The week-in-the-news roundtable always involves tough choices on sound clips -- what to include, what to leave out. Amid all the pressing hard news, we often give a nod to a notable person who’s passed away. But this week brought, well, a ridiculous range of choices. So we gave a nod to them all in the roundtable today. And we devoted our whole second hour to the most famous. Here are some extras courtesy the miracle of YouTube…
First, there was the inimitable (though much imitated) Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson’s longtime sidekick who could do amazing things with the word “here.” He died on Tuesday. NBC News has a tribute:
Then came the news about Farrah Fawcett, who died yesterday after a long and heroic battle with cancer (we got the alert in the middle of our editorial meeting). I’m told by our intern Abbie Ruzicka that “Farrah Fawcett hair” is literally a term of art in the hair world:
And then, of course, there was Michael Jackson, who died late in the day on Thursday. The first album I ever bought was “Thriller.” On Facebook and Twitter last night, about a million other Gen Xers said the same thing. Here’s a classic moment in an interview with producer Quincy Jones, not long after they’d finished “Thriller.” Check out the live snake Michael has in his hands:
And here’s his 1988 Grammy performance of “Man in the Mirror,” the song we went out on in today’s hour:
Tags: film, media, news, television
I think what happened to Michael Jackson is what happened to certain banks: He got “too big to fail,” and as Americans we idolize that status. Once he got really “big,” about the time Reagan came along, we all thought we would rise along with the other boats. It was like breathing hydrogen, giving us little squeaky voices and making us want children to vindicate us, the children our mothers had wanted us to be, white and pixie-faced. Then we strove to look like those children, so they would claim us as their own. Oh, it was the end of an era that shattered like a dream, first the banks, then the auto industry, then the synthetic and instantly recognizable “face” of it all.
Posted by Ellen Dibble, on July 5th, 2009 at 7:51 pm EDTAnd I don’t have much civil to say, except I never caught any melody from Michael Jackson, nor do I see his “moves” as much different from those people do “anyway,” including the moon walk you do when you are dropping your plate of salad on the floor.
You were the greatest singer, dancer, and entertainer ever Michael. Thanks for all the great memories. We’ll miss you. God Bless. Rest in Peace.
Posted by Joe B., on July 6th, 2009 at 8:17 am EDT