Am still shocked about Michael Jackson’s passing. Went to bed after seeing Kirsty Wark interrupted in the middle of a Newsnight story on expenses (BBC executives this time) to receive news in her ear-piece that he’d been rushed to hospital. Awoke to hear he’d snuffed it. People have compared it to Elvis dying or John Lennon’s death. I wasn’t socially aware throughout either of those. I was at university though when Freddie Mercury died and remember being a bit shocked. I thought rock legends like that would go on forever. Of course there have been changes in our news media that characterise each of these events.
One thing we have seen in the past week or so is the juvenilisation of politics or acceptability of popular music as a legitimate art form whichever way you look at it. A Number 10 spokesman and David Cameron were both swift to express sadness for Jackson fans in Britain and the world. Another sign of the times that did not exist in the days of Elvis/Lennon/Freddie was the spectre of a bogus David Milliband who twittered that never before had somebody soared so high then dived so low. The phoney foreign secretary apparently has 1,800 followers. The FCO had to issue a statement that Milliband only blogs and does not twitter. The Jackson death also showed old off-line media following on-line new media. The news spewed out first on the TMZ blog and was taken up by the news agencies afterwards.
It has also been called a Diana moment. As far as I can remember William Hague’s weirdly detached response and then accusation of Blair milking the Princess of Wales’ death was seen as his downfall along with a trip in a baseball cap to Alton Towers, visit to the Notting Hill Carnival and stay in a hotel with Ffragrant Ffion before they’d tied the knot; that last one a faux pas with the Tory faithful. I was in France when that death occurred. Libération carried a two word headline: ‘Lady Dies’. Many memorable moments in history and triviality have been captured by memorable headlines. Freddie Star Ate My Hamster springs to mind.
Yet newspaper circulations are plummeting which explains all the rubbishy free DVDs they seem to contain these days. In the place of the print media as principal source of news are the 24 hour news channels hungry for any details they can gather witness camera crews camped out on the doorsteps of those implicated by the expenses scandals awaiting the twitch of the net curtains. The Jackson death has seen normal news suspended. During the first few days Sky News and News 24 seem to consist of wall to wall tributes from any old Tom, Dick and Harriet. Much was drowned out by the noise: the first armed forces day, the BBC expenses. Surely a good day for burying bad news. The late Robin Cook in the recently serialised Hugo Young papers complained that when he started out there were only three tv channels but now there were five. What would he have made of today’s state of play? Tony Blair had a point with his parting shot at the “ferral media”.
Perhaps our current leaders and pop are not such a weird combination as might appear. David Cameron is on record as being a Smiths fan. The photo-op loving spiv was only prevented from having his picture taken outside Salford lads club by members of Hazel Blears’ CLP. As for our side, I was actually at a dinner in 2006 where among those doing quick turns for the seated was Gordon Brown and Dionne Warwick. The latter endorsed the former. The now PM returned the compliment by declaring ‘Dionne, you sang walk on by. We will never walk on by from the British people’. It¹s a line he’s used since and a good one to remember while the Tory spivs Cameron and Osborne continue their appalling excuse for an economic policy advocating a scrapping of inheritance tax for the very richest in society in the middle of a recession.