The random bite of the media got a hard grip on Michael Jackson last week. The subject: some allegedly anti-Semitic lyrics on his new album, HIStory. The offending words, from the song “They Don’t Care About Us,” are:
There was glorious if predictable weirdness during Diane Sawyer’s live 40-minute talk with Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley two weeks ago: Jackson’s infantile behavior; Presley’s utter vapidity; a wedding video that basically confirms suspicions that the pair’s kiss on last year’s MTV video awards was their first; and the flat statement from Jackson that he intends to continue his dalliances with prepubescent boys. The biggest surprise was Sawyer’s unremittingly tough questioning. When she brought up “They Don’t Care About Us,” Jackson responded earnestly with what struck me as the chat’s only moment of unconflicted sincerity: “It’s not anti-Semitic because I’m not a racist person. I could never be a racist. I love all races of people. . . . When I say [those words], I’m talking about myself as the victim.”
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But let’s take the charge at face value: is this appropriation defensible? On one level, yes: Jackson, who grew up black in America, has a right to sing about victimization; also, as the subject of extremely well-publicized child molestation charges, he has a right to sing about that experience as well. That said, consumers and critics are allowed to greet these conceits with the ridicule they deserve. This, to me, is where the heart of the matter lies. “They Don’t Care About Us” is patently not anti-Semitic, but it is a grasping, inappropriate, almost megalomaniacal song of poor-little-rich-boy complaints and rock star self-aggrandizement. Like much of his recent recorded work, his public actions, and the Diane Sawyer interview, it reveals an aging boy child as divorced from reality as can be imagined. Denaturing the lyrics, as Jackson agreed to do last week, will be a productive move only if he realizes what it was that actually hit him. Bad art is a crime that usually goes unpunished: here it hasn’t.
