মাইকেল জ্যাকসন (১৯৫৮ – ২০০৯)


মানুষের প্রস্থান, কিংবদন্তীর শুরু . . .

৭ comments

  1. মাসুদ করিম - ২৭ জুন ২০০৯ (৫:০৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    সুদর্শন পট্টনায়েক-এর শ্রদ্ধাঞ্জলি, পুরী সৈকতে বালুভাস্কর্য: ians.in
    এ আর রহমানের শ্রদ্ধাঞ্জলীআদিত্য সিনহার শ্রদ্ধাঞ্জলি

  2. নওরীন তামান্না - ১ জুলাই ২০০৯ (১২:১৯ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    মৃত্যুর কিছু দিন আগে গীতাঞ্জলি পড়ছিলেন মাইকেল, দীপক চোপড়ার ভাষ্য অনুযায়ী। রেডিফ্-এ প্রকাশিত সাক্ষাৎকারটি ঈষৎ সম্পাদনা করে তুলে দেয়া হল।

    MJ: “I WANT TO GO OUT LIKE ELVIS”
    Arthur J Pais

    ‘If the media calls me weird, what word would the media have for so many things going on around us,’ Michael Jackson once asked his friend Deepak Chopra. ‘People think my behavior is weird. Isn’t the world more weird?’

    Chopra had introduced the poetry of sufi poet Rumi and Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore to Michael Jackson, not to forget meditation. . . Chopra says he cannot forget the anguish in his friend’s voice as Jackson discussed the word ‘weird.’ “He talked about what was happening in Sudan,” Chopra continued. “He talked about global warming. He felt the cruelty in Sudan, the degradation of the environment, and he was convinced that those things were far more weird than his own alleged weirdness.

    “He was a very delicate person, a very innocent soul,” added Chopra. “I have never seen him get angry and say a bad thing about anyone.” But Chopra also watched, with certain amount of helplessness, the self-destructive side of the singer. His son Gotham Chopra had traveled at the age of 13 with Jackson as a roadie on his Dangerous tour.

    ‘Will it matter that Michael behaved with discipline and impeccable manners around my son?’ Chopra mused in a blog. ‘It sends a shiver to recall something he told Gotham: ‘I don’t want to go out like Marlon Brando. I want to go out like Elvis.”

    Chopra’s admiration for Jackson included the performer as well. “As a performer and singer, Michael was unsurpassed,” said Chopra. “He took millions of people, including my children and me, into an ecstatic state. He had many great qualities as an individual and I have always felt he was greatly misunderstood, and many people were not fully aware of a Jackson who really cared for his fellow beings.”

    Since Jackson’s death, Chopra has been besieged by the media. In an exclusive interview with Rediff, he talked at length on how some people, who lead complicated lives, resist holistic advice.

    Chopra also spent quite a bit of time looking at the positive side of Jackson. “He was very concerned about nature and ecology and thought deeply about man’s relationship with nature,” Chopra said, adding that he had given Jackson a copy of Tagore’s Gitanjali.

    Chopra remembers how, many years ago, after an exhausting performance in Bucharest, Jackson sat backstage with Chopra chatting about Sufi poetry. Tagore soon joined the list of writers Jackson admired. “He was reading a poem by Tagore when we talked the last time, just about two weeks ago,” Chopra said.

    Recently when Jackson and Chopra chatted at the former’s request to discuss the lyrics for a new composition, the singer and performer talked about creating a spiritual relationship with the nature. “It was like, we ought to look at the world as the extension of ourselves,” Chopra mused. And yet Chopra confesses, he had watched with sadness, Jackson’s inability to overcome his deep psychological problems, and even as he remembers Jackson for his humanity and exuberance, he adds that he had felt the tragedy lurking behind the singer for a long time. “And that is why I wrote in my blog my heartfelt feelings,” Chopra added. He wrote: ‘Michael Jackson will be remembered, most likely, as a shattered icon, a pop genius who wound up a mutant of fame. That’s not who I will remember, however. His mixture of mystery, isolation, indulgence, overwhelming global fame, and personal loneliness was intimately known to me. For 20 years I observed every aspect, and as easy as it was to love Michael — and to want to protect him — his sudden death yesterday seemed almost fated.’

    He sees in Jackson’s troubles life lessons for celebrities. Jackson, he says, became a victim to the image the media crafted, and fell prey to doctors who were merciless in the pursuit of their high living. ‘He was surroundered by enablers,’ Chopra writes on his Website, ‘including a shameful plethora of MDs.’ “Addiction is the number one disease of the civilization,” he mused, as he discussed Jackson’s dependence on painkillers. “You can’t blame the addict but instead, we ought to look into the complex situations that create addicts. Addictions have cost the lives of many people in the entertainment industry. Jimi Hendrix and Heath Ledger [ Images ] among them. Addiction cost Michael dearly. And the ravages of addictions just won’t stop unless we seriously address the root causes, and make sure the medical establishment won’t make the situation worse by its prescription drugs. “With hindsight, one could say this could have been done or he could have behaved differently or sought different advisers. But the situation (with Jackson) was incredibly complicated,” he added.

    Recent studies have shown in the case of adults who were physically or sexually abused as children, a number of intense psychological problems lead to trauma and illnesses, he added. In some cases, the pain is in the mind but the victim feels as if he is undergoing intense physical pain. Often, people like Jackson, who had a traumatic childhood, undergo a lot of self-loathing and shame, he added. ‘They think of all the bad things that happened to them in their childhood and in adult life, and they ask themselves, what did we do to deserve this?’ Even success cannot help them overcome the self-loathing and shame, unless they go for holistic healing. But it has to be done consistently. . .

    ‘He declared often, as former child stars do, that he was robbed of his childhood,’ Chopra wrote in his blog. ‘Considering the monstrously exaggerated value our society places on celebrity, which was showered on Michael without stint, the public was callous to his very real personal pain. It became another tawdry piece of the tabloid Jacko, pictured as a weird changeling and as something far more sinister.’

    Was Jackson’s compulsion with cosmetic surgery a form of self-mutilation, Chopra wondered. “And then the media calls this compulsion bizarre,” he added. “The behavior (of the person under media scrutiny) then becomes even more bizarre It is a very tragic situation.” ‘Unbounded privilege became another toxic force in his undoing. What began as idiosyncrasy, shyness, and vulnerability was ravaged by obsessions over health, paranoia over security, and an isolation that grew more and more unhealthy,’ Chopra wrote in his blog. ‘When Michael passed me the music for that last song, the one sitting by my bedside waiting for the right words, the procedure for getting the CD to me rivaled a CIA covert operation in its secrecy.’

    The most tragic thing that ever happened to Jackson was getting trapped in a web of prescription drugs, Chopra said. Chopra, trained in Western medicine, has for many years criticized the medical establishment for doling out prescription drugs. He was reminded of an interview with India Abroad over 20 years ago where he had declared that the drug problem in America was not created by Colombians or Mexicans but doctors who liberally doled out prescription drugs. “That continues today, and even very young children are given loads of prescription drugs,” he said. “This is very shameful. Michael became a victim to this phenomenon.

    “Some doctors are clearly narcissistic,” he said. “Some of them develop codependency with the patients.” He called them ‘designer doctors’ who ‘just won’t let their patients go.’ And the patients in turn start believing that not getting the prescribed drug ‘would be suicidal,’ Chopra added “In fact, the drugs make your condition worse and this was also the case with Michael.”

    Jackson’s dependency with prescription drugs could have started over a decade ago when he had been sued for sexual molestation of a young boy. Though he would be exonerated in the court, he suffered quite a bit of trauma, and began believing he was physically suffering too. He even asked Chopra for prescription drugs in 2005 and the holistic guru flatly refused. When Chopra pressed him over the dependency, Jackson became quite agitated, and then very defensive. “I brought up the subject of drug use as recently as six months ago,” he said.

    Does he feel bad that he could not do more to help Jackson? “With hindsight, one can feel and say so many things,” he said with a sigh. “In a way, this was coming, and it’s frustrating that we couldn’t do anything about it. But it is the person, who is suffering who should take the initiative and the people around him, the doctors who let him have the prescription drugs should have acted honorably.” He said in another interview: ‘The problem has been going on for a long time but we didn’t know what to do. There were attempts at intervention, and it didn’t succeed.’

    He also said Grace Rwamba, the nanny of Jackson’s children repeatedly contacted him with concerns about Jackson’s drug use but Jackson avoided his calls whenever the subject came up. As many times as Jackson would candidly confess that he had a problem, the conversation always ended with a deflection and denial, Chopra said. As Chopra was writing his blog, the reports of Jackson’s drug abuse were spreading across news channels. ‘The instant I heard of his death this afternoon,’ he wrote, ‘I had a sinking feeling that prescription drugs would play a key part.’

    Chopra and his family are trying to remember the humanity and music of Jackson but they are not glossing over his troubles and the price celebrities often pay. Chopra’s thoughts are also very much with people who were close to Jackson and who are also known to Chopra.
    ‘His children’s nanny and surrogate mother, Grace Rwamba, is like another daughter to me,’ he remembers in his blog. ‘I introduced her to Michael when she was 18, a beautiful, heartwarming girl from Rwanda who is now grown up. She kept an eye on him for me and would call me whenever he was down or running too close to the edge. How heartbreaking for Grace that no one’s protective instincts and genuine love could avert this tragic day.’

    What were the closest moments Chopra has had with the late Jackson? Jackson wanted to produce a book to sell primarily as a concert souvenir, Chopra said, going back to the 1990s. “It would contain pictures for his fans but there would also be a text consisting of short fables,” he recalled. “I sat with him for hours while he dreamily wove Aesop-like tales about animals, mixed with words about music and his love of all things musical. This project became Dancing the Dream after I pulled the text together for him, acting strictly as a friend. It was this time together that convinced me of the modus vivendi Michael had devised for himself: to counter the tidal wave of stress that accompanies mega-stardom, he built a private retreat in a fantasy world where pink clouds veiled inner anguish and Peter Pan was a hero, not a pathology.”

    Chopra introduced Jackson to his editor at Doubleday which published the book in 1992 with an impressive pressrun of 150,000 copies. The book was a success but Jackson felt it could have become a bigger success. “There is renewed interest in the book now that he is gone,” Chopra said. “The book could soon be reissued. There was a feeling that people did not really understand at the time what Michael was trying to show through the poems and reflections. It requires a higher consciousness to appreciate the thoughts in the book This time around people may look deeply into the book — and into themselves.”

  3. রিসাত - ৩ জুলাই ২০০৯ (১১:৫৬ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    নাইস পোস্ট

  4. নওরীন তামান্না - ১০ জুলাই ২০০৯ (১:১০ অপরাহ্ণ)

    পল থেরো‍’র স্মৃতিচারণ, এখানে:
    ======
    My trip to Neverland, and the call from Michael Jackson I’ll never forget
    by Paul Theroux

    [After the eminent American writer was given a rare tour of Michael Jackson’s fabled ranch, the singer telephoned him in the early hours for a chat. Here, Paul Theroux recalls an unguarded conversation that touched on fame, childhood and Biblical betrayal.]

    I heard the news today, oh boy, that Michael Jackson had a heart attack – and died of cardiac arrest, at the age of 50, in Los Angeles. I am reminded of a long conversation I had with him at four o’clock one morning, and of my visit to Neverland. The visit came first, the conversation a few weeks later, on the phone.

    Neverland, a toytown wilderness of carnival rides and doll houses and zoo animals and pleasure gardens, lay inside a magnificent gateway on a side road in a rural area beyond Santa Barbara. Nosing around, I saw pinned to the wall of the sentry post an array of strange faces, some of them mugshots, all of them undesirables, with names and captions such as “Believes she is married to Mr Jackson” and “Might be armed” and “Has been loitering near gate”.

    A road lined with life-sized bronzed statuary – skipping boys, gamboling animals – led past an artificial lake and a narrow-gauge railway to Michael’s house. Neverland occupied an entire 3,000-acre valley, yet very little of it was devoted to human habitation – just the main house with its dark shingles and mullioned windows, and a three-bedroom guesthouse. The rest was given over to a railway terminus, Katharine Station, named after Jackson’s mother, a formidable security headquarters, various funhouses, a cinema (with windowed bedrooms instead of balcony seats), and almost indefinable sites, one with teepees like an Indian camp.

    And sprawling over many acres, the Jackson zoo of bad-tempered animals. The giraffes were understandably skittish. In another enclosure, rocking on its thick legs, was Gypsy, a moody five-ton elephant, which Elizabeth Taylor had given as a present to Michael. The elephant seemed to be afflicted with the rage of heightened musth. “Don’t go anywhere near him,” the keeper warned me.

    In the reptile house, with its frisbee-shaped frogs and fat pythons, both a cobra and a rattlesnake had smashed their fangs against the glass of their cage trying to bite me. The llamas spat at me, as llamas do, but even in the ape sanctuary, “AJ”, a big bristly, shovel-mouthed chimp, had spat in my face, and Patrick the orang-utan had tried to twist my hand. “And don’t go anywhere near him, either.”

    In the wider part of the valley, the empty fairground rides were active – twinkling, musical – but empty: Sea Dragon, the Neverland Dodgem cars, the Neverland carrousel playing Michael’s own song, Childhood (“Has anyone seen my childhood?…”). Even the lawns and flower beds were playing music; loudspeakers disguised as big, grey rocks buzzed with showtunes, filling the valley with unstoppable Muzak that drowned the chirping of wild birds. In the middle of it, a Jumbotron, its screen the size of a drive-in movie, showed a cartoon, two crazy-faced creatures quacking miserably at each other – all of this very bright in the cloudless California dusk, not a soul watching.

    Later that day, I boarded a helicopter with Elizabeth Taylor – I was at Neverland interviewing her – and flew over the valley. It says something for Miss Taylor’s much-criticised voice that I could hear her clearly over the helicopter noise. Girlish, imploring, piercing, the loud yack-yack-yack of the titanium rotor blades, she clutched her dog, a Maltese named Sugar, and screamed: “Paul, tell the pilot to go around in a circle, so we can see the whole ranch!”

    Even without my relaying the message – even with his ears muffled by headphones – her voice knifed through to the pilot. He lifted us high enough into the peach-coloured sunset so that Neverland seemed even more toy-like.

    “That’s the gazebo, where Larry [Fortensky, her seventh husband] and I tied the knot,” Elizabeth said, moving her head in an ironising wobble. Sugar blinked through prettily-combed white bangs which somewhat resembled Elizabeth’s own white hair. “Isn’t the railway station darling? Over there is where Michael and I have picnics,” and she indicated a clump of woods on a cliff. “Can we go around one more time?”

    Neverland Valley revolved slowly beneath us, the shadows lengthening from the pinky-gold glow slipping from the sky.

    Even though no rain had fallen for months, the acres of lawns watered by underground sprinklers were deep green. Here and there, like toy soldiers, uniformed security people patrolled on foot, or on golf carts; some stood sentry duty – for Neverland was also a fortress.

    “What’s that railway station for?” I asked.

    “The sick children.”

    “And all those rides?”

    “The sick children.”

    “Look at all those tents…” Hidden in the woods, it was my first glimpse at the collection of tall teepees.

    “The Indian village. The sick children love that place.”

    From this height, I could see that this valley of laboriously recaptured childhood pleasure was crammed with more statuary than I’d seen from ground level. Lining the gravel roads and the golf-cart paths were little winsome bronzes of flute players, rows of grateful, grinning kiddies, clusters of hand-holding tots, some with banjos, some with fishing rods; and large bronze statues, too, like the centrepiece of the circular drive in front of Michael’s house, a statue of Mercury (god of merchandise and merchants), rising 30 feet, with winged helmet and caduceus, and all balanced on one tippy-toe, the last of the syrupy sunset lingering on his big bronze buttocks, making his bum look like a buttered muffin.

    The house at Neverland was filled with images, many of them depicting Michael life-sized, elaborately costumed, in heroic poses with cape, sword, ruffed collar, crown. The rest were an example of a sort of obsessive iconography: images of Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross, Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin – and for that matter of Mickey Mouse and Peter Pan, all of whom, over the years, in what is less a life than a metamorphosis, he had come physically to resemble.

    “So you’re Wendy and Michael is Peter?” I had asked Elizabeth Taylor afterwards.

    “Yeah. Yeah. There’s a kind of magic between us.”

    The friendship started when, out of the blue, Michael offered her tickets for one of his Thriller Tour concerts – indeed, she asked for 14 tickets. But the seats were in a glass-enclosed VIP box, so far from the stage “you might as well have been watching it on TV”. Instead of staying, she led her large party home.

    Hearing that she’d left the concert early, Michael called the next day in tears apologising for the bad seats. He stayed on the line, they talked for two hours. And then they talked every day. Weeks passed, the calls continued. Months went by. “Really, we got to know each other on the telephone, over three months.”

    One day Michael suggested that he might drop by. Elizabeth said fine. He said: “May I bring my chimpanzee?” Elizabeth said, “Sure. I love animals.” Michael showed up holding hands with the chimp, Bubbles.

    “We have been steadfast ever since,” Elizabeth said.

    “Do you see much of Michael?”

    “More of him than people realise – more than I realise,” she said. They went in disguise to movies in Los Angeles cinemas, sitting in the back, holding hands. Before I could frame a more particular question, she said: “I love him. There’s a vulnerability inside him which makes him the more dear. We have such fun together. Just playing.”

    Or role-playing – her Wendy to his Peter. In the hallway of her house, a large Michael Jackson portrait was inscribed “To my True Love Elizabeth. I’ll love you Forever, Michael”.

    She gave him a live elephant. Dr Arnie Klein, his dermatologist, showed me a birthday snapshot taken in Las Vegas, Michael looking distinctly chalky as he presented Elizabeth with a birthday present, an elephant-shaped bauble, football-sized, covered in jewels.

    What began as a friendship with Michael Jackson developed into a kind of cause in which Elizabeth Taylor became almost his only defender.

    “What about his” – and I fished for a word – “eccentricity? Does that bother you?”

    “He is magic. And I think all truly magical people have to have that genuine eccentricity.” There is not an atom in her consciousness that allows her the slightest negativity on the subject of Jacko. “He is one of the most loving, sweet, true people I have ever loved. He is part of my heart. And we would do anything for each other.”

    This Wendy with a vengeance, who was a wealthy and world-famous pre-adolescent, supporting her parents from the age of nine, said she easily related to Michael, who was also a child star, and denied a childhood, as well as viciously abused by his father. There was a “Katherine” steam engine, and a “Katherine Street” at Neverland; there was no “Joseph Street”, nor anything bearing his father’s name.

    ‘He’ll talk to you if I ask him to,” Elizabeth had told me. And at a prearranged signal, Michael called me, at four one morning. There was no secretarial intervention of “Mr Jackson on the line”. The week’s supermarket tabloids’ headlines were “Jacko on suicide watch” and “Jacko in loony bin”, and one with a South Africa dateline, “Wacko Jacko King of Pop Parasails with 13-year-old”. In fact, he was in New York City, where he was recording a new album. This was 10 years ago.

    My phone rang and I heard: “This is Michael Jackson.” The voice was breathy, unbroken, boyish – tentative, yet tremulously eager and helpful, not the voice of a 40-year-old. In contrast to this lilting sound, its substance was denser, like a blind child giving you explicit directions in darkness.

    “How would you describe Elizabeth?” I asked.

    “She’s a warm cuddly blanket that I love to snuggle up to and cover myself with. I can confide in her and trust her. In my business, you can’t trust anyone.”

    “Why is that?”

    “Because you don’t know who’s your friend. Because you’re so popular, and there’s so many people around you. You’re isolated, too. Becoming successful means that you become a prisoner. You can’t go out and do normal things. People are always looking at what you’re doing.”

    “Have you had that experience?”

    “Oh, lots of times. They try to see what you’re reading, and all the things you’re buying. They want to know everything. There are always paparazzi downstairs. They invade my privacy. They twist reality. They’re my nightmare. Elizabeth is someone who loves me – really loves me.”

    “I suggested to her that she was Wendy and you’re Peter.”

    “But Elizabeth is also like a mother – and more than that. She’s a friend. She’s Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, the Queen of England and Wendy. We have great picnics. It’s so wonderful to be with her. I can really relax with her, because we’ve lived the same life and experienced the same thing.”

    “Which is?”

    “The great tragedy of childhood stars. We like the same things. Circuses. Amusement parks. Animals.”

    And there was their shared fame and isolation.

    “It makes people do strange things. A lot of our famous luminaries become intoxicated because of it – they can’t handle it. And your adrenaline is at the zenith of the universe after a concert – you can’t sleep. It’s maybe two in the morning and you’re wide awake. After coming off stage, you’re floating.”

    “How do you handle that?”

    “I watch cartoons. I love cartoons. I play video games. Sometimes I read.”

    “You mean you read books?”

    “Yeah. I love to read short stories and everything.”

    “Any in particular?”

    “Somerset Maugham,” he said quickly, and then, pausing at each name: “Whitman. Hemingway. Twain.”

    “What about those video games?”

    “I love X-Man. Pinball. Jurassic Park. The martial arts ones – Mortal Kombat.”

    “I played some of the video games at Neverland,” I said. “There was an amazing one called Beast Buster.”

    “Oh, yeah, that’s great. I pick each game. That one’s maybe too violent, though. I usually take some with me on tour.”

    “How do you manage that? The video game machines are pretty big, aren’t they?”

    “Oh, we travel with two cargo planes.”

    “Have you written any songs with Elizabeth in mind?”

    “Childhood.”

    “Is that the one with the line, ‘Has anyone seen my childhood?'”

    “Yes. It goes…”, and he liltingly recited “Before you judge me, try to…”, and then sang the rest.

    “Didn’t I hear that playing on your merry-go-round at Neverland?”

    Delightedly, he said, “Yes! Yes!”

    He went on about childhood, how, like Elizabeth, as a child star he used to support his family.

    “I was a child supporting my family. My father took the money. Some of the money was put aside for me, but a lot of the money was put back into the entire family. I was just working the whole time.”

    “So you didn’t have a childhood, then – you lost it. If you had it to do again how would you change things?”

    “Even though I missed out on a lot, I wouldn’t change anything.”

    “I can hear your little kids in the background.” The gurgling had become insistent, like a plug-hole in a flood. “If they wanted to be performers and lead the life you led, what would you say?”

    “They can do whatever they want to do. If they want to do that, it’s okay.”

    “How will you raise them differently from the way you were raised?”

    “With more fun. More love. Not so isolated.”

    “Elizabeth says she finds it painful to look back on her life. Do you find it hard to do that?”

    “No, not when it’s pertaining to an overview of your life rather than any particular moment.”

    This oblique and somewhat bookish form of expression was a surprise to me – another Michael Jackson surprise. He had made me pause with “intoxicated” and “zenith of the universe”, too. I said: “I’m not too sure what you mean by ‘overview’.”

    “Like childhood. I can look at that. The arc of my childhood.”

    “But there’s some moment in childhood when you feel particularly vulnerable. Did you feel that? Elizabeth said that she felt she was owned by the studio.”

    “Sometimes really late at night we’d have to go out – it might be three in the morning – to do a show. My father forced us. He would get us up. I was seven or eight. Some of these were clubs or private parties at people’s houses. We’d have to perform.” This was in Chicago, New York, Indiana, Philadelphia, he added – all over the country. “I’d be sleeping and I’d hear my father. ‘Get up! There’s a show!’ ”

    “But when you were on stage, didn’t you get a kind of thrill?”

    “Yes. I loved being on stage. I loved doing the shows.”

    “What about the other side of the business – if someone came up after the show, did you feel awkward?”

    “I didn’t like it. I’ve never liked people-contact. Even to this day, after a show, I hate it, meeting people. It makes me shy. I don’t know what to say.”

    “But you did that Oprah interview, right?

    “With Oprah it was tough. Because it was on TV – on TV, it’s out of my realm. I know that everyone is looking and judging. It’s so hard.”

    “Is this a recent feeling – that you’re under scrutiny?”

    “No,” he said firmly, “I have always felt that way.”

    “Even when you were seven or eight?”

    “I’m not happy doing it.”

    “Which I suppose is why talking to Elizabeth over a period of two or three months on the phone would be the perfect way to get acquainted. Or doing what we’re doing right now.”

    “Yes.”

    At some point Michael’s use of the phrase “lost childhood” prompted me to quote the line from George William Russell, “In the lost boyhood of Judas / Christ was betrayed”, and I heard “Wow” at the other end of the line. He asked me to explain what that meant, and when I did, he urged me to elaborate. What sort of a childhood did Judas have? What had happened to him? Where had he lived? Who had he known?

    I told him that Judas had red hair, that he was the treasurer of the Apostles, that he might have been Sicarii – a member of a radical Jewish group, that he might not have died by hanging himself but somehow exploded, all his guts flying.

    Twenty more minutes of Biblical apocrypha with Michael Jackson, on the lost childhood of Judas, and then the whisper again. “Wow.”

  5. রেজাউল করিম সুমন - ৩০ নভেম্বর ২০১১ (১২:১৬ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    মাইকেল জ্যাকসনের মৃত্যুর জন্য দায়ী চিকিৎসককে সর্বোচ্চ শাস্তি চার বছরের কারাদণ্ড দেয়া হয়েছে।

    Michael Jackson’s doctor sentenced to 4 years

    By ANTHONY McCARTNEY

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — The doctor who was convicted in the overdose death of Michael Jackson was sentenced to the maximum four years in prison Tuesday in a finale to the tormented saga of the King of Pop.

    Dr. Conrad Murray sat stoically with his hands crossed as Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor repeatedly chastised him for what he called a “horrific violation of trust” while caring for Jackson.

    “Dr. Murray created a set of circumstances and became involved in a cycle of horrible medicine,” the judge said. “The practice of propofol for medicine madness, which violated his sworn obligation, for money, fame prestige and whwatever else may have occurred.”

    Pastor said one of the most disturbing aspects of Murray’s case was a slurred recording of Jackson recovered from the doctor’s cell phone.

    “That tape recording was Dr. Murray’s insurance policy,” Pastor said. “It was designed to record his patient surreptitiously at that patient’s most vulnerable point.”

    Michael Jackson’s family told Pastor they were not seeking revenge but want the doctor who killed the superstar to receive a stiff sentence that serves as a warning to opportunistic doctors.

    “The Bible reminds us that men cannot do justice, they can only seek justice,” the family said in a statement read by attorney Brian Panish. “That is all we can ask as a family, and that is all we ask for here.”

    The statement went on to say, “We are not here to seek revenge. There is nothing you can do today that will bring Michael back.”

    Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after a six-week trial that presented the most detailed account yet of Jackson’s final hours but left many questions about Murray’s treatment of the superstar with an operating-room anesthetic as he battled chronic insomnia.

    Lead defense attorney Ed Chernoff highlighted the accomplishments of Murray.

    “I do wonder though to what extent the court considers the entirety of a man’s book of life, as opposed to one chapter,” he told the judge.

    The doctor decided not to directly address the court.

    Chernoff again attacked Michael Jackson, as he and his team frequently did during the doctor’s trial.

    “Michael Jackson was a drug seeker,” Chernoff said.

    Jackson’s death in June 2009 stunned the world, as did the ensuing investigation that led to Murray being charged in February 2010.

    Murray told detectives he had been giving the singer nightly doses of propofol to help him sleep as he prepared for a series of comeback concerts. Propofol is supposed to be used in hospital settings and has never been approved for sleep treatments, yet Murray acknowledged giving it to Jackson then leaving the room on the day the singer died.

    Murray declined to testify during his trial but did opt to participate in a documentary in which he said he didn’t consider himself guilty of any crime and blamed Jackson for entrapping him into administering the propofol doses. His attorneys contended throughout the case that Jackson must have given himself the fatal dose when Murray left the singer’s bedside.

    In their sentencing memorandum, prosecutors cited Murray’s statements to advocate that he receive the maximum term. They also want him to pay restitution to the singer’s three children — Prince, Paris and Blanket.

    It’s unlikely that Murray can pay any sizable sum, including the $1.8 million cost of his funeral. He was deeply in debt when he agreed to serve as Jackson’s personal physician for $150,000 a month, and the singer died before Murray received any money.

    Prosecutors said the relationship of Jackson and Murray was corrupted by greed. Murray left his practices to serve as Jackson’s doctor and look out for his well-being, but instead acted as an employee catering to the singer’s desire to receive propofol to put him to sleep, prosecutors said.

    “The defendant has displayed a complete lack of remorse for causing Michael Jackson’s death,” prosecutors wrote in a filing last week. “Even worse than failing to accept even the slightest level of responsibility, (Murray) has placed blame on everyone else, including the one person no longer here to defend himself, Michael Jackson.”

    Murray’s attorneys are relying largely on 34 letters from relatives, friends and former patients to portray Murray in a softer light and win a lighter sentence. The letters and defense filings describe Murray’s compassion as a doctor, including accepting lower payments from his mostly poor patients.

    “There is no question that the death of his patient, Mr. Jackson, was unintentional and an enormous tragedy for everyone affected,” defense attorneys wrote in their sentencing memo. “Dr. Murray has been described as a changed, grief-stricken man, who walks around under a pall of sadness since the loss of his patient, Mr. Jackson.”

    ___

    Follow Anthony McCartney at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

  6. মাসুদ করিম - ২২ জুলাই ২০১২ (৩:১৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

    মাইকেল জ্যাকসন ও জ্যানেট জ্যাকসনের মা ক্যাথরিন জ্যাকসন নিখোঁজ।

    Katherine Jackson, the mother of the pop superstars Michael and Janet Jackson, was reported missing to authorities on Saturday night, according to reports.

    According to CNN, Jackson’s lawyer believed she had been traveling with Rebbie Jackson, her daughter. “I’m concerned that she’s not safe,” Sandra Ribera, the lawyer, said. Jackson is 82.

    Michael’s three children have lived with Katherine since their father’s death in 2009, Ribera said. Ribera added that Katherine had not contacted the grandchildren in a week.

    Early Sunday morning, Paris Jackson, Michael’s 14-year-old daughter, said the same on Twitter, and asked for the public’s help in finding her grandmother.

    Paris Jacksoη

    @ParisJackson

    yes , my grandmother is missing . i haven’t spoken with her in a week i want her home now .

    Paris Jacksoη

    @ParisJackson

    if anybody sees my grandmother , please call the authorities or this number— (818)-876-0186 it’s the security number .. thank you so much

    খবরের লিন্ক : Katherine Jackson, Mother Of Michael and Janet Jackson, Reported Missing

  7. মাসুদ করিম - ২০ সেপ্টেম্বর ২০১৪ (১১:০৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Listen to the Long-Lost Freddie Mercury & Michael Jackson Duet

    Some 33 years ago, Queen started work on a track called “There Must Be More to Life Than This,” which featured vocals by Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson. Written during the Hot Space sessions (circa 1981), the song was eventually abandoned and put on a shelf until Freddie Mercury released his own version on a 1985 solo album. Now, with the upcoming release of a Queen compilation called Queen Forever, you can hear the original. No longer do you have to wonder what a Mercury-Jackson duet might sound like. In fact, you only have to click play above and the suspense will be over.

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