who do exemplary work and have sexual relationships outside their marriages. As for what I am going to do about my marriage and the relationship with another woman is none of your business.

I wish Americans cared as much about universal health care as they do about other people's sex lives. If they did, we'd have health care for everybody tomorrow.

Grow up, people, and get your priorities in order.

© 2009 Julius Lester

Liberals and President Obama

In recent weeks liberals have criticized President Obama on matters where they disagree with him on principal. The president has said repeatedly that while his administration will not engage in torture of prisoners, neither will he prosecute CIA agents who tortured prisoners, nor anyone in the Bush administration who ordered such tortures. He will also continue the Bush administration policy of preventive detention, meaning anyone deemed likely to be involved in future terrorist attacks on this country will not be released from detention.

Constitutional lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, and liberal commentators such as Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC have reacted with outrage. Recently, Maddow, in her faux little girl voice, asked, "Is this Change We Can Believe In?', a sarcastic reference to one of Obama's campaign slogans.

And there's the problem. "Change We Can Believe In." Liberals assumed Obama believed what they believed, that the changes they believed in were the changes he believed in. Liberals projected onto Candidate Obama their own image. And now, they are feeling betrayed because the president is not as liberal as they thought.

I suspect that the change President Obama has experienced is that Candidate Obama did not know how complex and difficult it is to govern, that presidential decisions have consequences which can reverberate for generations. For example, what would happen if President Obama prosecuted CIA operatives and Bush administration officials for their involvement in torturing prisoners, a clear violation of American law and the Geneva Convention? At a minimum current CIA agents would feel betrayed that operatives were being prosecuted for carrying out orders under one administration that are now considered illegal by a new administration. Agents would fear that carrying out orders from the Obama administration would might leave them open to prosecution from a later administration.

Equally, prosecuting Bush administration officials would set a precedent and would lead the next Republican Party president, whoever he or she might be, to prosecute officials from the previous Democratic Party administration for whatever the Republicans could find or make up. I would love to see Dick Chaney thrown in jail, but doing so would split the country even more than it already is. It would also create animosities that would linger for decades, as well as make people reluctant to serve in government.

Preventive detention is clearly against the U.S. Constitution which guarantees one's right to a speedy trial. But what if Suspected Terrorist X is released and six months later Suspected Terrorist X is involved in an attack on the U.S. in which thousands are killed? The blame for releasing Terrorist X would fall directly on Obama. His presidency as well as liberalism would be derided for naivete and an inability to protect the American people.

What liberals failed to see was that Candidate Obama was not as liberal as they thought he was. What liberals also fail to see is that if Obama was an ideological liberal, he would be no different than Bush in his ideological reactionary conservatism. The President of the United States is supposed to govern for the benefit of the American people, not merely those with whom he shares a political ideology. If President Obama is going to be president of the nation, he is going to make decisions I disagree with, and even, abhor.

What liberals fail to grasp is that it is easy to be ideologically pure when you don't have to be responsible for the consequences of putting your ideology into practice. Why can't liberals understand that we have just emerged from eight years of being governed by an ideologue whose allegiance was to his ideology and not to solving the nation's problems?

I trust Obama because on some issues he is liberal, on others he is conservative, and on many, he is pragmatic. Anybody who can piss off liberals and conservatives has the makings of a great president.

© 2009 by Julius Lester

The Toll of the Bell

I think one of the reasons I have not been wanting to communicate is because in the past month three people I knew have died. In the past year, add three more. One of the aspects of aging that nothing can prepare you for is the deaths of people you know in the generation ahead of you, and, increasingly, the deaths of your contemporaries.

The most personal death was that of David Gahr 11 months ago. He was my spiritual older brother, my mentor when I took up photography, and a wonderful soul. But David was in his 80's, had been in declining health, so I was somewhat prepared for his death, as much as one can prepare for the finality death represents. But with his death I lost an important connection to my past for it was David who took my photograph when I started writing for Sing Out magazine in 1965. It was David who took the photographs of me that appear on the two record albums I made for Vanguard during my days as a folksinger. It is his photographs of me that appear on the jackets of my first books. A part of me which I shared with no one else also died when David did.

The other deaths were not as personal in terms of shared histories, but they were personal in the emotions shared. One was a woman older than me whom I knew through my associations with various Jewish communities in Vermont. We shared an unquestioned love of Judaism. Another was a woman I knew only through e-mail, but we shared a love of books, of Amazon Kindle, of psychotherapy, and I really miss writing to and hearing from her. Another was someone who reached out to me when I was being attacked publicly for something I'd written. At the time, I knew him only by name, but when he heard he called and asked if I needed anything. And, I have never forgotten that phone call and how much it meant when I was feeling very, very alone. Another was a colleague from the University of Massachusetts who always had a mischievous twinkle in his eye which I think I captured in a photograph I took of him which he used for a book of his. And the last was someone I knew only casually. He and I retired from the University of Massachusetts at the same time, and the last time I saw him we talked about the joys of retirement. Apparently his retirement was not as joyful as mine because he walked onto the railroad tracks as a train approached. And, of course, I wonder: did I miss something in our last conversation? Is there something I could have done?

This is the part of aging there is no preparation for, this whittling away at your memories, this snipping of relationships that sever emotional cords as surely as the snipping of your umbilical chord severed you from your mother's womb. It is as if part of the preparation for your own demise is the gradual but steady taking away from you the relationships that have bound you, in love and joy, to this world. And something of you dies as these others die.

I realize that I have been in mourning. Even more, I begin to understand that mourning has become an integral part of my living, that the deaths of people I know is now woven into the fabric of my living, and the number of those deaths can only increase.

Old age is the time when you learn the depths of sorrow, and I am learning that those depths are far deeper than I would have ever imagined.

© 2009 by Julius Lester
julius.lester@gmail.com

An Odd Event

Friday morning, April 24, I logged on to check my e-mail and found the strangest e-mail I've ever received. Phil Nel, an author and member of an internet children's literature group to which we both contribute, wrote that in my biography on Wikipeida it stated that I had died "peacefully" in my sleep at 6:15 that morning. Though Phil admitted feeling a little odd e-mailing me, I am grateful he did so instead of accepting what he read as fact and telling others.

I went to my biography on Wikipedia and read about my "death". My very first response was to wonder if I had died and hadn't gotten the news yet. Who knows what it's like to be dead? I thought about the old philosophical question: Am I a butterfly dreaming that I am me? I asked my wife to read this "news" of my "death" and her doing so confirmed that I was, indeed, still alive.

I deleted the paragraph describing my "death", though I was touched by the last line which read, "He will be missed by all." I read through my Wikipedia bio and restored verbs to present tense that had been changed to past. Then I e-mailed my children and told them what had happened, in case someone offered them condolences on my "death."

Some might think it would be upsetting to read of one's death. It wasn't for me. I was more baffled than anything else. Why would someone choose me for such a prank? I am not famous enough that news of my death will make the front pages of newspapers or cause television networks to interrupt regular programming to announce it. However, the real negative about this false report of my death is that should I die in the next few weeks, no one will believe it.

The person who perpetrated this obviously does not know me, because I do not want to die in my sleep. I want to know that I am dying; I want the experience of watching death approach -- if that's what happens. To die in your sleep is, I suppose, easy and painless but if I have to suffer pain to know that I am dying, I will choose the pain. However, it would be even more painful to be dying and know that I won't have the chance to write about it. Maybe dying in my sleep isn't so bad after all.

I am glad that I do not allow unmoderated comments on this blog. It would be all too easy for someone to post false information here. And, over the past almost two months I have received "comments" for the blog that have been entirely in Chinese or Japanese characters from "Anonymous". They automatically go to my spam folder, but perhaps "Anonymous" got tired of being ignored by me and "killed me off".

One lesson from this is be careful using Wikipedia. Another is to emulate Phil Nel, and check your information before passing it onto others.

As to my silence since my blog post of March 1, I haven't felt like talking and, I will now return to that silence.

Julius Lester
julius.lester@gmail.com

Catalog Pollution -3

On November 15 and 25, 2007, I wrote about “Catalog Pollution” and how I was thoroughly disgusted by the number of catalogs I received in the mail each day. So I began a campaign to reduce the number I was receiving by utilizing CatalogChoice.org. This is a non-profit environmental group that operates a web site where you can log on, check the catalogs you no longer want to receive. They contact the catalog, and that will be that.

Unfortunately, it did not turn out to be that easy. My experience was that the majority of companies ignored the requests from CatalogChoice, with some openly saying they would not honor such requests. After eight months I decided it was time to call the companies directly to get off their their mailing lists, and, equally important, to tell them to stop renting or selling my name to other companies.

I kept a record of the catalogs, date contacted, and whether I made the request via phone, e-mail or snail mail. Some companies want you to send them your mailing label, figuring, I’m sure, that very few will go to that trouble. I did.

It took me six months of mainly phone calls, and for a while I was calling companies every day, but, finally, in January the day came when I went to the mailbox and (fanfare), there were no catalogs! At first it was an odd feeling to receive scarcely any mail. Now I feel very clean when I open the mail box and there’s scarcely anything inside.

For the record, I stopped 143 catalogs from coming to our house. Of that 143 I would say that I had ordered from 10-20 companies, and that is being generous. The remaining catalogs I received were the result of my name being rented and sold repeatedly.

Now I order things over the phone. In that way I can request that my information not be sold or rented and thus receive only the catalogs I want.

I also learned that American businesses do not know how to sell. They send out glossy, full color catalogs indiscriminately in the blind hope that enough people will order something. Some companies send out catalogs once or twice a month. From one company I received 11 catalogs in 5 months and had to contact them 4 times before they finally removed my name from their system.

But I was persistent, and I prevailed. I am no longer polluting my soul with consumer pornography. I feel so much better.

© 2009 by Julius Lester
--------------------

I am aware that I started to write about books I'd read and liked last year and have not continued. I probably won't. Instead, I'll add to my posts quotes from the books I liked in 2008.

"Be cheerful, be stoic, be tranquil. In the valley of sorrow, spread your wings."

Susan Sontag, quoted in Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir by David Rieff. He is Sontag's son, and his book is his experience of the last years of her life. It is an intense and searing book.

Julius Lester
julius.lester@gmail.com

Michael Phelps Is Not A Role Model

A photograph has appeared of Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimming multi-gold medalist, smoking marijuana. From the outcry you would think Western civilization was coming to an end. There have also been reports and photographs of Phelps at strip clubs receiving lap dances. Isn't it interesting, however, that these did not provoke the same negative response?

But what did people expect of Michael Phelps? He is a young man who has devoted practically his entire short life to one act - swimming. Every day he swam; he ate a mountain of food; he sat on the couch with his dog and watched television. This is what he did, year after year after year. His commitment to athletic excellence in swimming paid off with more gold medals than anyone has won in a single Olympics, and this has made him a millionaire several times over.

However, the price of such an accomplishment is that Michael Phelps is emotionally undeveloped. He's an adolescent boy who now wants to act like an adolescent boy. Unfortunately for him, he is finding out that he doesn't get to go back and do all the adolescent boy things now. One of the prices of taking millions of dollars to endorse products is the loss of a private life. Michael Phelps wants consumers to care about (and buy) the products he endorses; consumers have an interest, then, in knowing who Michael Phelps is, and why they should believe what he says about the products he wants us to buy.

What I do not understand is why Michael Phelps, or any athlete, is supposed to be a role model. A role model of what? Yes, the very best athletes are incredibly disciplined and committed, but they are also young. In the United States we glorify youth without recognizing that the majority of our lives are spent not being young. It is the rare athlete who can be a role model for anything except being young, physically gifted, and disciplined.

When I was young I didn't have role models. I had heroes. I was very involved with classical music, played piano, and kept a bust of Beethoven on the top of the piano. My middle initial is "B", and. some time ago, I came across a book from my childhood, and inside I'd written "Property of Julius 'Beethoven' Lester". I had many heroes -- the English poet, Shelly, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus. These were people whose lives awoke my spirit, made me want to strap on wings and soar toward the sun. Heroes stir in us the desire to touch and be touched by the divine. Heroes make us want to be better than we are, to live lives bigger than we could have imagined.

In the United States today, however, "Heroes" is a television show, and we have "role models." I thought a "role" was something someone pretended to be. But a hero does not pretend. A hero makes us ask, what are the values by which you live your life? When I was in college, I read the dialogue of Plato's that describes the death of Socrates, and I remember talking with others in the class and thinking a lot about would I die for something I believed in? In 1956 none of us knew that in a mere four years that question would be made real when the civil rights movement began, and thousands and thousands of blacks and whites would have to as that question - am I willing to risk my life, am I willing to die for the cause of racial equality?

As frightening as the question was (and is), those of us who had grown up with heroes found courage in their lives and works and answered, yes.

Michael Phelps has the potential to become a hero.

So do we all.

© 2009 by Julius Lester
julius.lester@gmail.com