On MSNBC the other day, the writer who goes by the name Touré was telling us we’ve just all been too mean to Michael Jackson:
[A]mong the people, you know, the music and the joy and the cultural importance of Michael has been liberated from the discussion of the eccentricities*, which is what the media, and a lot of regular people, too, have focused on in the last decade or so.
Now, hold that thought for a minute. Meanwhile, in the NYT, my friend David Carr was coming to the defense of Steve Jobs:
[L]ast week, Mr. Jobs returned to work on a part-time basis, precisely when he said he would. Experts with only a general knowledge of his treatment suggest his prognosis is good.
That did not stop the keening on the blogs, in the news media and in the investment community that he and Apple needed to do a medical full monty to explain his conditions because they believe they are material to the company’s future and should be reported as such.
To which I, and not many others, say: Is anyone really confused about Mr. Jobs’s health status? I remain unconvinced, in part because I believe that prurience, not legitimate financial concerns, drives most people’s interest in the illness of others.
Now, what unites these two comments is an overweening concern for the tender feelings of celebrities—or, in the much more egregious Touré-Jackson case, for the tender feeling of a dead celebrity.
Two things are going on here. For the first, their perspectives are uncannily similar to the position that would be taken not just by the famous people involved themselves, but their PR establishments.
In Toure’s case I think it’s pretty much a case of his being a popist, that sphere of pop culture writing that thinks that there’s just too darn much criticism about pop stars out there. The popist mantra is to take pop stars on their own terms. Carr is a much more serious person and is of course not carrying Apple’s water, though he is equally wrong.
He’s wrong because of the second issue, which is much more important. Neither Touré nor Carr said the obvious: That when you live by celebrity you die by it—metaphorically, of course I mean, though mortality at least brushes each of these cases.
Jackson lived and Jobs lives in almost unimaginable luxury, and more than that they both lived lives in which their every whim was fulfilled. They each can make the boast of the truly fortunate person, which is that he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do, and can basically do anything he wants to do.
And forgive me for sounding crass, but the category of doing what one wants to to, particularly when it comes to men, often involves sex, and it’s hard to believe that both, like most other celebrities, haven’t enjoyed the manifold benefits of that, too.
You didn’t hear either of them, or their respective amen corners, complain about the state of their lives before the downside of their wealth and fame arose.
In fact, both, to a great extent, have been hoisted on their own petard. Jobs, of course, is famously intransigent and unforgiving. He’s insulting, rude, impulsive, and, by all accounts, a heroic asshole, by which I mean he goes the extra mile and is mean to people even when doesn’t have to be.
Beyond that, he’s turned himself into a celebrity—a brittle and remote one, of course, but a consumer icon.
Well guess what? People get interested when you contract a mysterious disease.
Tough shit if he’s getting subjected to a little too much publicity about his health, particular when a) he and the company have been at best obfuscatory and at worst untruthful about his condition and b) he patently is a key corporate asset whose health, for better or worse, is tied to Apple’s financial fortunes. How is interest driven by these two forces “prurient”? I mean, it might be, as well, but the prurient aspect is far outweighed by the other two.
There’s a really easy way to work in the business world and have this not be a factor, and that is to own your own business and keep the company private. Jobs made that decision many years ago.
As for Jackson, jesus—his biggest claim to fame is his celebrity qua celebrity. He’s an amazing pop artist, of course, but he’s no Stevie Wonder, to name just one Motown fellow. He’s no Springsteen**, either, and he’s no Prince. A lot of black activists, like the buffoonish Al Sharpton, have been trying to prop up his rep as a breakthrough black artist; I take the point that “Billie Jean” was a watershed for MTV, but Wonder was hitting crazy commercial landmarks in the 1970s. (Songs of the Key of Life debuted at number one, for example, an almost unprecedented event at the time, and while I don’t care much about the Grammys, his dominance of the event in the middle part of the decade was nearly total.)
Anyway, the one thing people can say about Jackson was that, for a time, he had the biggest-selling album ever in the U.S.*** He played his celebrity for all it was worth. He was an early practitioner of the art of being more famous for being famous.
Again, guess what? People are going to be interested when kids say you molested them, in whether you’re gay if you’ve apparently never had a heterosexual relationship in your life, in why your skin color changed, or in why you’ve destroyed your face with plastic surgery.
He got all the attention for the things he wanted to have attention paid to—god knows we’ve heard enough about Jackson’s accomplishments. But it takes a special type of journalist to then turn around and complain when people also talk about the weird stuff.
Indeed, Toure was also on MSNBC excitedly telling viewers that Jackson was “bigger than Elvis in the history of music,” which is a silly thing to say, for reasons I‘ve explained earlier: Most particularly, the difference is that Jackson’s supreme skill was marshaling his already formidable commercial appeal and taking it to a new level—a temporary one, as we saw. Presley, as we all know, invented himself, his music, and then his audience one by one, in an absolutely epochal series of audacious moves.
If, as popists do, you equate simply popularity with importance, it’s easy to fall into such absurd logical traps. As more of the hoopla goes on, the more brittle Jackson’s legacy feels to me. If you gotta keep insisting someone’s important, he starts to seem more of a simulacrum. In this way I think Jackson will be a most impermanent star.
———–
* Touré, who I bet didn’t write about Jackson’s “eccentricities” when he was alive, also doesn’t think they should be talked about when he was dead. (”Is it appropriate now to go into those issues? … We’ve gone over them over and over”) His remark provoked this smackdown from Gloria Allred: “May I say we weren’t just talking about eccentricities for the last what, 15 years or so. What you call curiosity other people call accusations of child molestations.”
** Springsteen was a serious songwriter, of course; he melded the music of everyone from the Crystals to Van Morrison in a strikingly open-hearted way; he ran away from celebrity at crucial times; and he’s carried himself through an almost 40-year career with a great deal of dignity.
*** Until Their Greatest Hits by the Eagles supplanted it. Now, you’ll, note, everyone talks about how Thriller is the largest selling album worldwide. It probably is, but it’s a conveniently uncheckable factoid; in some twelve days of almost constant coverage, I’ve yet to hear someone say that Thriller is the second best-selling album in U.S. history.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The death of MJ: The commenters strike back
Timothy Howard:
Do you have a reasonable idea of why MJ was apparently so ill for so many years? What were his illnesses? I have heard so many different rumors over the years, but clearly he was frail, weak and often in a wheelchair. We know he was diagnosed with lupus, which contributed to his sun sensitivity, but was he just a hypochondriac who took a lot of drugs for imagined illnesses? Did his heart just give out from years of starving himself?
HV: I’m not a expert in this. The one I remember was vitiligo, which supposedly caused his pigmentation to vary; others say, No, he was bleaching his skin to be white; yet others say no, he was just trying to even out the effects of the vitiligo, which seems nutty. From afar it seems the real problem was some sort of self-hating syndrome that caused him to wish to alter his appearance so dramatically, and so tragically. Again, from the outside, it looked like what he really needed was psychological help, for that and whatever his sexual issues were, to the extent that they made him unhappy, that he wasn’t able to fulfill himself, or that they affected his ability to, ah, conduct himself in accordance with societal mores.
John Bormanis:
Such “suicides” in public seem an almost inevitable result of the drives to go over the top. An interesting question is, why don’t they happen more frequently (one can imagine the same happening to Brit. Spears any moment)? How did he hold out so long? Quite tragic how humans endure abuse for stardom…
HV: We’ve heard as well about the “stress” Jackson was under. I have a feeling that he probably caused more stress for people than he took in. Granted that a child molestation trial wasn’t a walk in the park, and could have been an enormous distraction; at the same time, he took delight into turning the thing into a circus, and along the way his feelings should have run not to stress but to the much more sensible, “How could I be so stupid as to have sleepovers with hundreds of young boys?”
Other than that, you have to ask, What did Michael Jackson do all day? He hadn’t recorded an album within memory and barely appeared in public.
Rvanpatten:
maybe if he would’ve used more recipes from my cookboook, he’d still be around.
dick van patten
HV: This commenter is making a rude reference to a comment I made about Mr. Van Patten in a post about Howard Kurtz and Mariel Hemingway.
Ingrid:
“[Presley’s] tragedy is so vast it calls into question the future of the society that created, and destroyed, him.”
That is a big, big statement. Could you say more about what you mean by “society” - the entertainment industry, the record-buying and movie-going public, the South, what? And destroyed? Didn’t Elvis destroy himself, with help from the doctors who prescribed drugs for him?
I’m not being snarky, I really want to know what leads you to this conclusion.
HV: Presley has become, in a lifetime, an archetype. It’s funny, I remember arguing many years ago with a friend who, irritatingly, kept insisting that “’Star Trek’ had created the first new mythology in 4000 years.” (Wrong on so many levels.) Presley, though: Did we have, before him, the model of the artist who died too young, not in the hot flame of his art, but by keeling over off a toilet to die, his last moments of life spent in the dim haze of a realization that he’d throw away everything? Isn’t that a modern archetype with a primal force to equal other ancient ones?
Anyway, beyond that, Presley also stands as a metaphor for America, given the breathtaking achievement of his wild surmise. If you buy into that, his debauching—by himself and others—and that fate are worrisome. Not just to America-bashers; Virgil, you’ll recall, served as a national poet without peer, but still found in Rome’s behavior disturbing indications—among other things, a dangerously out-of-control leadership and cathartic but needless violence.
You can appreciate both America’s failings and its achievements and worry about a society that, after creating such figures, watches blankly while such an artist collapses. On the other hand, the founding fathers didn’t define the happiness they allowed us to pursue, and some people, particularly people with the funds to underwrite the quest, are going to get it wrong.
Frank Youngwerth:
I think the Colonel, who continuously sucked money out of Elvis’ soul, and Quincy Jones, who apparently considered Michael a jazz artist, deserve consideration too.
HV: I disagree with you about Jones, but in both cases don’t you think the artist shares the blame? If the bioraphies are to be believed, Parker was taking 50 percent of Presley’s income in the latter half of his career, which is different from, for example, the Stones’ shafting at the hands of Allen Klein.
ruben martinez:
elvis presley and michel jackson were both superstars in their field of music. both were great singers, different styles, great charisma attraction. michael jackson was loved it seems by both black and white audiences, while i am not sure the black audience liked presley’s music. what i do know is when elvis died the entire white people of the world mourned plus other non white races like hispanics. i do not know if the same is true about jackson. the point i am trying to make is to me, a hispanic man in my 50s, i grew up with both; i love their music equally. no black or white prejudice and will miss them deeply. but in my opinion because elvis was white his legacy will continue to be supreme over anybody else white or black, and it will be up to the mainly the black race to keep [jackson’s] legacy from being forgotten. they were one of a kind, R M
Bill:
Excellent analysis; great counterpoint. A bit harsh, perhaps, but a bit of reality needs to intrude.
I agree about Elvis. Those of us who lived in the segregated US before the ’60’s will be able to relate to what you meant. Those who have never seen blatant discrimination, in thought and speech as well as in deed, probably will not get it.
TJ Mertz:
Three related thoughts.
First, my brother pointed out a difference he saw yesterday and that is that Elvis seemed to enjoy himself and his stardom (at least for over a decade) and that Michael didn’t.
Second, although you are correct about Michael Jackson building Berry Gordy’s crossover concepts and not pioneering in the sense of Elvis and cross over being primarily a commercial concept, I think the word “merely” isn’t quite right and that (at least in terms of my experience and inner life) Michael’s role is more significant than this captures.
For many those years of the early 1970s were years when the ideals of the Civil Rights movement were being tried out in day-to-day life. As a grade schooler at an consciously integrated school named after Martin Luther King, I was in the middle of this. The Jackson 5 (I wish I could type with the 5 in Jackson 5 ending in a heart like it did in the notebooks of the girls in my grade school) dominated the culture of my school and embodied this idea. In this, their youth and ours were key. We were the “Young Folks,” the children of the dream and the J5 were ours. It was (for the most part) a culture of post-struggles hope and optimism (”bring salvation back”) and joy. We were the children of integration and crossover and were able to lived as if these were natural and ascendant. This made us and J5 different from earlier Motown artists and from the earlier culture of the Civil Rights movement. In important ways cross over did become merely commercial in the larger society, but for people like me the experiences of that time still resonate. The J5 are near the center of those experiences. I’ll add that at the time when Thriller broke I was working with some white working class and relatively racially isolated teenagers at a restaurant in Massachusetts and their embrace of Michael ten years later impressed me as having some of the same qualities in a much less conscious or political way.
Last, I’ve been thinking about how little Michael s death seems to call up personal feelings of mortality among my generation. I recall that when Elvis died people many who came of age in the 50’s and early 60’s spoke and wrote of how his death brought home the end of their youth and brought closer thoughts of the inevitability of their own deaths. I don’t feel this at all with Michael and don’t hear it from others. maybe it is because his life has been so publicly strange for so long that there is more of a personal distance. Maybe it is because there have been so many deaths — Joey Ramone evoked these feeling with me. Maybe, I’m wrong and others do feel it.
TJ
HV: TJ, thanks for taking the time to write. I take your point, but let me press back a little. Consider this: The Jackson Five should have been the very lightest of the great Motown acts in terms of their family-group shitck, but paradoxically became among the most … I won’t say timeless, but beloved. Wasn’t this because of the songs Deke Richards provided for them? Wasn’t it another one of Gordy’s peculiar triumphs that his machine provided the five something extra? Michael was going to be a star, regardless, sure. But those opening chords of “I Want You Back,” the jaunty beat and snappy wordplay of “The Love You Save” … Michael Jackson didn’t do that, The Corporation did. Again, not taking anything away from the Jackson brothers’ specific talents. And finally, I’d point out that the Jackson Five came in toward the end of the label’s golden era. For more than five years Motown acts had been banging the charts; I just took a cursory look at the number one hits of the 1960s; there really weren’t too many by black artists that weren’t Motown acts, and I bet the ratio was the same in the top tens or twenties. By which I mean that the Jackson Five came in at the end of an incredible shift in societal perceptions of black musicians; and for that Motown deserves the credit.
And I’m with you about the mortality issue. I’m disappointed in Jackson, mostly; the loss of Joey Ramone was much more affecting.
Forest:
Among Jackson’s numerous Neverland possessions up for auction a few months ago was something truly fascinating. It was one of those life-sized Elvis statues you sometimes see in theme restaurants - but that wasn’t the fascinating part. Someone (Jackson, I assume), had inscribed a quote on Elvis’ shoulder: “If I could only find a white man with a black man’s sound, I could make a million dollars.” ~ Sam Phillips. How telling.
Mike S.:
While I agree with most of what you’re saying here, I’m kind of confused about the remark you made that Elvis was a sexual predator. What exactly do you mean by that? I haven’t read about Elvis’s life too extensively but I don’t think I’ve come across anything suggesting that.
HV: Examples of this were detailed in Peter Guralnick’s two-volume Presley biographies. And of course Preseley’s fixation on Priscilla began when she was 14. (He was 24.) Leaving aside the malevolent Albert Goldman biography, Guralnick’s books, which are definitive and engrossing but infuriating in their special pleading for Presley, nonetheless include all sorts of other repellent Presley behavior, from dragging around a woman by her hair to missing his bodyguard’s wedding. Presley was supposed to have been the best man.
Andy Price:
In fairness to Ashleigh Banfield, she was fired after, in early 2003, she criticized media coverage (including but not limited to Fox News) of the Iraq invasion and occupation in a speech at Kansas State. So I think she is unworthy of your scorn.
Dan Coyle:
Agreed, Andy. Banfield is all right.
Ann:
Another angle I was totally unaware of: MJ reportedly converted to Islam late last year. The story didn’t get much play, and has been disputed, but I’m surprised I hadn’t heard it before, even as rumor:
Joe Kvidera:
The obligatory stampede of mourners to buy Bad and Thriller again is generating income for the first time in years. And just imagine the estate sale. Sothebys must be licking their lips.
HV: The math is interesting. Jackson Inc. went from having not much income and enormous expenditures into zero expenditures and boatloads of income. I’m no accountant, but I think the latter is better. Jackson’s albums all became best-sellers again since his death, and he’s dominated the top of the Billboard charts. Look more closely at the figures, though, and you’ll notice that in total he sold less than a half-million CD equivalents, including downloads, the first week, and now 800,000 the second. Even in the context of today’s anemic CD sales, that seems quite low to me. Billboard calls it “whopping,” however, so maybe I’m being overly dismissive. Still, you’ll also note that basically half of his CD sales were of greatest hits albums (and not his dorky HIStory, either). I’m sure the Jackson foofara will continue, and his fans will continue to spend money buying related paraphernalia, but I’d bet the music sales will decline steeply after this week.
Mrv:
I find it mind boggling how most of the MSM picks up and regurgitates the same mis-information, i.e. total LP sales-750 million? Watched former RIAA mouthpiece and pit bull Hilary Rosen blather on and on about MJ last night but got all dumb when asked if she had ever met him: Er no, but knew people who had…
What I can’t let go of is that irrespective of his musical chops, he was a suspected pedophile. Simple question to any of these folks busy moaning and gnashing their teeth, would you let your 11 year son sleep over at Michael’s house?
HV: I wouldn’t! Your Rosen story reminds me of when Lou Ferrigno was on I think Larry King the other night, blathering on about what good friends he and Jackson were. King came out of his stupor to ask an interesting question: Did you see evidence of drug use? Ferrigno, quickly: “Oh, I don’t know anything about his personal life!”
Joe Kvidera:
I just happened to surf by the CEO of Epic on TV saying Michael had sold “750 million records” world-wide. I yelled at the screen, “You SAY that here–but how many does it say he sold on your royalty statements?”
David K.:I guess the BILLION people who are said to watch the Oscars are the ones buying those albums.
Don’t expect there to be any rhyme or reason to the crap the media will be throwing out in the next few weeks.
Joe (not Kvidera):
Nice analysis. But the 100 million figure of Thriller isn’t as outlandish as you point out. Michael Jackson is HUGE outside of the U.S. It’s not far fetched to think that Michael sold way more albums overseas compared to the States.
HV: I don’t know, the more I look into it the more bogus the 100 million claim for Thriller seems. As far as I can tell the Guinness people were crediting Jackson with 50-something million sold as recently as a few years ago. And check out this chart anaysis story from Idolator. The writer is bending over backward to give Jackson all sort of credit but still notes:
I find it suspicious that [Thriller] was quoted at just over 40 million in global sales in the mid-’80s and suddenly shifted to the 100-mil figure less than two decades later — in the absence of additional hits, where’d those 50 million in new sales come from?
Bod:
This article (“Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs and the culture of popism”) remembers of that scene following Donnie’s death in The Big Lebowski, when Walter gives the most self-centered eulogy he could think of and the dude really loses it. Like what are you talking about man?
It’s nice to be consistent and not praise Jackson now that he is dead, as you obviously did not like him beforehand. However, Touré is allowed to mention (carefully) that people are damn stupid for celebrating him after rejoicing about his personal problems for years (which is pervert, ironically). But what the heck does Elvis have to do with that? They are lots of singers who are/were more talented that Elvis (or Jackson) and died. That’s not Touré’s point. That’s not the point.
If you want to argue about the quality of Thriller, know that some of Jackson’s album were produced by none other than Quincy Jones (including Thriller). This guy is a legend, like Miles Davis-legend. Are you now going to argue that Springsteen is also better than Quincy Jones?
Bob Peebles:
Bill, your persistent use of a made-up definition of “popism” exposes your intellectual dishonesty — or perhaps your simple lack of brainpower — once more.
You’re just not bright, knowledgeable or witty enough to be a prominent commentator on these issues, which is why you’re relegated to an obscure, self-created blog. All that drives you is seething resentment of those who still have the kind of jobs you lost.
Your dismissal of the merits of Michael Jackson’s music is thoroughly bizarre, churlish and flat-out wrong.
Maybe it’s time to get a new career?
HV: I appreciate your taking the time to write, but I don’t see why it’s so controversial for calling out journalists when they function as a part of the PR campaigns for the music industry. That a guy like Touré can go on national television and talk about Jackson’s achievements as a black artist and not in the same breath at least make acknowledgment that Jackson himself by all the evidence didn’t want to be black is curious to me. That’s one issue. Another: Admitting that Jackson’s artistic heyday ran from 1979 to, really, 1982. After that it can be legitimately said he did some amazing material, which was somewhat undercut by his rather grasping image campaigns (one year “bad,” the next “dangerous”)… and then a quick decline and a subsequent several decades of patent debilitation. And what sort of journalist shouts down someone talking about the negative side of the discussion, not because it’s wrong or anything, but just because it’s not nice to the subject? A popist, that’s who.
TheZeitgeist:
Jackson was someone who courted celebrity to be sure. But he is a unique character. Going from womb to tomb under the spotlights like that is pretty unique. No one else comes to mind in a comparable context.
Also, speculating on Jackson’s andro-image and bizarre fascination with the boys is one thing…hauling him down to the courthouse for what was a complete sham of a trial by a vindictive prosecutor that mentally damaged the dude (IMHO)is something else. Jackson didn’t “ask” for, or deserve that frankly. The guy really was asexual…even about the kids.
Its something that is very, very hard for other people to understand. Asexual people run the gamut, I think Hitler was another example. That behavior seems unbelievable to most people, sex is so important with most people at SOME point in their lives. Instead the response is to guess that they are epic perverts because no sex because that makes more sense in our perverted little minds than NO sex. Just say’in.
HV: This is a fair point: Jackson was never convicted of anything, and even the one settlement could have been a payoff to someone who was essentially blackmailing him. But that doesn’t mean Jackson did not behave inappropriately with kids in ways that should have both sunk his career and resulted in him being legally prevented from being around them. The public record of this behavior, combined with the sight of Neverland’s secret rooms (some with a half-dozen deadbolts) is slightly nauseating. And in that sense Jackson did ask for it. Again, a jury acquitted Jackson, but remember that part of the reason the prosecutor seemed so aggressive is that he was trying to prevent Jackson from again buying off his accuser.
John R.:
While I think you’re right about Elvis’ place in music history, bringing together the genres you listed I’m a little skeptical of your claims that he was a visionary, artistic figure. Michael certainly played a greater role in authoring his product, whether writing and producing his songs, setting up his music videos, or designing his stage shows. Elvis was a great singer and performer but his music was more dependent on writers and producers. As far as Elvis successors go (other than Nicolas Cage), do we have any rockabilly singers on the charts these days?
HV: I’m not an expert-expert on Presley, but I’m persuaded by people who are that his vocal meldings and his musical imagination were definitive. I also think that, far more than even Jackson, he threw this talent away. Never was more talent invested in such an oafish figure.
Jackson should probably be given more credit for his own control of his career, and visualizing that level he aspired to and of course achieved. As I said on NPR the other day, however, in an argument with Nelson George, giving Jackson too much credit for that is a trap—because, if the measure of his worth is that popularity, it must be noted it was a temporary one. As his album sales and his stature declined, he was forced to make up for it with ever-more-grasping posturings, like those oh-so-dated photo ops with him leading extras dressed up in military uniforms. (Talk about screwy: This was when the U.S. was spending a lot of money funding clowns in juntas in Central America.) As Jackson quickly had nothing to be famous about, he had to spend more and more of his time thinking up ways to demonstrate how famous he was.
Jeff:
Elvis remains the most influential artist of his era and the most important artist in rock history for a simple reason: he was the first. Whether intentional or not, he introduced black rhythm & blues to the wider white audience. That was the spark that lit the fire that’s been burning for 50+ years now. One can argue about the many great artists (white and black) of that era who are overlooked today, or the injustice of it, but that’s missing the point. For good and bad, in the context of those times, Elvis was the one.
Michael Jackson, on the other hand, didn’t invent a genre - he refined one already in existence, making it more palatable to the masses. The difference is immense. A better comparison than Elvis or the Beatles (the other name thrown into the mix by TV commentators), I think, is the Bee Gees circa Saturday Night Fever. After a decade in the biz, they shot to superstardom…and flamed out within a few years due to overexposure and changing musical trends. The same was true of MJ. By 1990 he was, for all intents and purposes, an afterthought.
Noam Sane:
Really interesting stuff. But the entertainment business is chock full of guys like this - he just took it large-scale.
For instance, Ahmet Ertegun - a revered music-industry figure. Check this paragraph out from an interview that Uncut Magazine did with the first manager of the Buffalo Springfield,
Frazier Mohawk:
Neil once said I should have stayed with the Buffalo Springfield longer. And I thought that too, but I gave them up at gunpoint so I didn’t have a choice. I was in New York putting on a little Eastern tour with the Springfield, and we were out there with The Byrds. I’d be talking to promoters as we were going about. One day [Atlantic producer/manager] Charlie Greene showed up and asked me out to dinner. So he picked me up in his limo, which I was pretty sure belonged to Ahmet [Ertegun, Atlantic boss] because it wasn’t a rental and he was the only guy I knew in New York with a limo. We drove around and around and Charlie would be talking, saying how he thought he could do a better job with the band. He had a silver revolver that he’d taken out of his waistband and had put in his pocket. The whole time he was talking, he had his hand on it. Eventually I said: “Hey Charlie, how about dinner now?” And he pulled over to a hotdog stand, reached through the window and bought me a hotdog. Then he said “Look, I’ll give you $1,000 for the band”, to which I said no. I think I said I’d think about it, but all I wanted to do was get out of there. So through a series of things, Charlie had written out an ‘agreement’ on a paper napkin. And I hadn’t signed it. As I was finally getting out of the car, and that was the only way I could get out, he stuck $1,000 in my pocket. I said “No no, I really don’t want this.” Charlie said “No, you keep it.” And that was the last I saw of The Buffalo Springfield. Charlie more or less said that if I came back around, I’d be dealt with. It was scary as hell. I never told the band what happened. And to this day, Neil and the others don’t know it happened. It was that whole Sonny Bono group of people at Atlantic. Ahmet was a very aggressive and forceful businessman and he got what he wanted. Yes, he had great ears and did wonderful things with music, but I certainly wasn’t happy.
Andrew Goodwin:
A difference between Elvis and Jackson — Michael was forced into show biz at such a young age that today we might call that child abuse. Which then produces a drivenness and a related need to re-create a lost childhood. Standard psycho-babble? Or simply what happened *to* him?
HV: Yeah, it’s a much different story. Both had a big idea, but when they had it they were at much different places in their lives, and the motivations, which is your point, are in both cases unknowable but plainly different. On the other hand, both had compromised fathers and both were closely attached to their mothers; something was driving Presley, too.
Dan Coyle:
I wonder, when Axl Rose kicks it, if we’re gonna be treated to a similar round of “Misunderstood genius” horseshit. Because that’s another guy who has been locked in his room for years, metaphorically, like Jackson and Elvis.
HV: And, of course, Sly Stone.
Do you have a reasonable idea of why MJ was apparently so ill for so many years? What were his illnesses? I have heard so many different rumors over the years, but clearly he was frail, weak and often in a wheelchair. We know he was diagnosed with lupus, which contributed to his sun sensitivity, but was he just a hypochondriac who took a lot of drugs for imagined illnesses? Did his heart just give out from years of starving himself?
HV: I’m not a expert in this. The one I remember was vitiligo, which supposedly caused his pigmentation to vary; others say, No, he was bleaching his skin to be white; yet others say no, he was just trying to even out the effects of the vitiligo, which seems nutty. From afar it seems the real problem was some sort of self-hating syndrome that caused him to wish to alter his appearance so dramatically, and so tragically. Again, from the outside, it looked like what he really needed was psychological help, for that and whatever his sexual issues were, to the extent that they made him unhappy, that he wasn’t able to fulfill himself, or that they affected his ability to, ah, conduct himself in accordance with societal mores.
John Bormanis:
Such “suicides” in public seem an almost inevitable result of the drives to go over the top. An interesting question is, why don’t they happen more frequently (one can imagine the same happening to Brit. Spears any moment)? How did he hold out so long? Quite tragic how humans endure abuse for stardom…
HV: We’ve heard as well about the “stress” Jackson was under. I have a feeling that he probably caused more stress for people than he took in. Granted that a child molestation trial wasn’t a walk in the park, and could have been an enormous distraction; at the same time, he took delight into turning the thing into a circus, and along the way his feelings should have run not to stress but to the much more sensible, “How could I be so stupid as to have sleepovers with hundreds of young boys?”
Other than that, you have to ask, What did Michael Jackson do all day? He hadn’t recorded an album within memory and barely appeared in public.
Rvanpatten:
maybe if he would’ve used more recipes from my cookboook, he’d still be around.
dick van patten
HV: This commenter is making a rude reference to a comment I made about Mr. Van Patten in a post about Howard Kurtz and Mariel Hemingway.
Ingrid:
“[Presley’s] tragedy is so vast it calls into question the future of the society that created, and destroyed, him.”
That is a big, big statement. Could you say more about what you mean by “society” - the entertainment industry, the record-buying and movie-going public, the South, what? And destroyed? Didn’t Elvis destroy himself, with help from the doctors who prescribed drugs for him?
I’m not being snarky, I really want to know what leads you to this conclusion.
HV: Presley has become, in a lifetime, an archetype. It’s funny, I remember arguing many years ago with a friend who, irritatingly, kept insisting that “’Star Trek’ had created the first new mythology in 4000 years.” (Wrong on so many levels.) Presley, though: Did we have, before him, the model of the artist who died too young, not in the hot flame of his art, but by keeling over off a toilet to die, his last moments of life spent in the dim haze of a realization that he’d throw away everything? Isn’t that a modern archetype with a primal force to equal other ancient ones?
Anyway, beyond that, Presley also stands as a metaphor for America, given the breathtaking achievement of his wild surmise. If you buy into that, his debauching—by himself and others—and that fate are worrisome. Not just to America-bashers; Virgil, you’ll recall, served as a national poet without peer, but still found in Rome’s behavior disturbing indications—among other things, a dangerously out-of-control leadership and cathartic but needless violence.
You can appreciate both America’s failings and its achievements and worry about a society that, after creating such figures, watches blankly while such an artist collapses. On the other hand, the founding fathers didn’t define the happiness they allowed us to pursue, and some people, particularly people with the funds to underwrite the quest, are going to get it wrong.
Frank Youngwerth:
I think the Colonel, who continuously sucked money out of Elvis’ soul, and Quincy Jones, who apparently considered Michael a jazz artist, deserve consideration too.
HV: I disagree with you about Jones, but in both cases don’t you think the artist shares the blame? If the bioraphies are to be believed, Parker was taking 50 percent of Presley’s income in the latter half of his career, which is different from, for example, the Stones’ shafting at the hands of Allen Klein.
ruben martinez:
elvis presley and michel jackson were both superstars in their field of music. both were great singers, different styles, great charisma attraction. michael jackson was loved it seems by both black and white audiences, while i am not sure the black audience liked presley’s music. what i do know is when elvis died the entire white people of the world mourned plus other non white races like hispanics. i do not know if the same is true about jackson. the point i am trying to make is to me, a hispanic man in my 50s, i grew up with both; i love their music equally. no black or white prejudice and will miss them deeply. but in my opinion because elvis was white his legacy will continue to be supreme over anybody else white or black, and it will be up to the mainly the black race to keep [jackson’s] legacy from being forgotten. they were one of a kind, R M
Bill:
Excellent analysis; great counterpoint. A bit harsh, perhaps, but a bit of reality needs to intrude.
I agree about Elvis. Those of us who lived in the segregated US before the ’60’s will be able to relate to what you meant. Those who have never seen blatant discrimination, in thought and speech as well as in deed, probably will not get it.
TJ Mertz:
Three related thoughts.
First, my brother pointed out a difference he saw yesterday and that is that Elvis seemed to enjoy himself and his stardom (at least for over a decade) and that Michael didn’t.
Second, although you are correct about Michael Jackson building Berry Gordy’s crossover concepts and not pioneering in the sense of Elvis and cross over being primarily a commercial concept, I think the word “merely” isn’t quite right and that (at least in terms of my experience and inner life) Michael’s role is more significant than this captures.
For many those years of the early 1970s were years when the ideals of the Civil Rights movement were being tried out in day-to-day life. As a grade schooler at an consciously integrated school named after Martin Luther King, I was in the middle of this. The Jackson 5 (I wish I could type with the 5 in Jackson 5 ending in a heart like it did in the notebooks of the girls in my grade school) dominated the culture of my school and embodied this idea. In this, their youth and ours were key. We were the “Young Folks,” the children of the dream and the J5 were ours. It was (for the most part) a culture of post-struggles hope and optimism (”bring salvation back”) and joy. We were the children of integration and crossover and were able to lived as if these were natural and ascendant. This made us and J5 different from earlier Motown artists and from the earlier culture of the Civil Rights movement. In important ways cross over did become merely commercial in the larger society, but for people like me the experiences of that time still resonate. The J5 are near the center of those experiences. I’ll add that at the time when Thriller broke I was working with some white working class and relatively racially isolated teenagers at a restaurant in Massachusetts and their embrace of Michael ten years later impressed me as having some of the same qualities in a much less conscious or political way.
Last, I’ve been thinking about how little Michael s death seems to call up personal feelings of mortality among my generation. I recall that when Elvis died people many who came of age in the 50’s and early 60’s spoke and wrote of how his death brought home the end of their youth and brought closer thoughts of the inevitability of their own deaths. I don’t feel this at all with Michael and don’t hear it from others. maybe it is because his life has been so publicly strange for so long that there is more of a personal distance. Maybe it is because there have been so many deaths — Joey Ramone evoked these feeling with me. Maybe, I’m wrong and others do feel it.
TJ
HV: TJ, thanks for taking the time to write. I take your point, but let me press back a little. Consider this: The Jackson Five should have been the very lightest of the great Motown acts in terms of their family-group shitck, but paradoxically became among the most … I won’t say timeless, but beloved. Wasn’t this because of the songs Deke Richards provided for them? Wasn’t it another one of Gordy’s peculiar triumphs that his machine provided the five something extra? Michael was going to be a star, regardless, sure. But those opening chords of “I Want You Back,” the jaunty beat and snappy wordplay of “The Love You Save” … Michael Jackson didn’t do that, The Corporation did. Again, not taking anything away from the Jackson brothers’ specific talents. And finally, I’d point out that the Jackson Five came in toward the end of the label’s golden era. For more than five years Motown acts had been banging the charts; I just took a cursory look at the number one hits of the 1960s; there really weren’t too many by black artists that weren’t Motown acts, and I bet the ratio was the same in the top tens or twenties. By which I mean that the Jackson Five came in at the end of an incredible shift in societal perceptions of black musicians; and for that Motown deserves the credit.
And I’m with you about the mortality issue. I’m disappointed in Jackson, mostly; the loss of Joey Ramone was much more affecting.
Forest:
Among Jackson’s numerous Neverland possessions up for auction a few months ago was something truly fascinating. It was one of those life-sized Elvis statues you sometimes see in theme restaurants - but that wasn’t the fascinating part. Someone (Jackson, I assume), had inscribed a quote on Elvis’ shoulder: “If I could only find a white man with a black man’s sound, I could make a million dollars.” ~ Sam Phillips. How telling.
Mike S.:
While I agree with most of what you’re saying here, I’m kind of confused about the remark you made that Elvis was a sexual predator. What exactly do you mean by that? I haven’t read about Elvis’s life too extensively but I don’t think I’ve come across anything suggesting that.
HV: Examples of this were detailed in Peter Guralnick’s two-volume Presley biographies. And of course Preseley’s fixation on Priscilla began when she was 14. (He was 24.) Leaving aside the malevolent Albert Goldman biography, Guralnick’s books, which are definitive and engrossing but infuriating in their special pleading for Presley, nonetheless include all sorts of other repellent Presley behavior, from dragging around a woman by her hair to missing his bodyguard’s wedding. Presley was supposed to have been the best man.
Andy Price:
In fairness to Ashleigh Banfield, she was fired after, in early 2003, she criticized media coverage (including but not limited to Fox News) of the Iraq invasion and occupation in a speech at Kansas State. So I think she is unworthy of your scorn.
Dan Coyle:
Agreed, Andy. Banfield is all right.
Ann:
Another angle I was totally unaware of: MJ reportedly converted to Islam late last year. The story didn’t get much play, and has been disputed, but I’m surprised I hadn’t heard it before, even as rumor:
Joe Kvidera:
The obligatory stampede of mourners to buy Bad and Thriller again is generating income for the first time in years. And just imagine the estate sale. Sothebys must be licking their lips.
HV: The math is interesting. Jackson Inc. went from having not much income and enormous expenditures into zero expenditures and boatloads of income. I’m no accountant, but I think the latter is better. Jackson’s albums all became best-sellers again since his death, and he’s dominated the top of the Billboard charts. Look more closely at the figures, though, and you’ll notice that in total he sold less than a half-million CD equivalents, including downloads, the first week, and now 800,000 the second. Even in the context of today’s anemic CD sales, that seems quite low to me. Billboard calls it “whopping,” however, so maybe I’m being overly dismissive. Still, you’ll also note that basically half of his CD sales were of greatest hits albums (and not his dorky HIStory, either). I’m sure the Jackson foofara will continue, and his fans will continue to spend money buying related paraphernalia, but I’d bet the music sales will decline steeply after this week.
Mrv:
I find it mind boggling how most of the MSM picks up and regurgitates the same mis-information, i.e. total LP sales-750 million? Watched former RIAA mouthpiece and pit bull Hilary Rosen blather on and on about MJ last night but got all dumb when asked if she had ever met him: Er no, but knew people who had…
What I can’t let go of is that irrespective of his musical chops, he was a suspected pedophile. Simple question to any of these folks busy moaning and gnashing their teeth, would you let your 11 year son sleep over at Michael’s house?
HV: I wouldn’t! Your Rosen story reminds me of when Lou Ferrigno was on I think Larry King the other night, blathering on about what good friends he and Jackson were. King came out of his stupor to ask an interesting question: Did you see evidence of drug use? Ferrigno, quickly: “Oh, I don’t know anything about his personal life!”
Joe Kvidera:
I just happened to surf by the CEO of Epic on TV saying Michael had sold “750 million records” world-wide. I yelled at the screen, “You SAY that here–but how many does it say he sold on your royalty statements?”
David K.:I guess the BILLION people who are said to watch the Oscars are the ones buying those albums.
Don’t expect there to be any rhyme or reason to the crap the media will be throwing out in the next few weeks.
Joe (not Kvidera):
Nice analysis. But the 100 million figure of Thriller isn’t as outlandish as you point out. Michael Jackson is HUGE outside of the U.S. It’s not far fetched to think that Michael sold way more albums overseas compared to the States.
HV: I don’t know, the more I look into it the more bogus the 100 million claim for Thriller seems. As far as I can tell the Guinness people were crediting Jackson with 50-something million sold as recently as a few years ago. And check out this chart anaysis story from Idolator. The writer is bending over backward to give Jackson all sort of credit but still notes:
I find it suspicious that [Thriller] was quoted at just over 40 million in global sales in the mid-’80s and suddenly shifted to the 100-mil figure less than two decades later — in the absence of additional hits, where’d those 50 million in new sales come from?
Bod:
This article (“Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs and the culture of popism”) remembers of that scene following Donnie’s death in The Big Lebowski, when Walter gives the most self-centered eulogy he could think of and the dude really loses it. Like what are you talking about man?
It’s nice to be consistent and not praise Jackson now that he is dead, as you obviously did not like him beforehand. However, Touré is allowed to mention (carefully) that people are damn stupid for celebrating him after rejoicing about his personal problems for years (which is pervert, ironically). But what the heck does Elvis have to do with that? They are lots of singers who are/were more talented that Elvis (or Jackson) and died. That’s not Touré’s point. That’s not the point.
If you want to argue about the quality of Thriller, know that some of Jackson’s album were produced by none other than Quincy Jones (including Thriller). This guy is a legend, like Miles Davis-legend. Are you now going to argue that Springsteen is also better than Quincy Jones?
Bob Peebles:
Bill, your persistent use of a made-up definition of “popism” exposes your intellectual dishonesty — or perhaps your simple lack of brainpower — once more.
You’re just not bright, knowledgeable or witty enough to be a prominent commentator on these issues, which is why you’re relegated to an obscure, self-created blog. All that drives you is seething resentment of those who still have the kind of jobs you lost.
Your dismissal of the merits of Michael Jackson’s music is thoroughly bizarre, churlish and flat-out wrong.
Maybe it’s time to get a new career?
HV: I appreciate your taking the time to write, but I don’t see why it’s so controversial for calling out journalists when they function as a part of the PR campaigns for the music industry. That a guy like Touré can go on national television and talk about Jackson’s achievements as a black artist and not in the same breath at least make acknowledgment that Jackson himself by all the evidence didn’t want to be black is curious to me. That’s one issue. Another: Admitting that Jackson’s artistic heyday ran from 1979 to, really, 1982. After that it can be legitimately said he did some amazing material, which was somewhat undercut by his rather grasping image campaigns (one year “bad,” the next “dangerous”)… and then a quick decline and a subsequent several decades of patent debilitation. And what sort of journalist shouts down someone talking about the negative side of the discussion, not because it’s wrong or anything, but just because it’s not nice to the subject? A popist, that’s who.
TheZeitgeist:
Jackson was someone who courted celebrity to be sure. But he is a unique character. Going from womb to tomb under the spotlights like that is pretty unique. No one else comes to mind in a comparable context.
Also, speculating on Jackson’s andro-image and bizarre fascination with the boys is one thing…hauling him down to the courthouse for what was a complete sham of a trial by a vindictive prosecutor that mentally damaged the dude (IMHO)is something else. Jackson didn’t “ask” for, or deserve that frankly. The guy really was asexual…even about the kids.
Its something that is very, very hard for other people to understand. Asexual people run the gamut, I think Hitler was another example. That behavior seems unbelievable to most people, sex is so important with most people at SOME point in their lives. Instead the response is to guess that they are epic perverts because no sex because that makes more sense in our perverted little minds than NO sex. Just say’in.
HV: This is a fair point: Jackson was never convicted of anything, and even the one settlement could have been a payoff to someone who was essentially blackmailing him. But that doesn’t mean Jackson did not behave inappropriately with kids in ways that should have both sunk his career and resulted in him being legally prevented from being around them. The public record of this behavior, combined with the sight of Neverland’s secret rooms (some with a half-dozen deadbolts) is slightly nauseating. And in that sense Jackson did ask for it. Again, a jury acquitted Jackson, but remember that part of the reason the prosecutor seemed so aggressive is that he was trying to prevent Jackson from again buying off his accuser.
John R.:
While I think you’re right about Elvis’ place in music history, bringing together the genres you listed I’m a little skeptical of your claims that he was a visionary, artistic figure. Michael certainly played a greater role in authoring his product, whether writing and producing his songs, setting up his music videos, or designing his stage shows. Elvis was a great singer and performer but his music was more dependent on writers and producers. As far as Elvis successors go (other than Nicolas Cage), do we have any rockabilly singers on the charts these days?
HV: I’m not an expert-expert on Presley, but I’m persuaded by people who are that his vocal meldings and his musical imagination were definitive. I also think that, far more than even Jackson, he threw this talent away. Never was more talent invested in such an oafish figure.
Jackson should probably be given more credit for his own control of his career, and visualizing that level he aspired to and of course achieved. As I said on NPR the other day, however, in an argument with Nelson George, giving Jackson too much credit for that is a trap—because, if the measure of his worth is that popularity, it must be noted it was a temporary one. As his album sales and his stature declined, he was forced to make up for it with ever-more-grasping posturings, like those oh-so-dated photo ops with him leading extras dressed up in military uniforms. (Talk about screwy: This was when the U.S. was spending a lot of money funding clowns in juntas in Central America.) As Jackson quickly had nothing to be famous about, he had to spend more and more of his time thinking up ways to demonstrate how famous he was.
Jeff:
Elvis remains the most influential artist of his era and the most important artist in rock history for a simple reason: he was the first. Whether intentional or not, he introduced black rhythm & blues to the wider white audience. That was the spark that lit the fire that’s been burning for 50+ years now. One can argue about the many great artists (white and black) of that era who are overlooked today, or the injustice of it, but that’s missing the point. For good and bad, in the context of those times, Elvis was the one.
Michael Jackson, on the other hand, didn’t invent a genre - he refined one already in existence, making it more palatable to the masses. The difference is immense. A better comparison than Elvis or the Beatles (the other name thrown into the mix by TV commentators), I think, is the Bee Gees circa Saturday Night Fever. After a decade in the biz, they shot to superstardom…and flamed out within a few years due to overexposure and changing musical trends. The same was true of MJ. By 1990 he was, for all intents and purposes, an afterthought.
Noam Sane:
Really interesting stuff. But the entertainment business is chock full of guys like this - he just took it large-scale.
For instance, Ahmet Ertegun - a revered music-industry figure. Check this paragraph out from an interview that Uncut Magazine did with the first manager of the Buffalo Springfield,
Frazier Mohawk:
Neil once said I should have stayed with the Buffalo Springfield longer. And I thought that too, but I gave them up at gunpoint so I didn’t have a choice. I was in New York putting on a little Eastern tour with the Springfield, and we were out there with The Byrds. I’d be talking to promoters as we were going about. One day [Atlantic producer/manager] Charlie Greene showed up and asked me out to dinner. So he picked me up in his limo, which I was pretty sure belonged to Ahmet [Ertegun, Atlantic boss] because it wasn’t a rental and he was the only guy I knew in New York with a limo. We drove around and around and Charlie would be talking, saying how he thought he could do a better job with the band. He had a silver revolver that he’d taken out of his waistband and had put in his pocket. The whole time he was talking, he had his hand on it. Eventually I said: “Hey Charlie, how about dinner now?” And he pulled over to a hotdog stand, reached through the window and bought me a hotdog. Then he said “Look, I’ll give you $1,000 for the band”, to which I said no. I think I said I’d think about it, but all I wanted to do was get out of there. So through a series of things, Charlie had written out an ‘agreement’ on a paper napkin. And I hadn’t signed it. As I was finally getting out of the car, and that was the only way I could get out, he stuck $1,000 in my pocket. I said “No no, I really don’t want this.” Charlie said “No, you keep it.” And that was the last I saw of The Buffalo Springfield. Charlie more or less said that if I came back around, I’d be dealt with. It was scary as hell. I never told the band what happened. And to this day, Neil and the others don’t know it happened. It was that whole Sonny Bono group of people at Atlantic. Ahmet was a very aggressive and forceful businessman and he got what he wanted. Yes, he had great ears and did wonderful things with music, but I certainly wasn’t happy.
Andrew Goodwin:
A difference between Elvis and Jackson — Michael was forced into show biz at such a young age that today we might call that child abuse. Which then produces a drivenness and a related need to re-create a lost childhood. Standard psycho-babble? Or simply what happened *to* him?
HV: Yeah, it’s a much different story. Both had a big idea, but when they had it they were at much different places in their lives, and the motivations, which is your point, are in both cases unknowable but plainly different. On the other hand, both had compromised fathers and both were closely attached to their mothers; something was driving Presley, too.
Dan Coyle:
I wonder, when Axl Rose kicks it, if we’re gonna be treated to a similar round of “Misunderstood genius” horseshit. Because that’s another guy who has been locked in his room for years, metaphorically, like Jackson and Elvis.
HV: And, of course, Sly Stone.
Michael Jackson’s worldwide sales — revealed?
Joe Kvidera passes on an interesting series of blog posts that purport to show official sales totals of Michael Jackson from around the world. I’m still absorbing the large amount of data myself that a poster named “Nelson” has shared, but here’s what seems to be the money graf:
WORLDWIDE SALES TOTAL in selected countries
SINGLES Total: 32,430,000 in selected countries
Australia: 525,000
Canada: 450,000
France: 4,275,000
Germany: 2,500,000
Japan: 370,000
US: 13,000,000
UK: 11,310,958
ALBUMS Total: 111,353,000 in selected countries
Australia: 2,835,000
Brazil: 8,220,000
Canada: 3,950,000
France: 5,100,000
Germany: 7,550,000
UK: 14,060,000
Japan: 3,638,000
U.S.: 55,000,000 (certified 58.5 in RIAA - HIStory 3.5, double albums)
Europe: 11,000,000 (complicate, introduced since 1996)
The Jackson camp, of course, makes the claim of 750 million sold. Let the analysis begin!
A few figures seem not quite right to me: Only 13M single sales in the US? Jackson has at least ten platinum singles, and quite a few more gold ones. (Most were from the pre-SoundScan era; if Nelson’s figures are not wrong, it’s powerful evidence that those RIAA certifications, which are based on shipments and not sales, are extremely unreliable indicators.*.)
And there are a lot of quadrants of the world not accounted for, from Asia to Africa.
More later. Besides the other MJ posts below, I also discussed Jackson’s inflated sales claims here.
——
* They are much more reliable in the multi-platinum realm. A CD certified ten times platinum has probably sold more than 9.5 million. But a simple gold or platinum certification can remain on a record that shipped 500k or 1M but sold perhaps 50 percent of that. If Sony, under demands from Jackson’s management, kept insuring that the artist could claim platinum certs, if not sales, it would be easy for the figures cited by the poster to be correct. Still, I’m skeptical.
WORLDWIDE SALES TOTAL in selected countries
SINGLES Total: 32,430,000 in selected countries
Australia: 525,000
Canada: 450,000
France: 4,275,000
Germany: 2,500,000
Japan: 370,000
US: 13,000,000
UK: 11,310,958
ALBUMS Total: 111,353,000 in selected countries
Australia: 2,835,000
Brazil: 8,220,000
Canada: 3,950,000
France: 5,100,000
Germany: 7,550,000
UK: 14,060,000
Japan: 3,638,000
U.S.: 55,000,000 (certified 58.5 in RIAA - HIStory 3.5, double albums)
Europe: 11,000,000 (complicate, introduced since 1996)
The Jackson camp, of course, makes the claim of 750 million sold. Let the analysis begin!
A few figures seem not quite right to me: Only 13M single sales in the US? Jackson has at least ten platinum singles, and quite a few more gold ones. (Most were from the pre-SoundScan era; if Nelson’s figures are not wrong, it’s powerful evidence that those RIAA certifications, which are based on shipments and not sales, are extremely unreliable indicators.*.)
And there are a lot of quadrants of the world not accounted for, from Asia to Africa.
More later. Besides the other MJ posts below, I also discussed Jackson’s inflated sales claims here.
——
* They are much more reliable in the multi-platinum realm. A CD certified ten times platinum has probably sold more than 9.5 million. But a simple gold or platinum certification can remain on a record that shipped 500k or 1M but sold perhaps 50 percent of that. If Sony, under demands from Jackson’s management, kept insuring that the artist could claim platinum certs, if not sales, it would be easy for the figures cited by the poster to be correct. Still, I’m skeptical.
Everything you ever wanted to know about worldwide record sales—Michael Jackson, the Beatles, Pink Floyd and more!
On the UK message board I wrote about last week, ukmix.org, a poster calling himself MJDangerous has been submitting reams of information about sales figures from around the world, notably about Michael Jackson.
With that exhaustive data, I first assumed he was a Sony employee, based either in Britain or France. MJDangerous was kind enough to respond to an email I sent him. It turns out he is French, just recently out of school and working as an engineer. His name is Guillaume Vieira. He’s not in the business at all, but rather a fan who for the last six years has been collecting press releases, Billboard stories and sales data and collating them into a coherent and persuasive portrait of an elusive beast: Legitimate accountings of worldwide record sales. I found the information he had at his fingertips impressive*.
We had the following chat over the weekend. I rearranged it a little and did some minor editing.
Hitsville: Thanks for taking the time to talk about this. What’s your experience in collecting worldwide sales figures? They are notoriously difficult to discern, aren’t they?
Guillaume Vieira: Figures are difficult to discern in the beginning, but I faced enough of them to discern them immediately and quite easily now. I’ve checked charts, certifications and officially reported sales of over 10,000 albums in the last six years. When a figure is said to have been officially reported but hasn’t, I know it instantly. As I said, it is easy for me—I already know all the figures that have been really reported.
Hitsville: As you’ve no doubt noticed, the New York Times after Michael Jackson’s death stated flatly that he had sold 750 million records worldwide, and that Thriller had sold an “estimated” 100 million. Every other news outlet in the land, not to mention the indefatigable U.S. cable channels, cited similar figures. Are they accurate? What’s your best estimate about Thriller?
Vieira: The figure of “over 100 million” for Thriller came out, just like the figure of 750 million for Jackson, in November 2006 at World Music Awards. The last reported figure by Sony was 54 million worldwide, during the HIStory era, while the Guinness Book of World Records reported Thriller at “over 50 million” worldwide. In 2006, his management team reported it sold 104 million worldwide—54 million in the US according to the RIAA and 50 million elsewhere according to Guinness!
Thriller indeed sold over 28 million copies in the US. It was a giant blockbuster there (37 weeks #1). But to sell 100 million it would have to be even more successful in every other market than in the US, which represents 40 percent of international sales. It was for sure a blockbuster, but that much was simply not possible!
In UK, its shipment is up to 4,12 million copies with last week’s sales.
In France, it sold a record breaking 3,3 million copies (1,8 million by Feb 1984 according to Billboard; 2,5 million by 1988 according to SNEP—the French equivalent of the RIAA. Then we have documented sales for recent years).
Italy, 1,19 million up to 2001, published by Sony Music. Thriller 25 is Gold there, as a whole it sold 1,3 million in this country by now.
Germany, 3xPlat (1,5m**) since 1995, not many figures since that time but chart performances put it around 2 million.
Sweden, recently certified 4xPlatinum, 400,000, plus 20,000 copies for Thriller 25.
Netherlands, 800,000 copies by 1996 (8xPlatinum, highest certified album ever), by now over 1 million.
Austria, 400,000, 8xPlatinum, again highest figure ever reached (local albums included).
Belgium, 550,000, 11xPlatinum, second to Helmut Lotti’s Goes Classic only.
Spain, 500,000 by 1984, around a million currently.
In Europe, it sold close to 17 million copies. This figure is massive—more impressive than 28 million in US. Since IFPI introduced album certifications for Europe in 1994, no album ever reached even 10 million. The only one studio album that reached 10 million in Europe in the last 20 years is Dangerous, by Michael Jackson himself, released in 1991, which sold 12 million copies in the old continent. That album, regarded as half a flop in the US, is to Europe/Asia/Oceania the equivalent of Shania Twain’s Come On Over in the US—The biggest album released in the last 2 decades.
Billboard recently reported a figure of 2,5 million copies in Japan for Thriller (it sold 1,616,000 copies while charting in 83/84 alone, without counting imports, 30% of sales of foreign acts). It sold around 6,5 million in Asia.
Over a million in Australia, recently certified 14xPlatinum (980,000).
In South America, it is the best selling album ever for a foreign act: more than 600,000 copies in Argentina, over 1,3 million in Brazil, 400,000 in Chile and a million in Mexico. Then over 3 million in Canada. In Africa, it sold 600,000 copies in South Africa alone, 300,000 copies in Turkey, over 2 million in the continent.
Then we only have to add figures: US 28,5m, Europe 17m, Canada 3,3m, Asia 6,5m, Latin America + Oceania 6m, Africa 2m, total around 63 million. As you can see, a lot of accurate data is actually known; the jigsaw is far from being as obscure as people may think. Give or take a maximum of 2m, this figure of 63 million is correct.
Hitsville: What’s your ballpark estimate of how many records Jackson sold worldwide?
Vieira:Albums - at least 205 million, at most 225 million
Singles - at least 105 million, at most 120 million
Digital singles - at least 19 million, at most 22 million
Music Videos - at least 14 million, at most 17 million
Ringtones - 2 million, give or take a few thousands (1,4 million in the US)
All those figures don’t include sales of the Jackson 5/Jacksons, except for Digital singles. The group sold:
Albums - at least 45 million, at most 60 million
Singles - at least 40 million, at most 55 million
All together, that puts a ballpark at 430—500 million, but since some figures may be a bit too high, and others too low (they aren’t all in the low side or all in the high side), a more correct one would be worldwide records sales somewhere between 450 million and 480 million.
That’s around 80 million more than Elvis Presley, 40 million under the Beatles***.
Hitsville: Those are impressive figures, even if they don’t approach those big round numbers the papers were tossing about. Let’s talk about the Jackson Five for a minute. It’s funny—while I hadn’t published it, I was working on a post discussing whether the figure of 100 million sold for the Jackson Five, as is claimed, could possibly be right. To be honest, I thought it couldn’t; their heyday lasted about 18 months. In the U.S. they’re the equivalent of, say, Three Dog Night. On the other hand, I also remember Michael Jackson perhaps in the Martin Bashir documentary, recalling that as a 12-year-old he would get royalty checks of $200,000, which I thought was a large figure a) at the time and b) considering infinitesimal royalty rate the group was getting from Motown. But it makes sense if the group was selling records at those levels. Did they really sell anything like 100 million records?
Guillaume: The Jackson 5/Jacksons did sell around 100 million; they sold around 50 million of each singles and albums. But that is up to now! When that figure was first claimed in 1977, they were obviously, far, far from reaching it. That claim even supposed they were the second group reaching that milestone after the Beatles—outselling even the Rolling Stones, which was not true at all (and still isn’t!). Their single sales in the US were massive; even up to now they still are close to Madonna in this area, and outsold acts like Whitney Houston.
Hitsville: In the context of Motown, the Jacksons were the label’s 5th or 6th biggest act. As I look over a crude marker like the biggest chart acts of Billboard, its strikes me that Berry Gordy oversaw the careers of close to ten percent of the biggest acts in history. Do you have an off-the-cuff sense of how many records Motown sold?
Guillaume: Motown sales were truly gigantic in the 60s and 70s. Single sales were huge at that time and to be honest they were definitely dominating that sector. Album sales of Motown acts are very often not that impressive: First because the market wasn’t big at the time, second because their acts are more remembered for their singles than their albums in general, third because Motown releases the same hits packages again and again, cannibalizing sales of original albums. Only Stevie Wonder, and later Lionel Richie, sold loads of albums while signed by Motown. It is hard to guess the entire sales of the label (especialy since I haven’t studied several of their key acts), but let’s check a few of them:
- Jackson 5 - 70 million (not including sales of the Jacksons, who weren’t on Motown anymore)
- Michael Jackson - 20 million
- Stevie Wonder - 170 million
- Lionel Richie - 85 million
- Diana Ross/Supremes - 190 million
- Commodores - 60 million
- The Temptations - 110 million
- Marvin Gaye - 110 million
- Four Tops - 40 million
- Miracles/Smokey Robinson - 55 million
A total of 910 million - most of them were singles. With all their acts, it is safe to say the Motown label sold well over 1 billion records, which is an incredible total.
Hitsville: Now, if it’s fair to toss in the Jackson Five’s sales with Michael’s, it’s fair to toss in Paul McCartney’s with his previous band. What’s his totals compared to Jackson’s? Diana Ross’ totals as a solo artist combined with with the Supremes?
Guillaume: Diana Ross/Supremes total is ahead, not that far from 200 million records sold. Paul McCartney is the master. He sold around 170 million records on his own, added to over 500 million with the Beatles; that is over two thirds of the road to a billion! Obviously, on such a list, Michael Jackson wouldn’t be at 2, considering the three other Beatles would be ahead of him. Macca with 670m, Lennon with 620m, Harrison with 550m and Ringo with 525m, then Michael Jackson with around 465m. When we see how hard it is to sell 10 million records (and despite what most people think it has always been very hard), those numbers are from another world!
Hitsville: Janet Jackson gets overlooked sometimes in the Michael hoopla, but she is a top-tier star in her own right, isn’t she? What’s your best estimation of her worldwide sales and her ranking worldwide?
Janet sold 45 million singles and 65 million albums, which ranks her among the top 60 best selling acts ever, quite an achievement already, definitely a star on her own. She is in par with the likes Nirvana, Journey, and the Who in terms of album sales and sold many more singles than them.
Hitsville: What are the second and third best-selling albums worldwide, behind Thriller?
Guillaume: Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd, is the second-best-selling album ever. It is now up to 42 million and still selling very well year after year. It is harder to say which album is at three—a trio of soundtracks sold about the same at 40 million: Grease, Saturday Night Fever and The Bodyguard. Grease looks like having the lead yet and anyway is the one that is still selling the most so it will end at 3 sooner or later.
Jackson’s Bad ranks in the top 10 while Dangerous sits inside the top 20. Interesting to note that despite their relatively small sales in the US compared to Thriller, in the rest of the world they were almost as massive as Thriller and are among the seven and eight best-selling albums ever, along with Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms, Dark Side of the Moon and the three soundtracks previously named. All those albums sold 20 to 23 million outside of the US, except Thriller, which sold close to 35 million.
With that exhaustive data, I first assumed he was a Sony employee, based either in Britain or France. MJDangerous was kind enough to respond to an email I sent him. It turns out he is French, just recently out of school and working as an engineer. His name is Guillaume Vieira. He’s not in the business at all, but rather a fan who for the last six years has been collecting press releases, Billboard stories and sales data and collating them into a coherent and persuasive portrait of an elusive beast: Legitimate accountings of worldwide record sales. I found the information he had at his fingertips impressive*.
We had the following chat over the weekend. I rearranged it a little and did some minor editing.
Hitsville: Thanks for taking the time to talk about this. What’s your experience in collecting worldwide sales figures? They are notoriously difficult to discern, aren’t they?
Guillaume Vieira: Figures are difficult to discern in the beginning, but I faced enough of them to discern them immediately and quite easily now. I’ve checked charts, certifications and officially reported sales of over 10,000 albums in the last six years. When a figure is said to have been officially reported but hasn’t, I know it instantly. As I said, it is easy for me—I already know all the figures that have been really reported.
Hitsville: As you’ve no doubt noticed, the New York Times after Michael Jackson’s death stated flatly that he had sold 750 million records worldwide, and that Thriller had sold an “estimated” 100 million. Every other news outlet in the land, not to mention the indefatigable U.S. cable channels, cited similar figures. Are they accurate? What’s your best estimate about Thriller?
Vieira: The figure of “over 100 million” for Thriller came out, just like the figure of 750 million for Jackson, in November 2006 at World Music Awards. The last reported figure by Sony was 54 million worldwide, during the HIStory era, while the Guinness Book of World Records reported Thriller at “over 50 million” worldwide. In 2006, his management team reported it sold 104 million worldwide—54 million in the US according to the RIAA and 50 million elsewhere according to Guinness!
Thriller indeed sold over 28 million copies in the US. It was a giant blockbuster there (37 weeks #1). But to sell 100 million it would have to be even more successful in every other market than in the US, which represents 40 percent of international sales. It was for sure a blockbuster, but that much was simply not possible!
In UK, its shipment is up to 4,12 million copies with last week’s sales.
In France, it sold a record breaking 3,3 million copies (1,8 million by Feb 1984 according to Billboard; 2,5 million by 1988 according to SNEP—the French equivalent of the RIAA. Then we have documented sales for recent years).
Italy, 1,19 million up to 2001, published by Sony Music. Thriller 25 is Gold there, as a whole it sold 1,3 million in this country by now.
Germany, 3xPlat (1,5m**) since 1995, not many figures since that time but chart performances put it around 2 million.
Sweden, recently certified 4xPlatinum, 400,000, plus 20,000 copies for Thriller 25.
Netherlands, 800,000 copies by 1996 (8xPlatinum, highest certified album ever), by now over 1 million.
Austria, 400,000, 8xPlatinum, again highest figure ever reached (local albums included).
Belgium, 550,000, 11xPlatinum, second to Helmut Lotti’s Goes Classic only.
Spain, 500,000 by 1984, around a million currently.
In Europe, it sold close to 17 million copies. This figure is massive—more impressive than 28 million in US. Since IFPI introduced album certifications for Europe in 1994, no album ever reached even 10 million. The only one studio album that reached 10 million in Europe in the last 20 years is Dangerous, by Michael Jackson himself, released in 1991, which sold 12 million copies in the old continent. That album, regarded as half a flop in the US, is to Europe/Asia/Oceania the equivalent of Shania Twain’s Come On Over in the US—The biggest album released in the last 2 decades.
Billboard recently reported a figure of 2,5 million copies in Japan for Thriller (it sold 1,616,000 copies while charting in 83/84 alone, without counting imports, 30% of sales of foreign acts). It sold around 6,5 million in Asia.
Over a million in Australia, recently certified 14xPlatinum (980,000).
In South America, it is the best selling album ever for a foreign act: more than 600,000 copies in Argentina, over 1,3 million in Brazil, 400,000 in Chile and a million in Mexico. Then over 3 million in Canada. In Africa, it sold 600,000 copies in South Africa alone, 300,000 copies in Turkey, over 2 million in the continent.
Then we only have to add figures: US 28,5m, Europe 17m, Canada 3,3m, Asia 6,5m, Latin America + Oceania 6m, Africa 2m, total around 63 million. As you can see, a lot of accurate data is actually known; the jigsaw is far from being as obscure as people may think. Give or take a maximum of 2m, this figure of 63 million is correct.
Hitsville: What’s your ballpark estimate of how many records Jackson sold worldwide?
Vieira:Albums - at least 205 million, at most 225 million
Singles - at least 105 million, at most 120 million
Digital singles - at least 19 million, at most 22 million
Music Videos - at least 14 million, at most 17 million
Ringtones - 2 million, give or take a few thousands (1,4 million in the US)
All those figures don’t include sales of the Jackson 5/Jacksons, except for Digital singles. The group sold:
Albums - at least 45 million, at most 60 million
Singles - at least 40 million, at most 55 million
All together, that puts a ballpark at 430—500 million, but since some figures may be a bit too high, and others too low (they aren’t all in the low side or all in the high side), a more correct one would be worldwide records sales somewhere between 450 million and 480 million.
That’s around 80 million more than Elvis Presley, 40 million under the Beatles***.
Hitsville: Those are impressive figures, even if they don’t approach those big round numbers the papers were tossing about. Let’s talk about the Jackson Five for a minute. It’s funny—while I hadn’t published it, I was working on a post discussing whether the figure of 100 million sold for the Jackson Five, as is claimed, could possibly be right. To be honest, I thought it couldn’t; their heyday lasted about 18 months. In the U.S. they’re the equivalent of, say, Three Dog Night. On the other hand, I also remember Michael Jackson perhaps in the Martin Bashir documentary, recalling that as a 12-year-old he would get royalty checks of $200,000, which I thought was a large figure a) at the time and b) considering infinitesimal royalty rate the group was getting from Motown. But it makes sense if the group was selling records at those levels. Did they really sell anything like 100 million records?
Guillaume: The Jackson 5/Jacksons did sell around 100 million; they sold around 50 million of each singles and albums. But that is up to now! When that figure was first claimed in 1977, they were obviously, far, far from reaching it. That claim even supposed they were the second group reaching that milestone after the Beatles—outselling even the Rolling Stones, which was not true at all (and still isn’t!). Their single sales in the US were massive; even up to now they still are close to Madonna in this area, and outsold acts like Whitney Houston.
Hitsville: In the context of Motown, the Jacksons were the label’s 5th or 6th biggest act. As I look over a crude marker like the biggest chart acts of Billboard, its strikes me that Berry Gordy oversaw the careers of close to ten percent of the biggest acts in history. Do you have an off-the-cuff sense of how many records Motown sold?
Guillaume: Motown sales were truly gigantic in the 60s and 70s. Single sales were huge at that time and to be honest they were definitely dominating that sector. Album sales of Motown acts are very often not that impressive: First because the market wasn’t big at the time, second because their acts are more remembered for their singles than their albums in general, third because Motown releases the same hits packages again and again, cannibalizing sales of original albums. Only Stevie Wonder, and later Lionel Richie, sold loads of albums while signed by Motown. It is hard to guess the entire sales of the label (especialy since I haven’t studied several of their key acts), but let’s check a few of them:
- Jackson 5 - 70 million (not including sales of the Jacksons, who weren’t on Motown anymore)
- Michael Jackson - 20 million
- Stevie Wonder - 170 million
- Lionel Richie - 85 million
- Diana Ross/Supremes - 190 million
- Commodores - 60 million
- The Temptations - 110 million
- Marvin Gaye - 110 million
- Four Tops - 40 million
- Miracles/Smokey Robinson - 55 million
A total of 910 million - most of them were singles. With all their acts, it is safe to say the Motown label sold well over 1 billion records, which is an incredible total.
Hitsville: Now, if it’s fair to toss in the Jackson Five’s sales with Michael’s, it’s fair to toss in Paul McCartney’s with his previous band. What’s his totals compared to Jackson’s? Diana Ross’ totals as a solo artist combined with with the Supremes?
Guillaume: Diana Ross/Supremes total is ahead, not that far from 200 million records sold. Paul McCartney is the master. He sold around 170 million records on his own, added to over 500 million with the Beatles; that is over two thirds of the road to a billion! Obviously, on such a list, Michael Jackson wouldn’t be at 2, considering the three other Beatles would be ahead of him. Macca with 670m, Lennon with 620m, Harrison with 550m and Ringo with 525m, then Michael Jackson with around 465m. When we see how hard it is to sell 10 million records (and despite what most people think it has always been very hard), those numbers are from another world!
Hitsville: Janet Jackson gets overlooked sometimes in the Michael hoopla, but she is a top-tier star in her own right, isn’t she? What’s your best estimation of her worldwide sales and her ranking worldwide?
Janet sold 45 million singles and 65 million albums, which ranks her among the top 60 best selling acts ever, quite an achievement already, definitely a star on her own. She is in par with the likes Nirvana, Journey, and the Who in terms of album sales and sold many more singles than them.
Hitsville: What are the second and third best-selling albums worldwide, behind Thriller?
Guillaume: Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd, is the second-best-selling album ever. It is now up to 42 million and still selling very well year after year. It is harder to say which album is at three—a trio of soundtracks sold about the same at 40 million: Grease, Saturday Night Fever and The Bodyguard. Grease looks like having the lead yet and anyway is the one that is still selling the most so it will end at 3 sooner or later.
Jackson’s Bad ranks in the top 10 while Dangerous sits inside the top 20. Interesting to note that despite their relatively small sales in the US compared to Thriller, in the rest of the world they were almost as massive as Thriller and are among the seven and eight best-selling albums ever, along with Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms, Dark Side of the Moon and the three soundtracks previously named. All those albums sold 20 to 23 million outside of the US, except Thriller, which sold close to 35 million.
Michael Jackson and the ultimate crossover
CNN’s coverage of Michael Jackson’s sudden illness in the minutes before his death was reported captured nicely the way the media has treated him. Nutty people were allowed to talk at length, including a guy who kept saying his concerts in London were in 2010. (They were scheduled for next month.)
Wolf Blitzer looked into the camera to tell us earnestly that the head of the concert promotion company had told them that Jackson was in “tip top shape,” and that he’d passed a health exam “with flying colors.”
Funny how an impossibly pampered 50-year-old guy in top-top shape could just keel over dead.
We’re supposed to live in an Age of Paparazzi. Isn’t it curious how stars nonetheless manage to die right before our eyes?
They do it with our complicity.
——-
Born not just to celebrity but to stardom, Michael Jackson never knew what it was like to live normally, or even behave normally. He was drafted into the family’s musical act, the Jackson 5, while in elementary school, and taken to Motown records. He was taught how to live a manufactured image at the feet of Berry Gordy, who was quite good at such legerdemain.
If you’re nine years old and born to be a star, such training will definitely turbocharge the marketing of your record sales; as for the fact that almost all the money from those sales went to your teacher and not you … well, that was his second lesson.
Trust, truth … there were concepts Michael Jackson learned early on didn’t have much worth. But of course he had his family, right?
His angry father beat him and his eight siblings with some determination, reputable biographers have told us. (Untrustworthy La Toya said that she and Michael were sexually molested, too.) On tour at age ten, Michael tried to sleep as his older brothers banged groupies in the motel rooms they shared. Then all the kids watched in wonder as their father took up with another woman and had a child with her.
Love, marriage, sex … Michael Jackson learned early that those didn’t mean much either. The Jackson 5 had a three-year run, not bad for a kid act. When the family, which realized it hadn’t made any money, left the label, a vengeful Gordy exacted as a price not just a brother—Jermaine, who, married to Gordy’s daughter, stayed at Motown—but even their name. When they moved to Columbia, they couldn’t use the name the Jackson 5.
Michael was all of 14.
In five years he collected himself, extracted himself from his father’s control and recorded two albums that would change the music industry. The best was the first: 1979’s Off the Wall, a groovy, irresistible stunner. Blithe and implacable, sparkling and protean, it displayed a lean and kaleidoscopic talent, feline in his sexuality and relaxed in his blackness. The round-faced, broad-nosed charmer looking out from the album’s cover reeked not just of charm but confidence and, for the last time, normality.
Three years later, Thriller would take what became an epochal step forward in terms of commerciality. Viewed now, with the befit of hindsight, we can see Jackson’s evolving physiognomy symptomatic of an insecurity we didn’t think to question at the time.
His celebrity’s toll on his own and his family’s life became considerable. For some unaccountable reason, after Thriller he still lived at home, as his family busied itself with intrigues and cockamamie plans. One imagines him sitting in his room ignoring the knocks at his door as offers of millions came in to the family from across the country and around the world to do just about anything—anything, that is, that Michael would do too.
With the exception of Janet, his youngest sister, who somehow managed to extract herself and create her own extraordinary career, virtually every member of his family managed to blemish their reputations; among other things, more than one of the boys, their father’s sons, were charged with beating up their girlfriends or wives.
The story from that point is a bleak and unrelieved one. Superficial things: Michael’s ludicrous trappings and entourages; the fetishization of the armed militias marching around in his videos; tales of his supposed bizarre doings leaked to tabloids; the grasping grandiosity of his public appearances. Jackson had a flair for exploiting the tabloid celebrity he had, but that was a skill he shared with Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton, and it probably shouldn’t be listed among his unique abilities.
More serious things: Mismanaged tours; declining songwriting skills; ever-more erratic album releases.
Even more serious things: An entirely transfigured physical appearance, morphing from an engaging and handsome African-American man into a misshapen Eurasian woman; his skin bleached, his faced resculpted; his nose, finally, needing to be practically taped on to his face. He left his race behind and, in a sense, his family too. (The nose, which seemed to have borne the brunt of his obsession with plastic surgery, was his father’s.)
The master of crossover had seemingly crossed over for good.
And finally, a black moral hole, and a descent into a double life as a sexual predator. You’ve heard about not taking candy from a stranger; Jackson’s candy took the form of literal amusement parks. There were nights of fun and sleepovers and inappropriate touching and …
Accusations were leveled many times; most cases were settled; one case, gone to trial, ended in an acquittal in Santa Maria in 2005.
In the obituaries, writers will savor Jackson’s talents, which were unquestioned; his ambition, which was otherworldly and a thing of awe; and his heyday, which was lasted really just a few years, and encompassed perhaps two and a half albums. Others will reflect on the tragedies visited upon him and those he visited on others.
I think it’s fair to classify Kurt Cobain’s death as one brought on by medical problems, specifically the roiling interaction of depression and addiction. Jackson’s death is in this sense more purely a suicide, just as Elvis Presley’s was some three decades ago. Like Presley, Jackson at some point stepped through a door, closed it, and turned the key. What went on behind the door we’ll never know.
Here’s what I wrote about Jackson and his plans for a comeback tour last year:
Jackson’s history with tours is checkered, of course, but this seems an obvious way to stave off financial problems. (And he could make even more if he kept his ambitions reined in and did a disciplined greatest-hits show with a minimum of spectacle.) The troubling question about Jackson is this: Is a tour or a series of performances the trump card, deep down inside, he knows he can put on the table when the need arises? Or is his mental or physical condition such at this point that it’s out of the question? If it’s the latter, Michael Jackson’s last years may turn out to be truly unpretty.
Wolf Blitzer looked into the camera to tell us earnestly that the head of the concert promotion company had told them that Jackson was in “tip top shape,” and that he’d passed a health exam “with flying colors.”
Funny how an impossibly pampered 50-year-old guy in top-top shape could just keel over dead.
We’re supposed to live in an Age of Paparazzi. Isn’t it curious how stars nonetheless manage to die right before our eyes?
They do it with our complicity.
——-
Born not just to celebrity but to stardom, Michael Jackson never knew what it was like to live normally, or even behave normally. He was drafted into the family’s musical act, the Jackson 5, while in elementary school, and taken to Motown records. He was taught how to live a manufactured image at the feet of Berry Gordy, who was quite good at such legerdemain.
If you’re nine years old and born to be a star, such training will definitely turbocharge the marketing of your record sales; as for the fact that almost all the money from those sales went to your teacher and not you … well, that was his second lesson.
Trust, truth … there were concepts Michael Jackson learned early on didn’t have much worth. But of course he had his family, right?
His angry father beat him and his eight siblings with some determination, reputable biographers have told us. (Untrustworthy La Toya said that she and Michael were sexually molested, too.) On tour at age ten, Michael tried to sleep as his older brothers banged groupies in the motel rooms they shared. Then all the kids watched in wonder as their father took up with another woman and had a child with her.
Love, marriage, sex … Michael Jackson learned early that those didn’t mean much either. The Jackson 5 had a three-year run, not bad for a kid act. When the family, which realized it hadn’t made any money, left the label, a vengeful Gordy exacted as a price not just a brother—Jermaine, who, married to Gordy’s daughter, stayed at Motown—but even their name. When they moved to Columbia, they couldn’t use the name the Jackson 5.
Michael was all of 14.
In five years he collected himself, extracted himself from his father’s control and recorded two albums that would change the music industry. The best was the first: 1979’s Off the Wall, a groovy, irresistible stunner. Blithe and implacable, sparkling and protean, it displayed a lean and kaleidoscopic talent, feline in his sexuality and relaxed in his blackness. The round-faced, broad-nosed charmer looking out from the album’s cover reeked not just of charm but confidence and, for the last time, normality.
Three years later, Thriller would take what became an epochal step forward in terms of commerciality. Viewed now, with the befit of hindsight, we can see Jackson’s evolving physiognomy symptomatic of an insecurity we didn’t think to question at the time.
His celebrity’s toll on his own and his family’s life became considerable. For some unaccountable reason, after Thriller he still lived at home, as his family busied itself with intrigues and cockamamie plans. One imagines him sitting in his room ignoring the knocks at his door as offers of millions came in to the family from across the country and around the world to do just about anything—anything, that is, that Michael would do too.
With the exception of Janet, his youngest sister, who somehow managed to extract herself and create her own extraordinary career, virtually every member of his family managed to blemish their reputations; among other things, more than one of the boys, their father’s sons, were charged with beating up their girlfriends or wives.
The story from that point is a bleak and unrelieved one. Superficial things: Michael’s ludicrous trappings and entourages; the fetishization of the armed militias marching around in his videos; tales of his supposed bizarre doings leaked to tabloids; the grasping grandiosity of his public appearances. Jackson had a flair for exploiting the tabloid celebrity he had, but that was a skill he shared with Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton, and it probably shouldn’t be listed among his unique abilities.
More serious things: Mismanaged tours; declining songwriting skills; ever-more erratic album releases.
Even more serious things: An entirely transfigured physical appearance, morphing from an engaging and handsome African-American man into a misshapen Eurasian woman; his skin bleached, his faced resculpted; his nose, finally, needing to be practically taped on to his face. He left his race behind and, in a sense, his family too. (The nose, which seemed to have borne the brunt of his obsession with plastic surgery, was his father’s.)
The master of crossover had seemingly crossed over for good.
And finally, a black moral hole, and a descent into a double life as a sexual predator. You’ve heard about not taking candy from a stranger; Jackson’s candy took the form of literal amusement parks. There were nights of fun and sleepovers and inappropriate touching and …
Accusations were leveled many times; most cases were settled; one case, gone to trial, ended in an acquittal in Santa Maria in 2005.
In the obituaries, writers will savor Jackson’s talents, which were unquestioned; his ambition, which was otherworldly and a thing of awe; and his heyday, which was lasted really just a few years, and encompassed perhaps two and a half albums. Others will reflect on the tragedies visited upon him and those he visited on others.
I think it’s fair to classify Kurt Cobain’s death as one brought on by medical problems, specifically the roiling interaction of depression and addiction. Jackson’s death is in this sense more purely a suicide, just as Elvis Presley’s was some three decades ago. Like Presley, Jackson at some point stepped through a door, closed it, and turned the key. What went on behind the door we’ll never know.
Here’s what I wrote about Jackson and his plans for a comeback tour last year:
Jackson’s history with tours is checkered, of course, but this seems an obvious way to stave off financial problems. (And he could make even more if he kept his ambitions reined in and did a disciplined greatest-hits show with a minimum of spectacle.) The troubling question about Jackson is this: Is a tour or a series of performances the trump card, deep down inside, he knows he can put on the table when the need arises? Or is his mental or physical condition such at this point that it’s out of the question? If it’s the latter, Michael Jackson’s last years may turn out to be truly unpretty.
Ongoing thoughts on Michael Jackson
(updated as the day goes on)
4) Quincy Jones interviewed: Did he worry about the child sex allegations against Jackson? “Yes, but I could never put my finger on it.”
3) From the “It-couldn’t-happen-to-a-nicer-group-of-people desk”; a Reuters story about the exposure of AEG, the promoter of Jackson’s 50 scheduled London shows:
Paying back the face value of some of the estimated 750,000 tickets sold is unlikely to be AEG Live’s only headache.
The company is reported to have invested $20-30 million on the production already, not including any advance to Jackson.
And the O2 Arena, which appears on AEG’s list of sites it owns or operates, is now faced with 50 empty nights, some of which it will struggle to fill at such short notice.
2) The media is reporting all sorts of things that make no sense. The NYT wrote last night, and I just heard someone on MSNBC report, that Jackson sold 750 million albums. Are they crazy?
Let’s give him his 100 million for Thriller, which I don’t believe for a minute.
The Jackson Five were a singles band; Jackson recorded six albums as an adult. Do people think he sold 150 million copies of each on average? Does anyone know how to do math? Even if you take singles into account and accept uncheckable sales figures from around the world it’s hard to see how he sold more than 250 million records, or a third of that total.
Then the MSNBC reporter said, without sourcing the info, that he may have been “a half billion dollars in debt.” That seems a little extreme! (Update: But see this attempt to do the math.) And then in the next breath she quoted his attorney saying that Jackson was “still generating great cash flow.” But of course, that was his problem: he wasn’t generating cash flow. Duh! That’s how you go into debt. He hadn’t released any new albums, and he hadn’t made any concert appearance. Where was the money coming from?
1) Get ready for the mother of all legal battles. Jackson undoubtedly left a legal and financial mess behind. It’s obvious that he was deeply in debt, by the simple expedient of having no income and spending money like a sheik; that his death will set off a feeding frenzy as his many creditors fight like jackals for the remains; and that the dozens of lawsuits he had going will grow enormously.
You can already see the more buffoonish members of his family posturing for the cameras, notably Jermaine:
My brother, the legendary King of Pop Michael Jackson, passed away… Our family requests that the media can respect our privacy during this tough time. And may Allah be with you, Michael, always.
4) Quincy Jones interviewed: Did he worry about the child sex allegations against Jackson? “Yes, but I could never put my finger on it.”
3) From the “It-couldn’t-happen-to-a-nicer-group-of-people desk”; a Reuters story about the exposure of AEG, the promoter of Jackson’s 50 scheduled London shows:
Paying back the face value of some of the estimated 750,000 tickets sold is unlikely to be AEG Live’s only headache.
The company is reported to have invested $20-30 million on the production already, not including any advance to Jackson.
And the O2 Arena, which appears on AEG’s list of sites it owns or operates, is now faced with 50 empty nights, some of which it will struggle to fill at such short notice.
2) The media is reporting all sorts of things that make no sense. The NYT wrote last night, and I just heard someone on MSNBC report, that Jackson sold 750 million albums. Are they crazy?
Let’s give him his 100 million for Thriller, which I don’t believe for a minute.
The Jackson Five were a singles band; Jackson recorded six albums as an adult. Do people think he sold 150 million copies of each on average? Does anyone know how to do math? Even if you take singles into account and accept uncheckable sales figures from around the world it’s hard to see how he sold more than 250 million records, or a third of that total.
Then the MSNBC reporter said, without sourcing the info, that he may have been “a half billion dollars in debt.” That seems a little extreme! (Update: But see this attempt to do the math.) And then in the next breath she quoted his attorney saying that Jackson was “still generating great cash flow.” But of course, that was his problem: he wasn’t generating cash flow. Duh! That’s how you go into debt. He hadn’t released any new albums, and he hadn’t made any concert appearance. Where was the money coming from?
1) Get ready for the mother of all legal battles. Jackson undoubtedly left a legal and financial mess behind. It’s obvious that he was deeply in debt, by the simple expedient of having no income and spending money like a sheik; that his death will set off a feeding frenzy as his many creditors fight like jackals for the remains; and that the dozens of lawsuits he had going will grow enormously.
You can already see the more buffoonish members of his family posturing for the cameras, notably Jermaine:
My brother, the legendary King of Pop Michael Jackson, passed away… Our family requests that the media can respect our privacy during this tough time. And may Allah be with you, Michael, always.
Elvis and Michael: The Lost Boys
As the Michael Jackson hoopla-cum-mourning continues, you’ll hear lots of comparisons of Jackson to Elvis Presley.
Jackson was a popular figure, and as I wrote yesterday he did represent an apogee of crossover, with commercial results we can wonder at to this day. Presley, of course, was uniquely popular too.
Both suffered from their stardom; both coasted for decades on early concussions of creativity; both lost themselves in an abyss of cowed courtiers and drug use; both, let’s face it, were sexual predators, a term I use not as a general-purpose epithet but as a descriptive term about people who systematically pursue under-aged kids for sexual purposes and, in both cases, were uniquely positioned to be successful at it, leaving some not insignificant legacy of damaged lives in their wake; both died, sadly, wasted away in a laceratingly pointless fashion, knowing, in their hearts, that they could not longer do the things that gave them their power in the first place.
Both were man-boys with infantile sexualities and preadolescent images of themselves as gang leaders and missionaries. Both changed from impossibly beautiful youths into ravaged adults, Presley bloated and dazed; Jackson self-mutilated almost beyond recognition.
But there the similarities end.
Presley grew up severely disadvantaged; I don’t want to make comparisons to a black family in Gary in the 1960s, but let’s remember that his father was basically a failed sharecropper. Out of this environment, one that should have made him a racist cracker, he developed a visionary perspective on music that hadn’t been imagined before. Blacks and whites, country and gospel, blues and pop. And he did it at a time when no one wanted it—indeed, almost everyone didn’t want it.
Presley invented a music and created its audience. Fine—so did T.K. Records, right?
But this wasn’t disco, for two reasons. What Presley invented with his voice was something that, in a sociological sense, was the internet of its time—by which I mean that it carried in it the seeds of its own revolution, and grew in power in the face of opposition. It did it by being so right—with the clarity of its conception and the audacity of its idea: Bringing those musics, and cultures, together. I think we can agree the rock era’s effect on society was definitive.
And that audacity was the second reason. Rock is the most American of musical genres because its conception is just that big. If I may quote Greil Marcus, Elvis Presley “almost has the scope to take America in.” America, like rock, is often flawed in its execution but it’s hard to argue with its ambition or its intents. The implications of America—the idea of America, not the reality of it—is monumental, something you can’t get your mind around. Presley—his audacity, his vision—is too big to think about as well. His tragedy is so vast it calls into question the future of the society that created, and destroyed, him.
Now, as for Jackson. As I wrote yesterday, he is the embodiment of crossover—the biggest star of his time, the culmination of some three decades of gracious black pop. Motown commandeered that music and cleaned it up for presentation to whites; Jackson took the lessons he gleaned from Berry Gordy, imagined a world that he bestrode, and didn’t stop until he did.
But: Since that world was merely a commercial one, Michael Jackson’s life doesn’t resonate like Presley’s. Sure his Thriller was the biggest record ever, for a while—but its commercial appeal soon burned out and, as the years went by, it was steadily overtaken and then supplanted by … Springsteen? Prince? Madonna?
No, just a dorky Eagles greatest hits album (”Oooh-oooh, witch-chay woo-man!”), beloved of the modern-day frat boy. Ten years or so after Thriller, Michael Jackson’s artistic footprint had washed away. He was no longer a star per se but rather a spectacle. Elvis Presley died at home, but no artist was farther away from himself at the time of his death; Jackson, by contrast, remained at the center of his own created world until the very end.
His legacy incorporated himself and nothing else, though I suppose you could throw Usher and Justin Timberlake in there. We’re still living in the world Elvis Presley created; for all intents and purposes, Jackson’s ended yesterday.
Jackson was a popular figure, and as I wrote yesterday he did represent an apogee of crossover, with commercial results we can wonder at to this day. Presley, of course, was uniquely popular too.
Both suffered from their stardom; both coasted for decades on early concussions of creativity; both lost themselves in an abyss of cowed courtiers and drug use; both, let’s face it, were sexual predators, a term I use not as a general-purpose epithet but as a descriptive term about people who systematically pursue under-aged kids for sexual purposes and, in both cases, were uniquely positioned to be successful at it, leaving some not insignificant legacy of damaged lives in their wake; both died, sadly, wasted away in a laceratingly pointless fashion, knowing, in their hearts, that they could not longer do the things that gave them their power in the first place.
Both were man-boys with infantile sexualities and preadolescent images of themselves as gang leaders and missionaries. Both changed from impossibly beautiful youths into ravaged adults, Presley bloated and dazed; Jackson self-mutilated almost beyond recognition.
But there the similarities end.
Presley grew up severely disadvantaged; I don’t want to make comparisons to a black family in Gary in the 1960s, but let’s remember that his father was basically a failed sharecropper. Out of this environment, one that should have made him a racist cracker, he developed a visionary perspective on music that hadn’t been imagined before. Blacks and whites, country and gospel, blues and pop. And he did it at a time when no one wanted it—indeed, almost everyone didn’t want it.
Presley invented a music and created its audience. Fine—so did T.K. Records, right?
But this wasn’t disco, for two reasons. What Presley invented with his voice was something that, in a sociological sense, was the internet of its time—by which I mean that it carried in it the seeds of its own revolution, and grew in power in the face of opposition. It did it by being so right—with the clarity of its conception and the audacity of its idea: Bringing those musics, and cultures, together. I think we can agree the rock era’s effect on society was definitive.
And that audacity was the second reason. Rock is the most American of musical genres because its conception is just that big. If I may quote Greil Marcus, Elvis Presley “almost has the scope to take America in.” America, like rock, is often flawed in its execution but it’s hard to argue with its ambition or its intents. The implications of America—the idea of America, not the reality of it—is monumental, something you can’t get your mind around. Presley—his audacity, his vision—is too big to think about as well. His tragedy is so vast it calls into question the future of the society that created, and destroyed, him.
Now, as for Jackson. As I wrote yesterday, he is the embodiment of crossover—the biggest star of his time, the culmination of some three decades of gracious black pop. Motown commandeered that music and cleaned it up for presentation to whites; Jackson took the lessons he gleaned from Berry Gordy, imagined a world that he bestrode, and didn’t stop until he did.
But: Since that world was merely a commercial one, Michael Jackson’s life doesn’t resonate like Presley’s. Sure his Thriller was the biggest record ever, for a while—but its commercial appeal soon burned out and, as the years went by, it was steadily overtaken and then supplanted by … Springsteen? Prince? Madonna?
No, just a dorky Eagles greatest hits album (”Oooh-oooh, witch-chay woo-man!”), beloved of the modern-day frat boy. Ten years or so after Thriller, Michael Jackson’s artistic footprint had washed away. He was no longer a star per se but rather a spectacle. Elvis Presley died at home, but no artist was farther away from himself at the time of his death; Jackson, by contrast, remained at the center of his own created world until the very end.
His legacy incorporated himself and nothing else, though I suppose you could throw Usher and Justin Timberlake in there. We’re still living in the world Elvis Presley created; for all intents and purposes, Jackson’s ended yesterday.
The death of Michael Jackson: Topics for further discussion
Ashleigh Banfield turned up on CNN the other day to discuss Michael Jackson. The appearance of Banfield—a highly watchable journalistic cocktail of Roland Hedley and Suzanne Stone Maretto who appeared on MSNBC full-blown, accoutermented with air filters and surgical masks, in the dusty hours after 9/11, rose meteorically to cover Afghanistan for the news channel in a fetching burka, and then disappeared into the black hole of her own ridiculousness soon after—gave confirmation, if it was needed, that the circus was in town.
With any luck, it’s gonna be here for a while. A few of the acts:
1) Who killed Michael Jackson? Drug reports will come drizzling out as the media and the LAPD searches for a certain Doctor Feelgood, selected by Jackson as a live-in medico but paid for by AEG, the concert promoter, who makes a cameo in the 911 call during Jackson’s death but then dropped out of sight. Now, Jackson obviously killed himself with his drug use, paranoia and mental decline. But it must be said that, the evening before, he’d been rehearsing on the stage of the Staples Center, so he wasn’t an invalid. The doctor is now re-appearing, having now, one assumes, lawyered up. Youth wants to know: How do you die when you have a live-in doctor?
2) The hangers-on and spokespeople. Jesse Jackson is with the Jackson family, drumming up suspicions about the doctor. (Thus far I haven’t seen an intrepid newsperson ask Jesse why, if he was so gosh darn close to Jackson, he didn’t do something to stop him from drugging himself to death—or whether he ever had any suspicions about those sleepovers with young boys. It’s a question the rest of Jackson’s family should be asked as well.) The doctor will have his own spokespersons, as will, in order, AEG, the concert promoter; Colony Capital, Fortress Investment, and Barclays, the companies that had apparently bought up big chunks of Jackson’s debts; and Sony. Jackson went through dozens of managers, advisers and accountants over his 25 years of decline; these guys will be making appearances as well. The holy grail, however, will be …
3) The whispers of David Geffen. Geffen was a longtime unofficial adviser to Jackson, and undoubtedly the source behind some of the anonymous information that has come out about him over the years. His name won’t appear in any of the upcoming stories, of course, but he should be getting back into the mix soon. Look for gnomic statements about Jackson’s financial behavior in authoritative-sounding major pieces in tony outlets like the NYT, LAT or WSJ, or loucher but industry-specific ones, like Nikke Finke’s blog. And don’t think Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown aren’t calling him.
4) The kids. Jackson has three, two by his onetime wife Deborah Rowe, and another, colloquially referred to as “Blanket,” with an as-yet-unidentified surrogate.
It takes a lot to surprise me when it comes to such stories. Hitsville always assumes the worst! But I nearly did a spit-take when I heard legal analyst Diane Dimond, who is not an idiot, speak about the kids with Keith Olbermann last night. Maybe it’s been reported; but this was news to me and I bet it is to you, too:
Let me tell you: It has long been known by those of us who cover Michael Jackson that Michael Jackson is not biologically connected to those children. There was a sperm donor that made those children with Debbie Rowe. Many of us know who that sperm donor is. Michael Jackson handpicked that sperm donor. If he now suddenly comes forward and says, ‘I want my kids, take my DNA; those kids are mine, I want them.’ Then what happens? He’s gonna fight with Debbie, it’s just a mess. And then a surrogate can come forward for Blanket ….
5) The estate. Gerald Posner, who is also a smart guy, told Chris Mathews that Jackson’s affairs had been put into various trusts during the time of his child-sex trial. The implication seemed to be that he needed to protect his assets, though I’m not sure why. In a worse-case scenario, he’d get convicted of the molestation and plying-a-kid-with-alcohol charges, and then face civil action, but it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t be able to afford simply to pay off any judgment. He wasn’t going to get a $100 million assessment against him, right? And even if a hurricane of charges made that possible, he, unlike OJ, had so much high-profile income accruing from blue-chip entities like Sony it’s hard to imagine his being able to keep collecting that money in the face of legal liabilities of that sort.
Anyway, the Journal and the NYT will go nuts in the coming weeks trying to untangle the state of Jackson’s finances and the hierarchies of the various claims against his estate. (Today, for example, the Times reported tentatively that Jackson’s mother, Kathleen, controlls his part of Sony/ATV through a trust.) Despite major stories on this in both papers it’s all still rather opaque.
One major question that I haven’t seen even asked in the coverage thus far, though it is by far the most salient, is what precisely is the status of Jackson’s partnership with Sony in the publishing company Sony/ATV. (The pair merged their publishing operations.) The Times reported some years ago that Sony had advanced him $300 million against what was said to be half of what was said to be Jackson’s half-ownership of the company.
Assuming that went though (if you read the story carefully you can see that it does not precisely say it did) and further assuming both that a) the above facts are true and b) Sony is a smart operation, Sony may come out of this with a secure 75 percent of the company and be sitting relatively pretty—assuming, finally, that the $300 million was not an inflated valuation for 25 percent of the company. (I take the point that the Beatles catalog is valuable, but it was valuable when Jackson bought it for $47 million; why is the ATV half of Sony/ATV worth $600 million today? Is it generating a modest five percent return, i.e., $30 million a year in income?)
On the other hand, the company’s ability to take control of that extra 25 percent portion may hinge on Jackson’ defaulting on the loan in some way that may or may not technically happen. The story is today’s Times makes some assertions that don’t quite jibe with its previous reporting. More on that in a second.
Specifically, there is the status of the debts held by two mysterious groups—Fortress Investment Group and Colony Capital—and then Barclays Bank. Fortress had an extraordinary hold on Jackson, carrying so much of his debt that it was collecting some $4.5 million a month just in interest from Jackson for at least a couple of years, according to the Times. Fortress has dropped out of sight of late as Colony stepped to the fore, but according to the Journal Colony held just a $24 million note on Jackson, which is how it acquired Jackson’s sleepover castle, Neverland Ranch.
In Jacko’s world, $24 million is chump change.
Colony was also said to be behind the pressure for him to get his ass back on stage and earn some money. As for Fortress, the Times says flatly today that Barclays now holds the big sum of $300 million against his share of Sony/ATV now, which is I assume the former Fortress debt. Next to the status of Sony/ATV, the big question about Michael Jackson right now is this debt; last year the WSJ said it was $400 million, so obviously neither paper is working with precise sources. And no one’s talking about what Sony got for its original bailout of Jackson, back in 2006.
Anyway, this big note has magicked itself up in the TV coverage to “Michael Jackson is $500 million in debt.” That’s sounds different from merely having a debt of that much, and is probably not correct; however much Jackson owes, it needs to be balanced against the value of his holdings, in ATV/Sony and his own personal operation. The Times says that could be worth as much as $100 million.
It’s possible, again, that the Sony bailout never went through and that the $400 million figure is a cumulative one, and not a new accumulation of debt, which might mean that his publishing holdings alone might cover his obligations. In other words, the estate might lose the publishing all together, but it would still have the rights to his recorded catalog (publishing, remember, is just songwriting royalties) and what I assume would be its share of his own personal publishing, a not insignificant asset.
On a final hand, remember that things had recently come to a serious pass with Jackson; he’d been backed into a corner and basically forced to get back on the road to get some money coming in. With his death it’s possible that some of the nuclear options that had obvious threats to his financial well-being could come to pass.
6) Collateral damage. The doctor, who went AWOL, is apparently someone who feels his interests are being served by doing what he can not to be involved in the investigation into Jackson’s death. It seems likely that he’s going to be a loser in this story. Sony may do okay it if gets its hands on at least part of Jackson share of the publishing, but still might end up with an unwelcome partner holding at least 25 percent of it. Hard to see how Colony comes out a winner, but it depends on how the loans are protected.
In the category of really fucked are the scores of people with lawsuits already pending against Jackson. Get in line, suckers! AEG, the company that thought it had finally met the getting-Michael-Jackson-back-on-stage challenge, seems on the hook for at least $30 million in outlays for the London shows, if news reports can be believed. (Plus it gets to refund some $80M-plus in sold tickets.) The company is putting on a brave face and saying insurance will cover its losses. Hard to countenance Lloyds of London would have risked $80 million on the chances of Michael Jackson showing up to do record signing, much less scores of concert, something he hadn’t managed to do for more than a decade. Even if AEG tries to do some cheesy Jackson family tribute concert in place of Jackson, could then string it out over 50 nights?
Jackson’s reputation will go into the toilet as all the stories people were afraid to tell when he was alive come to the fore. (A lot of them are going to be told by veterans of Jackson’s sleepovers.)
But no one’s more fucked than Jackson’s kids. They might as well start taking painkillers right now. Best case scenario is that they end up with Kathleen Katherine and Joe Jackson, Michael’s parents. Look how their children turned out.
7) The winners. Sony, ironically, will get one last post-iTunes cash infusion as nostalgic fans buy Jackson CDs; it will be interesting to see how much they eventually total, however. But remember that Jackson had a worldwide popularity, so Sony will be making bank disproportionately in less digital-savvy lands. (It’s also easier than it is in the U.S. to fudge sales records and royalty statement overseas.) As for Fortress, if it really was making upwards of $50 million a year on a $200 million note for a couple of years before getting bought out by Barclays it probably did fine. And if Sony arranged the Barclays refinancing Barclays should be fine as well, because Sony will just pay it for another chunk of the publishing catalog.
Those with stories to tell about Jackson will extract a lot of dough from tabloids not averse to paying for their information. The legal commentators will be riding high for the foreseeable future as a vast carnival of court proceedings spread out before them, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, drug use, incompetent advisors, shadowy behind-the-scenes figures, cartoonish figures elbowing for the spotlight, and the fates of three innocent kids.
And finally, the biggest winners of all will be Jackson’s family, hardened by years of financial game-playing with their doomed son; now free to run wild (there’s already reports of objects being moved out of Jackson’s house), they will be free to collect unimpeded the eggs from the Golden Goose who, alive, had been so difficult.
With any luck, it’s gonna be here for a while. A few of the acts:
1) Who killed Michael Jackson? Drug reports will come drizzling out as the media and the LAPD searches for a certain Doctor Feelgood, selected by Jackson as a live-in medico but paid for by AEG, the concert promoter, who makes a cameo in the 911 call during Jackson’s death but then dropped out of sight. Now, Jackson obviously killed himself with his drug use, paranoia and mental decline. But it must be said that, the evening before, he’d been rehearsing on the stage of the Staples Center, so he wasn’t an invalid. The doctor is now re-appearing, having now, one assumes, lawyered up. Youth wants to know: How do you die when you have a live-in doctor?
2) The hangers-on and spokespeople. Jesse Jackson is with the Jackson family, drumming up suspicions about the doctor. (Thus far I haven’t seen an intrepid newsperson ask Jesse why, if he was so gosh darn close to Jackson, he didn’t do something to stop him from drugging himself to death—or whether he ever had any suspicions about those sleepovers with young boys. It’s a question the rest of Jackson’s family should be asked as well.) The doctor will have his own spokespersons, as will, in order, AEG, the concert promoter; Colony Capital, Fortress Investment, and Barclays, the companies that had apparently bought up big chunks of Jackson’s debts; and Sony. Jackson went through dozens of managers, advisers and accountants over his 25 years of decline; these guys will be making appearances as well. The holy grail, however, will be …
3) The whispers of David Geffen. Geffen was a longtime unofficial adviser to Jackson, and undoubtedly the source behind some of the anonymous information that has come out about him over the years. His name won’t appear in any of the upcoming stories, of course, but he should be getting back into the mix soon. Look for gnomic statements about Jackson’s financial behavior in authoritative-sounding major pieces in tony outlets like the NYT, LAT or WSJ, or loucher but industry-specific ones, like Nikke Finke’s blog. And don’t think Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown aren’t calling him.
4) The kids. Jackson has three, two by his onetime wife Deborah Rowe, and another, colloquially referred to as “Blanket,” with an as-yet-unidentified surrogate.
It takes a lot to surprise me when it comes to such stories. Hitsville always assumes the worst! But I nearly did a spit-take when I heard legal analyst Diane Dimond, who is not an idiot, speak about the kids with Keith Olbermann last night. Maybe it’s been reported; but this was news to me and I bet it is to you, too:
Let me tell you: It has long been known by those of us who cover Michael Jackson that Michael Jackson is not biologically connected to those children. There was a sperm donor that made those children with Debbie Rowe. Many of us know who that sperm donor is. Michael Jackson handpicked that sperm donor. If he now suddenly comes forward and says, ‘I want my kids, take my DNA; those kids are mine, I want them.’ Then what happens? He’s gonna fight with Debbie, it’s just a mess. And then a surrogate can come forward for Blanket ….
5) The estate. Gerald Posner, who is also a smart guy, told Chris Mathews that Jackson’s affairs had been put into various trusts during the time of his child-sex trial. The implication seemed to be that he needed to protect his assets, though I’m not sure why. In a worse-case scenario, he’d get convicted of the molestation and plying-a-kid-with-alcohol charges, and then face civil action, but it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t be able to afford simply to pay off any judgment. He wasn’t going to get a $100 million assessment against him, right? And even if a hurricane of charges made that possible, he, unlike OJ, had so much high-profile income accruing from blue-chip entities like Sony it’s hard to imagine his being able to keep collecting that money in the face of legal liabilities of that sort.
Anyway, the Journal and the NYT will go nuts in the coming weeks trying to untangle the state of Jackson’s finances and the hierarchies of the various claims against his estate. (Today, for example, the Times reported tentatively that Jackson’s mother, Kathleen, controlls his part of Sony/ATV through a trust.) Despite major stories on this in both papers it’s all still rather opaque.
One major question that I haven’t seen even asked in the coverage thus far, though it is by far the most salient, is what precisely is the status of Jackson’s partnership with Sony in the publishing company Sony/ATV. (The pair merged their publishing operations.) The Times reported some years ago that Sony had advanced him $300 million against what was said to be half of what was said to be Jackson’s half-ownership of the company.
Assuming that went though (if you read the story carefully you can see that it does not precisely say it did) and further assuming both that a) the above facts are true and b) Sony is a smart operation, Sony may come out of this with a secure 75 percent of the company and be sitting relatively pretty—assuming, finally, that the $300 million was not an inflated valuation for 25 percent of the company. (I take the point that the Beatles catalog is valuable, but it was valuable when Jackson bought it for $47 million; why is the ATV half of Sony/ATV worth $600 million today? Is it generating a modest five percent return, i.e., $30 million a year in income?)
On the other hand, the company’s ability to take control of that extra 25 percent portion may hinge on Jackson’ defaulting on the loan in some way that may or may not technically happen. The story is today’s Times makes some assertions that don’t quite jibe with its previous reporting. More on that in a second.
Specifically, there is the status of the debts held by two mysterious groups—Fortress Investment Group and Colony Capital—and then Barclays Bank. Fortress had an extraordinary hold on Jackson, carrying so much of his debt that it was collecting some $4.5 million a month just in interest from Jackson for at least a couple of years, according to the Times. Fortress has dropped out of sight of late as Colony stepped to the fore, but according to the Journal Colony held just a $24 million note on Jackson, which is how it acquired Jackson’s sleepover castle, Neverland Ranch.
In Jacko’s world, $24 million is chump change.
Colony was also said to be behind the pressure for him to get his ass back on stage and earn some money. As for Fortress, the Times says flatly today that Barclays now holds the big sum of $300 million against his share of Sony/ATV now, which is I assume the former Fortress debt. Next to the status of Sony/ATV, the big question about Michael Jackson right now is this debt; last year the WSJ said it was $400 million, so obviously neither paper is working with precise sources. And no one’s talking about what Sony got for its original bailout of Jackson, back in 2006.
Anyway, this big note has magicked itself up in the TV coverage to “Michael Jackson is $500 million in debt.” That’s sounds different from merely having a debt of that much, and is probably not correct; however much Jackson owes, it needs to be balanced against the value of his holdings, in ATV/Sony and his own personal operation. The Times says that could be worth as much as $100 million.
It’s possible, again, that the Sony bailout never went through and that the $400 million figure is a cumulative one, and not a new accumulation of debt, which might mean that his publishing holdings alone might cover his obligations. In other words, the estate might lose the publishing all together, but it would still have the rights to his recorded catalog (publishing, remember, is just songwriting royalties) and what I assume would be its share of his own personal publishing, a not insignificant asset.
On a final hand, remember that things had recently come to a serious pass with Jackson; he’d been backed into a corner and basically forced to get back on the road to get some money coming in. With his death it’s possible that some of the nuclear options that had obvious threats to his financial well-being could come to pass.
6) Collateral damage. The doctor, who went AWOL, is apparently someone who feels his interests are being served by doing what he can not to be involved in the investigation into Jackson’s death. It seems likely that he’s going to be a loser in this story. Sony may do okay it if gets its hands on at least part of Jackson share of the publishing, but still might end up with an unwelcome partner holding at least 25 percent of it. Hard to see how Colony comes out a winner, but it depends on how the loans are protected.
In the category of really fucked are the scores of people with lawsuits already pending against Jackson. Get in line, suckers! AEG, the company that thought it had finally met the getting-Michael-Jackson-back-on-stage challenge, seems on the hook for at least $30 million in outlays for the London shows, if news reports can be believed. (Plus it gets to refund some $80M-plus in sold tickets.) The company is putting on a brave face and saying insurance will cover its losses. Hard to countenance Lloyds of London would have risked $80 million on the chances of Michael Jackson showing up to do record signing, much less scores of concert, something he hadn’t managed to do for more than a decade. Even if AEG tries to do some cheesy Jackson family tribute concert in place of Jackson, could then string it out over 50 nights?
Jackson’s reputation will go into the toilet as all the stories people were afraid to tell when he was alive come to the fore. (A lot of them are going to be told by veterans of Jackson’s sleepovers.)
But no one’s more fucked than Jackson’s kids. They might as well start taking painkillers right now. Best case scenario is that they end up with Kathleen Katherine and Joe Jackson, Michael’s parents. Look how their children turned out.
7) The winners. Sony, ironically, will get one last post-iTunes cash infusion as nostalgic fans buy Jackson CDs; it will be interesting to see how much they eventually total, however. But remember that Jackson had a worldwide popularity, so Sony will be making bank disproportionately in less digital-savvy lands. (It’s also easier than it is in the U.S. to fudge sales records and royalty statement overseas.) As for Fortress, if it really was making upwards of $50 million a year on a $200 million note for a couple of years before getting bought out by Barclays it probably did fine. And if Sony arranged the Barclays refinancing Barclays should be fine as well, because Sony will just pay it for another chunk of the publishing catalog.
Those with stories to tell about Jackson will extract a lot of dough from tabloids not averse to paying for their information. The legal commentators will be riding high for the foreseeable future as a vast carnival of court proceedings spread out before them, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, drug use, incompetent advisors, shadowy behind-the-scenes figures, cartoonish figures elbowing for the spotlight, and the fates of three innocent kids.
And finally, the biggest winners of all will be Jackson’s family, hardened by years of financial game-playing with their doomed son; now free to run wild (there’s already reports of objects being moved out of Jackson’s house), they will be free to collect unimpeded the eggs from the Golden Goose who, alive, had been so difficult.
The death of MJ: Where there’s a will…
This is the first of what may be many Michael Jackson wills, courtesy of Roger Friedman, the guy who got 86′ed from Foxnews.com a while back for talking about file-sharing on the internets, and is now working for the Hollywood Reporter:
The issue of Michael Jackson’s will—containing disposition of assets and appointment of guardians for his children—can finally be addressed.
Sources say that Jackson’s final will was drawn up in 2002, after the delivery/birth/acquisition of baby Blanket aka Prince Michael II. The word is that Jackson’s longtime attorney and adviser John Branca, the man who kept Jackson out of many calamities in the 1980s and 90s, is the executor.
(The link is to HR sister pub Billboard.)
As Hitsville noted yesterday, Jackson’s former friends and associates will be poking their heads up in the weeks to come. This is the first sally from Branca, who was of course the source for Friedman’s story. I always found Friedman level-headed, but here, perhaps overheated in these perfervid postmorten days, he’s overwriting.
Friedman lets his feelings for Branca show in his blog:
Branca, as I’ve noted before, is Michael Jackson’s children’s best possible advocate at the moment, and the only assurance they have of not being ripped off in the long run.
As a consequence, it’s hard to take seriously his assertions. One, this isn’t “finally going to address” the status of Jackson’s will. It’s going to begin to address it.
And how does he know—how could Branca know—that it was Jackson’s “final” will?
Most particularly, if, as is often said, Jackson’s child molestation trial in 2005 was a watershed for him financially and emotionally, it’s not hard to imagine he’d taken steps to revisit it in the ensuing seven years.
I’d be more convinced if Friedman had said, “The will, written in 2002 and updated by Jackson as circumstances had changed over the ensuing seven years …. ” Since Branca is undoubtedly his source, the fact that he didn’t say that is a pretty strong indication Jackson hadn’t been updating it—and that there’s no reason to think there’s not a later, supplanting document.
The issue of Michael Jackson’s will—containing disposition of assets and appointment of guardians for his children—can finally be addressed.
Sources say that Jackson’s final will was drawn up in 2002, after the delivery/birth/acquisition of baby Blanket aka Prince Michael II. The word is that Jackson’s longtime attorney and adviser John Branca, the man who kept Jackson out of many calamities in the 1980s and 90s, is the executor.
(The link is to HR sister pub Billboard.)
As Hitsville noted yesterday, Jackson’s former friends and associates will be poking their heads up in the weeks to come. This is the first sally from Branca, who was of course the source for Friedman’s story. I always found Friedman level-headed, but here, perhaps overheated in these perfervid postmorten days, he’s overwriting.
Friedman lets his feelings for Branca show in his blog:
Branca, as I’ve noted before, is Michael Jackson’s children’s best possible advocate at the moment, and the only assurance they have of not being ripped off in the long run.
As a consequence, it’s hard to take seriously his assertions. One, this isn’t “finally going to address” the status of Jackson’s will. It’s going to begin to address it.
And how does he know—how could Branca know—that it was Jackson’s “final” will?
Most particularly, if, as is often said, Jackson’s child molestation trial in 2005 was a watershed for him financially and emotionally, it’s not hard to imagine he’d taken steps to revisit it in the ensuing seven years.
I’d be more convinced if Friedman had said, “The will, written in 2002 and updated by Jackson as circumstances had changed over the ensuing seven years …. ” Since Branca is undoubtedly his source, the fact that he didn’t say that is a pretty strong indication Jackson hadn’t been updating it—and that there’s no reason to think there’s not a later, supplanting document.
The Jackson family: Bring on the wills!
Yesterday, the position of the Jackson family was that Michael Jackson died without a will. They could hold that belief, and tell a court that, by the simple expedient of holding their hands to their ears and saying “blah blah blah” if anyone mentioned the news reports saying that Jackson’s sometime attorney, John Branca, had a will, dating from 2002.
Now Branca has produced it, and given the family a copy of it. The details haven’t been fully released yet, but CNN says it makes Branca and someone named John MacLaine, described as a “longtime friend” of Jackson, co-executors.
This disrupts the Jackson family’s desire to control Jackson’s estate, so now they’re looking around for a later will, one that would supplant Branca’s.
The family’s lawyers, who just told a judge that there wasn’t a will, spent most of this evening talking on CNN, telling anyone who’d listen that there just might be another one floating around.
They had no evidence of one, but that didn’t stop them from using every opportunity they could to speak skeptically about Branca. The best part of the evening was when two of the lawyers, Burt Levitch and Londell McMillan, tried to squirm out of the reality that, for now, Branca & Co. have the upper hand:
LEVITCH: [M]y concern is [Branca] may not have the full picture. There’s certainly a possibility that he was involved at one point and, as I said it earlier, in response to a question, things were in transition often in Michael’s life.
KING: [Londell], they’re saying though that they’re his attorneys now, as I read that.
MCMILLAN: Well, John Branca has been with Michael Jackson from ‘80 till about ‘96.
KING: And then wasn’t?
MCMILLAN: And there was a break. And I understand recently from Mr. Branca that he was just recently brought on a week ago.
KING: Oh, he told you that?
MCMILLAN: Mr. Branca told me and others. I want to put it in context. There’s a long history and a legacy that they have had. There was a separation for quite some time. Apparently, Mr. Branca had the will in his safe. So one of the issues that we’ll have to explore is, are the individuals named in the will still the people that Mr. Jackson wanted to administer and control his life after he passed and moved on?
I don’t understand why they went on CNN. They weren’t speaking officially for the family and, for example, couldn’t answer any of the questions King or Anderson Cooper had about talk of a large Jackson memorial service this weekend at the Neverland Ranch. Since the real decisions about control of the Jackson estate are going to be made by a judge, what did it gain the Jacksons to have them out in public mumbling darkly about John Branca?
Now Branca has produced it, and given the family a copy of it. The details haven’t been fully released yet, but CNN says it makes Branca and someone named John MacLaine, described as a “longtime friend” of Jackson, co-executors.
This disrupts the Jackson family’s desire to control Jackson’s estate, so now they’re looking around for a later will, one that would supplant Branca’s.
The family’s lawyers, who just told a judge that there wasn’t a will, spent most of this evening talking on CNN, telling anyone who’d listen that there just might be another one floating around.
They had no evidence of one, but that didn’t stop them from using every opportunity they could to speak skeptically about Branca. The best part of the evening was when two of the lawyers, Burt Levitch and Londell McMillan, tried to squirm out of the reality that, for now, Branca & Co. have the upper hand:
LEVITCH: [M]y concern is [Branca] may not have the full picture. There’s certainly a possibility that he was involved at one point and, as I said it earlier, in response to a question, things were in transition often in Michael’s life.
KING: [Londell], they’re saying though that they’re his attorneys now, as I read that.
MCMILLAN: Well, John Branca has been with Michael Jackson from ‘80 till about ‘96.
KING: And then wasn’t?
MCMILLAN: And there was a break. And I understand recently from Mr. Branca that he was just recently brought on a week ago.
KING: Oh, he told you that?
MCMILLAN: Mr. Branca told me and others. I want to put it in context. There’s a long history and a legacy that they have had. There was a separation for quite some time. Apparently, Mr. Branca had the will in his safe. So one of the issues that we’ll have to explore is, are the individuals named in the will still the people that Mr. Jackson wanted to administer and control his life after he passed and moved on?
I don’t understand why they went on CNN. They weren’t speaking officially for the family and, for example, couldn’t answer any of the questions King or Anderson Cooper had about talk of a large Jackson memorial service this weekend at the Neverland Ranch. Since the real decisions about control of the Jackson estate are going to be made by a judge, what did it gain the Jacksons to have them out in public mumbling darkly about John Branca?
Friday, September 4, 2009
Tanya Jawab TORCH (Ask and Answer)
Assalamualaikum Wr.Wb.
saya seorang ibu usia 37 thn. Alhamdulillah saya telah diamanahi Allah seorang anak laki-laki saat ini usia 15 bulan dalam keadaan sehat (berat lahir 3,7 kg, tinggi 52cm). Bulan januari saya hamil (memang telah kami rencanakan sebelumnya menggunakan KB IUD)tapi saat kandungan saya berusia 2.5 bulan/10 minggu saya keguguran. setelah dikuret dan periksa TORCH di lab. hasilnya sbb. : IgG Toxoplasma positif : 16 & IgG CMV positif 34. sedangkan yg lainnya negatif. Pengobatan Islami seperti apa yang bisa saya lakukan untuk penyakit ini & perilaku apa yang harus saya perbaiki agar saya segera terbebas dari virus tersebut & bisa kembali hamil? Terimakasih atas kesempatannya dan mohon solusinya.
Wassalamualikum wr.wb.
Jawaban :
Wa’alaikum Salam,Wr.Wb.
Ibu Tri yang dicintai Alloh SWT dan saya hormati, Insya’alloh anda dan keluarga selalu dalam lindungan, keberkahan dan rahmat Alloh SWT. Sebelumnya saya akan membicarakan sedikit tentang TORCH.
TORCH adalah istilah untuk menggambarkan gabungan dari empat jenis penyakit infeksi yaitu TOxoplasma, Rubella, Cytomegalovirus dan Herpes. Keempat jenis penyakti infeksi ini, sama-sama berbahaya bagi janin bila infeksi diderita oleh ibu hamil.
Dan kini, diagnosis untuk penyakit infeksi telah berkembang antar lain ke arah pemeriksaan secara imunologis.
Prinsip dari pemeriksaan ini adalah deteksi adanya zat anti (antibodi) yang spesifik taerhadap kuman penyebab infeksi tersebut sebagai respon tubuh terhadap adanya benda asing (kuman. Antibodi yang terburuk dapat berupa Imunoglobulin M (IgM) dan Imunoglobulin G (IgG)
TOXOPLASMA
Infeksi Toxoplasma disebabkan oleh parasit yang disebut Toxoplasma gondi.
Pada umumnya, infeksi Toxoplasma terjadi tanpa disertai gejala yang spesipik. Kira-kira hanya 10-20% kasus infeksi
Toxoplasma yang disertai gejala ringan, mirip gejala influenza, bisa timbul rasa lelah, malaise, demam, dan umumnya tidak menimbulkan masalah.
Infeksi Toxoplasma berbahaya bila terjadi saat ibu sedang hamil atau pada orang dengan sistem kekebalan tubuh terganggu (misalnya penderita AIDS, pasien transpalasi organ yang mendapatkan obat penekan respon imun).
Jika wanita hamil terinfeksi Toxoplasma maka akibat yang dapat terjadi adalah abortus spontan atau keguguran (4%), lahir mati (3%) atau bayi menderita Toxoplasmosis bawaan. pada Toxoplasmosis bawaan, gejala dapat muncul setelah dewasa, misalnya kelinan mata dan telinga, retardasi mental, kejang-kejang dn ensefalitis.
Diagnosis Toxoplasmosis secara klinis sukar ditentukan karena gejala-gejalanya tidak spesifik atau bahkan tidak menunjukkan gejala (sub klinik). Oleh karena itu, pemeriksaan laboratorium mutlak diperlukan untuk mendapatkan diagnosis yang tepat. Pemeriksaan yang lazim dilakukan adalah Anti-Toxoplasma IgG, IgM dan IgA, serta Aviditas Anti-Toxoplasma IgG.
Pemeriksaan tersebut perlu dilakukan pada orang yang diduga terinfeksi Toxoplasma, ibu-ibu sebelum atau selama masa hamil (bila hasilnya negatif pelu diulang sebulan sekali khususnya pada trimester pertama, selanjutnya tiap trimeter), serta bayi baru lahir dari ibu yang terinfeksi Toxoplasma.
RUBELLA
Infeksi Rubella ditandai dengan demam akut, ruam pada kulit dan pembesaran kelenjar getah bening. Infeksi ini disebabkan oleh virus Rubella, dapat menyerang anak-anak dan dewasa muda.
Infeksi Rubella berbahaya bila tejadi pada wanita hamil muda, karena dapat menyebabkan kelainan pada bayinya. Jika infeksi terjadi pada bulan pertama kehamilan maka risiko terjadinya kelainan adalah 50%, sedangkan jika infeksi tejadi trimester pertama maka resikonya menjadi 25% (menurut America College of Obstatrician and Gynecologists, 1981).
Tanda tanda dan gejala infeksi Rubella sangat bervariasi untuk tiap individu, bahkan pada beberapa pasien tidak dikenali, terutama apabila ruam merah tidak tampak. Oleh Karena itu, diagnosis infeksi Rubella yang tepat perlu ditegakkan dengan bantuan pemeriksaan laboratorium.
Pemeriksaan Laboratorium yang dilakukan meliputi pemeriksaan Anti-Rubella IgG dana IgM.
Pemeriksaan Anti-rubella IgG dapat digunakan untuk mendeteksi adanya kekebalan pada saat sebelum hamil. Jika ternyata belum memiliki kekebalan, dianjurkan untuk divaksinasi.
Pemeriksaan Anti-rubella IgG dan IgM terutama sangat berguna untuk diagnosis infeksi akut pada kehamilan < 18 minggu dan resiko infeksi rubella bawaan.
CYTOMEGALOVIRUS (CMV)
Infeksi CMV disebabkan oleh virus Cytomegalo, dan virus ini temasuk golongan virus keluarga Herpes. Seperti halnya keluarga herpes lainnya, virus CMV dapat tinggal secara laten dalam tubuh dan CMV merupakan salah satu penyebab infeksi yang berbahaya bagi janin bila infeksi yang berbahaya bagi janin bila infeksi terjadi saat ibu sedang hamil.
Jika ibu hamil terinfeksi. maka janin yang dikandung mempunyai risiko tertular sehingga mengalami gangguan misalnya pembesaran hati, kuning, pengkapuran otak, ketulian, retardasi mental, dan lain-lain.
Pemeriksaan laboratorium sangat bermanfaat untuk mengetahui infeksi akut atau infeski berulang, dimana infeksi akut mempunyai risiko yang lebih tinggi. Pemeriksaan laboratorium yang dilakukan meliputi Anti CMV IgG dan IgM, serta Aviditas Anti-CMV IgG.
HERPES SIMPLEKS TIPE II
Infeksi herpes pada alat genital (kelamin) disebabkan oleh Virus Herpes Simpleks tipe II (HSV II). Virus ini dapat berada dalam bentuk laten, menjalar melalui serabut syaraf sensorik dan berdiam diganglion sistem syaraf otonom.
Bayi yang dilahirkan dari ibu yang terinfeksi HSV II biasanya memperlihatkan lepuh pada kuli, tetapi hal ini tidak selalu muncul sehingga mungkin tidak diketahui. Infeksi HSV II pada bayi yang baru lahir dapat berakibat fatal (Pada lebih dari 50 kasus)
Pemeriksaan laboratorium, yaitu Anti-HSV II IgG dan Igm sangat penting untuk mendeteksi secara dini terhadap kemungkinan terjadinya infeksi oleh HSV II dan mencaegah bahaya lebih lanjut pada bayi bila infeksi terjadi pada saat kehamilan.
Infeksi TORCH yang terjadi pada ibu hamil dapt membahayakan janin yang dikandungnya. Pada infeksi TORCH, gejala klinis yang ada sering sulit dibedakan dari penyakit lain karena gejalanya tidak spesifik. Walaupun ada yang memberi gejala ini tidak muncul sehingga menyulitkan dokter untuk melakukan diagnosis. Oleh karena itu, pemeriksaan laboratorium sangat diperlukan untuk membantu mengetahui infeksi TORCH agar dokter dapat memberikan penanganan atau terapi yang tepat.
Gejala gejala yang dialami oleh seseorang yang mengidap Toksoplasma?
80 - 90 % orang normal tidak menunjukkan gejala. hanya 10-20 persen menunjukkan gejala. Pada orang dewasa toksoplasma biasanya menimbulkan gejala berupa :
1. Rasa lelah.
2. Flu.
3. Nyeri kepala.
4. Sakit tenggorokan.
5. Demam.
6. pembesaran kelenjar getah bening termasuk hati serta limpa.
7. gangguan pada kulit.
Pencegahan :
1. Lakukan pemeriksaan terhadap binatang peliharaan anda di rumah, seperti kucing, burung, ikan, kelinci dan anjing untuk mengetahui apakah mereka memiliki infeksi aktif atau tidak. Jika binatang peliharaan anda ternyata memiliki infeksi aktif, titipkan mereka ke tempat pemeliharaan atau pada teman sekurang kurangnya selama 6 minggu (yaitu dimana masa infeksi dapat ditularkan). Jika mereka bebas dari infeksi, biarkan mereka seperti biasanya dengan tidak membiarkan mereka memakan makan daging mentah, pergi keluar rumah, memburu tikus atau burung, atau bermain dengan binatang lain.
2. Mintalah seseorang untuk membersihkan kandang dan kotorannya. Bila anda harus melakukannya sendiri, gunakan sarung tangan dan cuci tangan anda setelah selesai. Kandang harus dibersihkan setiap hari karena sel telur yang memindahkan penyakit akan sangat menular dengan berjalannya waktu.
3. Gunakan sarung tangan jika anda berkebun. Jangan berkebun di tanah yang terkena kotoran kucing, juga jangan biarkan anak bermain di pasir yang terkena kotoran kucing.
4. Cuci buah dan sayur terutama yang ditanam sendiri dengan sabun pencuci piring, bilas bersih bersih.
5. Jangan makan daging mentah atau daging yg kurang matang atau susu yang tidak di pasteurisasi. Bila anda ke restoran pesanlah daging yang matang penuh.
6. Termometer daging yang anda masak atau rebus. Minimal harus menunjukan 70º C. (Kista ini di lingkungan dapat hidup sampai beberapa bulan. dan dia tahan terhadap desinfektan, freezing, and drying. tapi dia akan mati pada suhu 70 derajat C dalam 10 menit).
7. Jika anda sedang hamil lakukan pemeriksaan rutin untuk menghindari dan mengatisipasi jika terkena toksoplasma.
Toksoplasma dapat diobati. Dengan pemeriksaan dan pengobatan secara dini, penularan pada bayi akan bisa ditekan seminimal mungkin. Selain itu, pengobatan dini yang tepat saat awal kehamilan akan menurunkan secara signifikan kemungkinan janin terinfeksi. Dan pengobatan yang dapat anda lakukan di "Klinik Seahat" adalah dengan menggunakan beberapa terapi yang dapat meningkatkan imunitas tubuh dan daya tahan tubuh. Seperti banyaklah anda mengkonsumsi Habbatussauda, madu, kurma dan lainnya. Untuk lebih spesifik dalam pengobatan anda dapat mengkonsumsi beberapa obat seperti Moridae Herbs 3x2 kapsul, Immunocaps 3x3 kapsul, Habbatussauda 3x2 kapsul, aloeina 3x2 kapsul dan Gen-C 3x1 sendok makan. Selamat mencoba, semoga kehamilan anda tidak mengalami gangguan yang berarti.
Terimakasih !
Wassalamu’alaikum,Wr.Wb.
saya seorang ibu usia 37 thn. Alhamdulillah saya telah diamanahi Allah seorang anak laki-laki saat ini usia 15 bulan dalam keadaan sehat (berat lahir 3,7 kg, tinggi 52cm). Bulan januari saya hamil (memang telah kami rencanakan sebelumnya menggunakan KB IUD)tapi saat kandungan saya berusia 2.5 bulan/10 minggu saya keguguran. setelah dikuret dan periksa TORCH di lab. hasilnya sbb. : IgG Toxoplasma positif : 16 & IgG CMV positif 34. sedangkan yg lainnya negatif. Pengobatan Islami seperti apa yang bisa saya lakukan untuk penyakit ini & perilaku apa yang harus saya perbaiki agar saya segera terbebas dari virus tersebut & bisa kembali hamil? Terimakasih atas kesempatannya dan mohon solusinya.
Wassalamualikum wr.wb.
Jawaban :
Wa’alaikum Salam,Wr.Wb.
Ibu Tri yang dicintai Alloh SWT dan saya hormati, Insya’alloh anda dan keluarga selalu dalam lindungan, keberkahan dan rahmat Alloh SWT. Sebelumnya saya akan membicarakan sedikit tentang TORCH.
TORCH adalah istilah untuk menggambarkan gabungan dari empat jenis penyakit infeksi yaitu TOxoplasma, Rubella, Cytomegalovirus dan Herpes. Keempat jenis penyakti infeksi ini, sama-sama berbahaya bagi janin bila infeksi diderita oleh ibu hamil.
Dan kini, diagnosis untuk penyakit infeksi telah berkembang antar lain ke arah pemeriksaan secara imunologis.
Prinsip dari pemeriksaan ini adalah deteksi adanya zat anti (antibodi) yang spesifik taerhadap kuman penyebab infeksi tersebut sebagai respon tubuh terhadap adanya benda asing (kuman. Antibodi yang terburuk dapat berupa Imunoglobulin M (IgM) dan Imunoglobulin G (IgG)
TOXOPLASMA
Infeksi Toxoplasma disebabkan oleh parasit yang disebut Toxoplasma gondi.
Pada umumnya, infeksi Toxoplasma terjadi tanpa disertai gejala yang spesipik. Kira-kira hanya 10-20% kasus infeksi
Toxoplasma yang disertai gejala ringan, mirip gejala influenza, bisa timbul rasa lelah, malaise, demam, dan umumnya tidak menimbulkan masalah.
Infeksi Toxoplasma berbahaya bila terjadi saat ibu sedang hamil atau pada orang dengan sistem kekebalan tubuh terganggu (misalnya penderita AIDS, pasien transpalasi organ yang mendapatkan obat penekan respon imun).
Jika wanita hamil terinfeksi Toxoplasma maka akibat yang dapat terjadi adalah abortus spontan atau keguguran (4%), lahir mati (3%) atau bayi menderita Toxoplasmosis bawaan. pada Toxoplasmosis bawaan, gejala dapat muncul setelah dewasa, misalnya kelinan mata dan telinga, retardasi mental, kejang-kejang dn ensefalitis.
Diagnosis Toxoplasmosis secara klinis sukar ditentukan karena gejala-gejalanya tidak spesifik atau bahkan tidak menunjukkan gejala (sub klinik). Oleh karena itu, pemeriksaan laboratorium mutlak diperlukan untuk mendapatkan diagnosis yang tepat. Pemeriksaan yang lazim dilakukan adalah Anti-Toxoplasma IgG, IgM dan IgA, serta Aviditas Anti-Toxoplasma IgG.
Pemeriksaan tersebut perlu dilakukan pada orang yang diduga terinfeksi Toxoplasma, ibu-ibu sebelum atau selama masa hamil (bila hasilnya negatif pelu diulang sebulan sekali khususnya pada trimester pertama, selanjutnya tiap trimeter), serta bayi baru lahir dari ibu yang terinfeksi Toxoplasma.
RUBELLA
Infeksi Rubella ditandai dengan demam akut, ruam pada kulit dan pembesaran kelenjar getah bening. Infeksi ini disebabkan oleh virus Rubella, dapat menyerang anak-anak dan dewasa muda.
Infeksi Rubella berbahaya bila tejadi pada wanita hamil muda, karena dapat menyebabkan kelainan pada bayinya. Jika infeksi terjadi pada bulan pertama kehamilan maka risiko terjadinya kelainan adalah 50%, sedangkan jika infeksi tejadi trimester pertama maka resikonya menjadi 25% (menurut America College of Obstatrician and Gynecologists, 1981).
Tanda tanda dan gejala infeksi Rubella sangat bervariasi untuk tiap individu, bahkan pada beberapa pasien tidak dikenali, terutama apabila ruam merah tidak tampak. Oleh Karena itu, diagnosis infeksi Rubella yang tepat perlu ditegakkan dengan bantuan pemeriksaan laboratorium.
Pemeriksaan Laboratorium yang dilakukan meliputi pemeriksaan Anti-Rubella IgG dana IgM.
Pemeriksaan Anti-rubella IgG dapat digunakan untuk mendeteksi adanya kekebalan pada saat sebelum hamil. Jika ternyata belum memiliki kekebalan, dianjurkan untuk divaksinasi.
Pemeriksaan Anti-rubella IgG dan IgM terutama sangat berguna untuk diagnosis infeksi akut pada kehamilan < 18 minggu dan resiko infeksi rubella bawaan.
CYTOMEGALOVIRUS (CMV)
Infeksi CMV disebabkan oleh virus Cytomegalo, dan virus ini temasuk golongan virus keluarga Herpes. Seperti halnya keluarga herpes lainnya, virus CMV dapat tinggal secara laten dalam tubuh dan CMV merupakan salah satu penyebab infeksi yang berbahaya bagi janin bila infeksi yang berbahaya bagi janin bila infeksi terjadi saat ibu sedang hamil.
Jika ibu hamil terinfeksi. maka janin yang dikandung mempunyai risiko tertular sehingga mengalami gangguan misalnya pembesaran hati, kuning, pengkapuran otak, ketulian, retardasi mental, dan lain-lain.
Pemeriksaan laboratorium sangat bermanfaat untuk mengetahui infeksi akut atau infeski berulang, dimana infeksi akut mempunyai risiko yang lebih tinggi. Pemeriksaan laboratorium yang dilakukan meliputi Anti CMV IgG dan IgM, serta Aviditas Anti-CMV IgG.
HERPES SIMPLEKS TIPE II
Infeksi herpes pada alat genital (kelamin) disebabkan oleh Virus Herpes Simpleks tipe II (HSV II). Virus ini dapat berada dalam bentuk laten, menjalar melalui serabut syaraf sensorik dan berdiam diganglion sistem syaraf otonom.
Bayi yang dilahirkan dari ibu yang terinfeksi HSV II biasanya memperlihatkan lepuh pada kuli, tetapi hal ini tidak selalu muncul sehingga mungkin tidak diketahui. Infeksi HSV II pada bayi yang baru lahir dapat berakibat fatal (Pada lebih dari 50 kasus)
Pemeriksaan laboratorium, yaitu Anti-HSV II IgG dan Igm sangat penting untuk mendeteksi secara dini terhadap kemungkinan terjadinya infeksi oleh HSV II dan mencaegah bahaya lebih lanjut pada bayi bila infeksi terjadi pada saat kehamilan.
Infeksi TORCH yang terjadi pada ibu hamil dapt membahayakan janin yang dikandungnya. Pada infeksi TORCH, gejala klinis yang ada sering sulit dibedakan dari penyakit lain karena gejalanya tidak spesifik. Walaupun ada yang memberi gejala ini tidak muncul sehingga menyulitkan dokter untuk melakukan diagnosis. Oleh karena itu, pemeriksaan laboratorium sangat diperlukan untuk membantu mengetahui infeksi TORCH agar dokter dapat memberikan penanganan atau terapi yang tepat.
Gejala gejala yang dialami oleh seseorang yang mengidap Toksoplasma?
80 - 90 % orang normal tidak menunjukkan gejala. hanya 10-20 persen menunjukkan gejala. Pada orang dewasa toksoplasma biasanya menimbulkan gejala berupa :
1. Rasa lelah.
2. Flu.
3. Nyeri kepala.
4. Sakit tenggorokan.
5. Demam.
6. pembesaran kelenjar getah bening termasuk hati serta limpa.
7. gangguan pada kulit.
Pencegahan :
1. Lakukan pemeriksaan terhadap binatang peliharaan anda di rumah, seperti kucing, burung, ikan, kelinci dan anjing untuk mengetahui apakah mereka memiliki infeksi aktif atau tidak. Jika binatang peliharaan anda ternyata memiliki infeksi aktif, titipkan mereka ke tempat pemeliharaan atau pada teman sekurang kurangnya selama 6 minggu (yaitu dimana masa infeksi dapat ditularkan). Jika mereka bebas dari infeksi, biarkan mereka seperti biasanya dengan tidak membiarkan mereka memakan makan daging mentah, pergi keluar rumah, memburu tikus atau burung, atau bermain dengan binatang lain.
2. Mintalah seseorang untuk membersihkan kandang dan kotorannya. Bila anda harus melakukannya sendiri, gunakan sarung tangan dan cuci tangan anda setelah selesai. Kandang harus dibersihkan setiap hari karena sel telur yang memindahkan penyakit akan sangat menular dengan berjalannya waktu.
3. Gunakan sarung tangan jika anda berkebun. Jangan berkebun di tanah yang terkena kotoran kucing, juga jangan biarkan anak bermain di pasir yang terkena kotoran kucing.
4. Cuci buah dan sayur terutama yang ditanam sendiri dengan sabun pencuci piring, bilas bersih bersih.
5. Jangan makan daging mentah atau daging yg kurang matang atau susu yang tidak di pasteurisasi. Bila anda ke restoran pesanlah daging yang matang penuh.
6. Termometer daging yang anda masak atau rebus. Minimal harus menunjukan 70º C. (Kista ini di lingkungan dapat hidup sampai beberapa bulan. dan dia tahan terhadap desinfektan, freezing, and drying. tapi dia akan mati pada suhu 70 derajat C dalam 10 menit).
7. Jika anda sedang hamil lakukan pemeriksaan rutin untuk menghindari dan mengatisipasi jika terkena toksoplasma.
Toksoplasma dapat diobati. Dengan pemeriksaan dan pengobatan secara dini, penularan pada bayi akan bisa ditekan seminimal mungkin. Selain itu, pengobatan dini yang tepat saat awal kehamilan akan menurunkan secara signifikan kemungkinan janin terinfeksi. Dan pengobatan yang dapat anda lakukan di "Klinik Seahat" adalah dengan menggunakan beberapa terapi yang dapat meningkatkan imunitas tubuh dan daya tahan tubuh. Seperti banyaklah anda mengkonsumsi Habbatussauda, madu, kurma dan lainnya. Untuk lebih spesifik dalam pengobatan anda dapat mengkonsumsi beberapa obat seperti Moridae Herbs 3x2 kapsul, Immunocaps 3x3 kapsul, Habbatussauda 3x2 kapsul, aloeina 3x2 kapsul dan Gen-C 3x1 sendok makan. Selamat mencoba, semoga kehamilan anda tidak mengalami gangguan yang berarti.
Terimakasih !
Wassalamu’alaikum,Wr.Wb.
TORCH
Pengertian TORCH
TORCH adalah singkatan dari Toxoplasma gondii (Toxo), Rubella, Cyto Megalo Virus (CMV), Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) yang terdiri dari HSV1 dan HSV2 serta kemungkinan oleh virus lain yang dampak klinisnya lebih terbatas (Misalnya Measles, Varicella, Echovirus, Mumps, virus Vaccinia, virus Polio, dan virus Coxsackie-B).
Penyebab utama dari virus dan parasit TORCH (Toxo, Rubella, CMV, dan Herpes) adalah hewan yang ada di sekitar kita, seperti ayam, kucing, burung, tikus, merpati, kambing, sapi, anjing, babi dan lainnya. Meskipun tidak secara langsung sebagai penyebab terjangkitnya penyakit yang berasal dari virus ini adalah hewan, namun juga bisa disebabkan oleh karena peratara (tidak langsung) seperti memakan sayuran, daging setengah matang dan lainnya.
Dalam dunia medis, Toxo sering disebut juga dengan virus kucing. Padahal sesungguhnya ini bukan virus kucing, tetapi parasit darah. Kenapa sering disebut virus kucing : selain sebutan ini sudah salah kaprah, memang parasit ini tumbuhnya di dalam tubuh binatang. Hal mana menurut penelitian di dalam maupun di luar negeri, 70% penyebab penyakit ini adalah kotoran kucing. Kemudian melalui hewan lain yang menempel dalam makanan, lalu masuklah ke dalam tubuh manusia dan menyatu dalam darah.
Awalnya seseorang yang mengidap Toxo ini tampak sehat tetapi kemudian ketika sedang hamil mulai muncul sejumlah gejala. Gejala yang sering terjadi adalah flek pada wanita yang sedang hamil. Flek ini bisa terjadi terus menerus sepanjang kehamilan, janin di dalam rahim tidak berkembang, hamil anggur, atau bayinya meninggal pada usia kandungan 7-8 bulan. Bahkan yang seringkali terjadi adlah keguguran.
Sebenarnya Toxo bukanlah penyakit menular kepada pasangan, tetapi ia menular pada keturunan. Bisa jadi anak pertama dan kedua sehat, tetapi anak ketiga cacat atau mengalami Epilepsi dan autisme. Tetapi yang sering terjadi sesungguhnya jika dilakukan tes di laboratorium, baik anak pertama maupun anak kedua sesungguhnya turut terinfeksi.
Berbeda dengan Rubella. Penyakit ini orang sering menyebutnya dengan Campak Jerman. Pada kasus Rubella, ibu hamil tidak mengalami keguguran atau bayinya meninggal saat lahir, tetapi yang sering terjadi adalah bayi yang dilahirkan mengalami glukoma, atau kebutaan, kerusakan pada otak atau pengapuran pada otak, bibir sumbing, tuna rungu dan sulit bicara.
Sedangkan pada pengidap CMV (Cyto Megalo Virus), misalnya seorang ibu pada saat hamil, ia akan mengalami keguguran terus menerus, atau bayi yang dikandungnya lahir dalam keadaan cacat fisik, seperti Hidrosefalus (pembesaran kepala), Microsefalus (pengecilan kepala), lahir dengan usus keluar tubuh, tubuh transparan atau kaki dan tangannya jadi bengkok.
Kemudian, untuk penyakit Herpes lain lagi. Kemunculannya ditandai dengan bintik - bintik pada tubuh dan pada alat genital. Seorang yang mengidap Herpes, di samping kesakitan, juga terasa panas. Bagi wanita hamil sering keguguran atau bayinya lahir dalam keadaan cacat.
Jadi Toxo, Rubella, CMV, dan Herpes dapat menyebabkan rusaknya fertilitas pada wanita. Sel telur maupun inti sel dirusak oleh virus tersebut sehingga sel terlurnya mengecil dan tidak bisa dibuahi. Dengan adanya infeksi TORCH ini, pada wanita bisa menyebabkan terbentuknya mioma, penyumbatan atau perlengketan, sehingga sel telur tidak bisa dibuahi atau mengakibatkan sulit hamil.
Toxo tidak menular pada pasangan, sedangkan Rubella, CMV, dan Herpes bisa menular. Penularan bisa terjadi melalui hubungan seksual, air liur, keringat, darah, dan Air Susu Ibu (ASI). Sehingga kau wanita terjangkit Rubella, CMV, dan Herpes, maka suaminya pun dapat tertular. Sulitnya terjadi kehamilan pada wanita disebabkan oleh virus tersebut memperburuk kualitas spermatozoa/sperma, karena kekentalan sperma menjadi cair. Volume sperma yang seharusnya 5 CC menjadi 3 CC dan gerakannya pun sudah berubah.
Perlu ditegaskan lagi bahwa Toxo maupun Rubella dan CMV serta Herpes BUKAN hanya milik ibu hamil saja. Tetapi siap pun bisa terkena TORCH. Baik dia orang dewasa, kamum muda, lansia, maupun balita. Kemudian TORCH ini yang diserang adalah saraf otak, mata dan gerak. Jika menyerag otak misalnya gejalanya sering sakit kepala, radang tenggorokan, atau flu berkepanjangan. Otot - otot terasa sakit sampai ke persendian dan pinggang. Kaki pun mudah capek dan lemas, menggigil kemudian lambung pun sakit.
Orang sering beranggapan bahwa anak yang sakit mata disebabkan oleh seringnya nonton TV dan terlalu dkat ke layar. Tak terpikirkan bahwa sakit mata yang biasa mengakibatkan kebutaan itu disebabkan ooleh infeksi TORCH.
TORCH?
Penyakit TORCH merupakan kelompok infeksi beberapa jenis virus yaitu parasit Toxoplasma gondii, virus Rubella, CMV (Cytomegalo Virus), virus Herpes Simplex (HSV1 – HSV2) dan kemungkinan oleh virus lain yang dampak klinisnya lebih terbatas (misalnya Measles, Varicella, Echovirus, Mumps, Vassinia, Polio dan Coxsackie-B).
Penyakit TORCH ini dikenal karena menyebabkan kelainan dan berbagai keluhan yang bisa menyerang siapa saja, mulai anak-anak sampai orang dewasa, baik pria maupun wanita. Bagi ibu yang terinfeksi saat hamil dapat menyebabkan kelainan pertumbuhan pada bayinya, yaitu cacat fisik dan mental yang beraneka ragam.
Infeksi TORCH juga dapat menyerang semua jaringan organ tubuh, termasuk sistem saraf pusat dan perifeir yang mengendalikan fungsi gerak, penglihatan, pendengaran, sistem kadiovaskuler serta metabolisma tubuh.
Toxoplasma Gondii
Penyakit Toxoplasmosis disebabkan oleh bakteri Toxoplasma gondii. Parasit ini biasa hidup di dalam usus hewan peliharaan rumah seperti anjing dan kucing, sehingga penularan dari hewan ke manusia mudah terjadi. Hewan lain adalah tikus, burung merpati, ayam, kerbau, sapi atau kambing.
Daging hewan tersebut dikonsumsi manusia dan dapat berubah menjadi kista-kisata yang masuk dalam peredaran darah dan jaringan otot/daging. Bila penyakit ini menjangkiti wanita hamil, maka janin juga akan terinfeksi.
Gejala yang mungkin timbul adalah anemia, kejang-kejang, pembengkakan kelenjar air liur, muntah, bisul-bisul, radang paru-paru, diare, demam, kulit kuning dan pengapuran dalam tengkorak.
Gejala tersebut umumnya tampak pada bayi berusia 1 tahun atau lebih, akan diteruskan dengan kejang-kejang, serta keterlambatan mental dan fisik pada usia selanjutnya. Infeksi pada ibu hamil seakan tanpa menimbulkan gejala yang tampak pada ibu sendiri namun mempunyai dampak yang serius pada janin, dapat keguguran, atau lahir dengan cacat fisik maupun mental.
Rubella
Infeksi virus Rubella merupakan penyakit ringan pada anak dan dewasa, tetapi apabila terjadi pada ibu yang sedang mengandung virus ini dapat menembus dinding plasenta dan langsung menyerang janin.
Gejala klinis setelah bayi lahir adalah mata katarak, kelainan jantung, atau tuli. Gejala lain adalah berat badan rendah, trombositopeni, kelainan tulang, kelainan kelenjar endrokin, kekurangan hormon pertumbuhan, diabetes atau radang paru-paru.
Virus Rubella ditularkan melalui urin, kontak pernafasan, dan memiliki masa inkubasi 2-3 minggu. Penderita dapat menularkan virus selama seminggu sebelum dan sesudah timbulnya rash (bercak merah) pada kulit. Rash Rubella berwarna merah jambu, menghilang dalam 2-3 hari, dan tidak selalu muncul untuk semua kasus infeksi.
Cyto Megalo Virus (CMV)
Virus CMV termasuk keluarga virus Herpes. Sekitar 50% – 80% orang dewasa memiliki antibodi anti CMV. Infeksi primer virus ini terjadi pada usia bayi, anak-anak, dan remaja yang sedang dalam kegiatan seksual aktif. Penderita infeksi primer tidak memperlihatkan gejala yang khusus, tetapi virus tetap hidup dalam tubuh penderita selama bertahun-tahun.
Virus CMV akan aktif apabila inang mengalami penurunan kondisi fisik dan kadang-kadang memunculkan keluhan seperti vertigo, migren, radang sendi, radang tenggorokan, radang lambung, lemah lesu dan beberapa keluhan pada saraf mata dan saraf otak.
Hanya sekitar 5 hingga 10 bayi yang terinfeksi CMV menunjukan kelainan sewaktu lahir. Gejala klinis yang umum dijumpai adalah berat badan rendah, hepatomegali, splenomegali, kulit kuning, radang paru-paru, dan kerusakan sel pada jaringan saraf pusat. Cacat pada jaringan saraf akan berlanjut menjadi kemunduran mental, tuli, rabun dan mikrosefali.
Herpess Simplex
HSV dibedakan menjadi HSV1 dan HSV2, penyebab 84% kasus penyakit kelamin Herpes adalah HSV2.
Perbedaan HSV1 dan HSV2:
Bagian yang disukai HSV1 adalah kulit dan selaput lendir mukosa di mata atau mulut, hidung dan telinga. Sedangkan HSV2 di kulit dan selaput lendir pada alat kelamin dan parianal.
Bentuk pada kulit HSV1 adalah bercak verikel-verikel kecil tersebar, sedangkan HSV2 membentuk bercak verikel besar, tebal dan terpusat.
Wanita hamil yang terinfeksi HSV2 harus ditangani secara serius karena dapat menembus plasenta ndan menimbulkan kerusakan neonatel sampai kematian janin. Selama belum dilakukan pengobatan yang efektif, perkembangan penyakit herpes sulit diramalkan. Jika infeksi ini segera diobati maka kemungkinan resiko dapat dihindarkan, sedangkan infeksi rekurens hanya dapat dibatasi frekwensi kambuhnya.
Diagnosa Penyakit TORCH
Proses diagnosa medis merupakan langkah pertama untuk menangani suatu penyakit. Tetapi diagnosa berdasarkan pengamatan gejala klinis sering sukar dilaksanakan, maka dilakukan diagnosa laboratorik dengan memeriksa serum darah, untuk mengukur titer-titer antibodi IgM atau IgG-nya.
Penderita TORCH kadang tidak menunjukkan gejala klinis yang spesifik, bahkan bisa jadi sama sekali tidak merasakan sakit. Secara umum keluhan yang dirasakan adalah mudah pingsan, pusing, vertigo, migran, penglihatan kabur, pendengaran terganggu, radang tenggorokan, radang sendi, nyeri lambung, lemah lesu, kesemutan, sulit tidur, epilepsi, dan keluhan lainnya.
Untuk kasus kehamilan: sulit hamil, keguguran, organ tubuh bayi tidak lengkap, cacat fisik maupun mental, autis, keterlambatan tumbuh kembang anak, dan ketidaksempurnaan lainnya.
Namun begitu, gejala diatas tentu belum membuktikan adanya penyakit TORCH sebelum dibuktikan dengan uji laboratorik.
Sewaktu istri saya mengalami penyakit sakit kepala yang luar biasa setiap hari, sudah mendatangi beberapa dokter untuk mengetahui penyakit apa sebenarnya yang diderita. Setelah akhirnya seorang dokter menyarankan untuk tes darah di laboratorium barulah ketahuan penyakitnya yaitu CMV.
Pengobatan TORCH
Karena pengobatan TORCH secara medis sangat mahal untuk ukuran kami, akhirnya pengobatan alternatif yang dipilih. Di Jogjakarta menurut informasi penderita TORCH banyak yang berobat dengan cara Terapi Sengat Lebah di daerah Godean, mengkonsumsi Kapsul Herbal TORCH produksi Kusumo Wanadri racikan Romo Dr. Paulus di jalan Cokroaminoto, dan Terapi Ramuan Herbal di Yayasan Aquatreat Teraphy Indonesia hasil penelitian Ir. H.A. Juanda di Jalan Sidikan.
Istri saya saat ini sedang menjalani terapi pak Juanda, dimana pengobatan alternatif pak Juanda menghususkan diri menangani Penyakit TORCH saja. Syukur alhamdulillah istri saya mengalami banyak kemajuan yang menggembirakan setelah dilakukan uji lab kembali kandungan virus CMV-nya banyak berkurang.
Kebetulan aku masih punya catatan tentang ahli pengobatan TORCH
Alamatnya sbb:
Bpk. Juanda
Jl. Kemang Raya No 11
Jakarta
Telp 717 92329
Perumahan Indra Pata
Jl. Sutiragen 9 No 6
Warung Jambu, Bogor
Telp 0251 341 094
TORCH adalah singkatan dari Toxoplasma gondii (Toxo), Rubella, Cyto Megalo Virus (CMV), Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) yang terdiri dari HSV1 dan HSV2 serta kemungkinan oleh virus lain yang dampak klinisnya lebih terbatas (Misalnya Measles, Varicella, Echovirus, Mumps, virus Vaccinia, virus Polio, dan virus Coxsackie-B).
Penyebab utama dari virus dan parasit TORCH (Toxo, Rubella, CMV, dan Herpes) adalah hewan yang ada di sekitar kita, seperti ayam, kucing, burung, tikus, merpati, kambing, sapi, anjing, babi dan lainnya. Meskipun tidak secara langsung sebagai penyebab terjangkitnya penyakit yang berasal dari virus ini adalah hewan, namun juga bisa disebabkan oleh karena peratara (tidak langsung) seperti memakan sayuran, daging setengah matang dan lainnya.
Dalam dunia medis, Toxo sering disebut juga dengan virus kucing. Padahal sesungguhnya ini bukan virus kucing, tetapi parasit darah. Kenapa sering disebut virus kucing : selain sebutan ini sudah salah kaprah, memang parasit ini tumbuhnya di dalam tubuh binatang. Hal mana menurut penelitian di dalam maupun di luar negeri, 70% penyebab penyakit ini adalah kotoran kucing. Kemudian melalui hewan lain yang menempel dalam makanan, lalu masuklah ke dalam tubuh manusia dan menyatu dalam darah.
Awalnya seseorang yang mengidap Toxo ini tampak sehat tetapi kemudian ketika sedang hamil mulai muncul sejumlah gejala. Gejala yang sering terjadi adalah flek pada wanita yang sedang hamil. Flek ini bisa terjadi terus menerus sepanjang kehamilan, janin di dalam rahim tidak berkembang, hamil anggur, atau bayinya meninggal pada usia kandungan 7-8 bulan. Bahkan yang seringkali terjadi adlah keguguran.
Sebenarnya Toxo bukanlah penyakit menular kepada pasangan, tetapi ia menular pada keturunan. Bisa jadi anak pertama dan kedua sehat, tetapi anak ketiga cacat atau mengalami Epilepsi dan autisme. Tetapi yang sering terjadi sesungguhnya jika dilakukan tes di laboratorium, baik anak pertama maupun anak kedua sesungguhnya turut terinfeksi.
Berbeda dengan Rubella. Penyakit ini orang sering menyebutnya dengan Campak Jerman. Pada kasus Rubella, ibu hamil tidak mengalami keguguran atau bayinya meninggal saat lahir, tetapi yang sering terjadi adalah bayi yang dilahirkan mengalami glukoma, atau kebutaan, kerusakan pada otak atau pengapuran pada otak, bibir sumbing, tuna rungu dan sulit bicara.
Sedangkan pada pengidap CMV (Cyto Megalo Virus), misalnya seorang ibu pada saat hamil, ia akan mengalami keguguran terus menerus, atau bayi yang dikandungnya lahir dalam keadaan cacat fisik, seperti Hidrosefalus (pembesaran kepala), Microsefalus (pengecilan kepala), lahir dengan usus keluar tubuh, tubuh transparan atau kaki dan tangannya jadi bengkok.
Kemudian, untuk penyakit Herpes lain lagi. Kemunculannya ditandai dengan bintik - bintik pada tubuh dan pada alat genital. Seorang yang mengidap Herpes, di samping kesakitan, juga terasa panas. Bagi wanita hamil sering keguguran atau bayinya lahir dalam keadaan cacat.
Jadi Toxo, Rubella, CMV, dan Herpes dapat menyebabkan rusaknya fertilitas pada wanita. Sel telur maupun inti sel dirusak oleh virus tersebut sehingga sel terlurnya mengecil dan tidak bisa dibuahi. Dengan adanya infeksi TORCH ini, pada wanita bisa menyebabkan terbentuknya mioma, penyumbatan atau perlengketan, sehingga sel telur tidak bisa dibuahi atau mengakibatkan sulit hamil.
Toxo tidak menular pada pasangan, sedangkan Rubella, CMV, dan Herpes bisa menular. Penularan bisa terjadi melalui hubungan seksual, air liur, keringat, darah, dan Air Susu Ibu (ASI). Sehingga kau wanita terjangkit Rubella, CMV, dan Herpes, maka suaminya pun dapat tertular. Sulitnya terjadi kehamilan pada wanita disebabkan oleh virus tersebut memperburuk kualitas spermatozoa/sperma, karena kekentalan sperma menjadi cair. Volume sperma yang seharusnya 5 CC menjadi 3 CC dan gerakannya pun sudah berubah.
Perlu ditegaskan lagi bahwa Toxo maupun Rubella dan CMV serta Herpes BUKAN hanya milik ibu hamil saja. Tetapi siap pun bisa terkena TORCH. Baik dia orang dewasa, kamum muda, lansia, maupun balita. Kemudian TORCH ini yang diserang adalah saraf otak, mata dan gerak. Jika menyerag otak misalnya gejalanya sering sakit kepala, radang tenggorokan, atau flu berkepanjangan. Otot - otot terasa sakit sampai ke persendian dan pinggang. Kaki pun mudah capek dan lemas, menggigil kemudian lambung pun sakit.
Orang sering beranggapan bahwa anak yang sakit mata disebabkan oleh seringnya nonton TV dan terlalu dkat ke layar. Tak terpikirkan bahwa sakit mata yang biasa mengakibatkan kebutaan itu disebabkan ooleh infeksi TORCH.
TORCH?
Penyakit TORCH merupakan kelompok infeksi beberapa jenis virus yaitu parasit Toxoplasma gondii, virus Rubella, CMV (Cytomegalo Virus), virus Herpes Simplex (HSV1 – HSV2) dan kemungkinan oleh virus lain yang dampak klinisnya lebih terbatas (misalnya Measles, Varicella, Echovirus, Mumps, Vassinia, Polio dan Coxsackie-B).
Penyakit TORCH ini dikenal karena menyebabkan kelainan dan berbagai keluhan yang bisa menyerang siapa saja, mulai anak-anak sampai orang dewasa, baik pria maupun wanita. Bagi ibu yang terinfeksi saat hamil dapat menyebabkan kelainan pertumbuhan pada bayinya, yaitu cacat fisik dan mental yang beraneka ragam.
Infeksi TORCH juga dapat menyerang semua jaringan organ tubuh, termasuk sistem saraf pusat dan perifeir yang mengendalikan fungsi gerak, penglihatan, pendengaran, sistem kadiovaskuler serta metabolisma tubuh.
Toxoplasma Gondii
Penyakit Toxoplasmosis disebabkan oleh bakteri Toxoplasma gondii. Parasit ini biasa hidup di dalam usus hewan peliharaan rumah seperti anjing dan kucing, sehingga penularan dari hewan ke manusia mudah terjadi. Hewan lain adalah tikus, burung merpati, ayam, kerbau, sapi atau kambing.
Daging hewan tersebut dikonsumsi manusia dan dapat berubah menjadi kista-kisata yang masuk dalam peredaran darah dan jaringan otot/daging. Bila penyakit ini menjangkiti wanita hamil, maka janin juga akan terinfeksi.
Gejala yang mungkin timbul adalah anemia, kejang-kejang, pembengkakan kelenjar air liur, muntah, bisul-bisul, radang paru-paru, diare, demam, kulit kuning dan pengapuran dalam tengkorak.
Gejala tersebut umumnya tampak pada bayi berusia 1 tahun atau lebih, akan diteruskan dengan kejang-kejang, serta keterlambatan mental dan fisik pada usia selanjutnya. Infeksi pada ibu hamil seakan tanpa menimbulkan gejala yang tampak pada ibu sendiri namun mempunyai dampak yang serius pada janin, dapat keguguran, atau lahir dengan cacat fisik maupun mental.
Rubella
Infeksi virus Rubella merupakan penyakit ringan pada anak dan dewasa, tetapi apabila terjadi pada ibu yang sedang mengandung virus ini dapat menembus dinding plasenta dan langsung menyerang janin.
Gejala klinis setelah bayi lahir adalah mata katarak, kelainan jantung, atau tuli. Gejala lain adalah berat badan rendah, trombositopeni, kelainan tulang, kelainan kelenjar endrokin, kekurangan hormon pertumbuhan, diabetes atau radang paru-paru.
Virus Rubella ditularkan melalui urin, kontak pernafasan, dan memiliki masa inkubasi 2-3 minggu. Penderita dapat menularkan virus selama seminggu sebelum dan sesudah timbulnya rash (bercak merah) pada kulit. Rash Rubella berwarna merah jambu, menghilang dalam 2-3 hari, dan tidak selalu muncul untuk semua kasus infeksi.
Cyto Megalo Virus (CMV)
Virus CMV termasuk keluarga virus Herpes. Sekitar 50% – 80% orang dewasa memiliki antibodi anti CMV. Infeksi primer virus ini terjadi pada usia bayi, anak-anak, dan remaja yang sedang dalam kegiatan seksual aktif. Penderita infeksi primer tidak memperlihatkan gejala yang khusus, tetapi virus tetap hidup dalam tubuh penderita selama bertahun-tahun.
Virus CMV akan aktif apabila inang mengalami penurunan kondisi fisik dan kadang-kadang memunculkan keluhan seperti vertigo, migren, radang sendi, radang tenggorokan, radang lambung, lemah lesu dan beberapa keluhan pada saraf mata dan saraf otak.
Hanya sekitar 5 hingga 10 bayi yang terinfeksi CMV menunjukan kelainan sewaktu lahir. Gejala klinis yang umum dijumpai adalah berat badan rendah, hepatomegali, splenomegali, kulit kuning, radang paru-paru, dan kerusakan sel pada jaringan saraf pusat. Cacat pada jaringan saraf akan berlanjut menjadi kemunduran mental, tuli, rabun dan mikrosefali.
Herpess Simplex
HSV dibedakan menjadi HSV1 dan HSV2, penyebab 84% kasus penyakit kelamin Herpes adalah HSV2.
Perbedaan HSV1 dan HSV2:
Bagian yang disukai HSV1 adalah kulit dan selaput lendir mukosa di mata atau mulut, hidung dan telinga. Sedangkan HSV2 di kulit dan selaput lendir pada alat kelamin dan parianal.
Bentuk pada kulit HSV1 adalah bercak verikel-verikel kecil tersebar, sedangkan HSV2 membentuk bercak verikel besar, tebal dan terpusat.
Wanita hamil yang terinfeksi HSV2 harus ditangani secara serius karena dapat menembus plasenta ndan menimbulkan kerusakan neonatel sampai kematian janin. Selama belum dilakukan pengobatan yang efektif, perkembangan penyakit herpes sulit diramalkan. Jika infeksi ini segera diobati maka kemungkinan resiko dapat dihindarkan, sedangkan infeksi rekurens hanya dapat dibatasi frekwensi kambuhnya.
Diagnosa Penyakit TORCH
Proses diagnosa medis merupakan langkah pertama untuk menangani suatu penyakit. Tetapi diagnosa berdasarkan pengamatan gejala klinis sering sukar dilaksanakan, maka dilakukan diagnosa laboratorik dengan memeriksa serum darah, untuk mengukur titer-titer antibodi IgM atau IgG-nya.
Penderita TORCH kadang tidak menunjukkan gejala klinis yang spesifik, bahkan bisa jadi sama sekali tidak merasakan sakit. Secara umum keluhan yang dirasakan adalah mudah pingsan, pusing, vertigo, migran, penglihatan kabur, pendengaran terganggu, radang tenggorokan, radang sendi, nyeri lambung, lemah lesu, kesemutan, sulit tidur, epilepsi, dan keluhan lainnya.
Untuk kasus kehamilan: sulit hamil, keguguran, organ tubuh bayi tidak lengkap, cacat fisik maupun mental, autis, keterlambatan tumbuh kembang anak, dan ketidaksempurnaan lainnya.
Namun begitu, gejala diatas tentu belum membuktikan adanya penyakit TORCH sebelum dibuktikan dengan uji laboratorik.
Sewaktu istri saya mengalami penyakit sakit kepala yang luar biasa setiap hari, sudah mendatangi beberapa dokter untuk mengetahui penyakit apa sebenarnya yang diderita. Setelah akhirnya seorang dokter menyarankan untuk tes darah di laboratorium barulah ketahuan penyakitnya yaitu CMV.
Pengobatan TORCH
Karena pengobatan TORCH secara medis sangat mahal untuk ukuran kami, akhirnya pengobatan alternatif yang dipilih. Di Jogjakarta menurut informasi penderita TORCH banyak yang berobat dengan cara Terapi Sengat Lebah di daerah Godean, mengkonsumsi Kapsul Herbal TORCH produksi Kusumo Wanadri racikan Romo Dr. Paulus di jalan Cokroaminoto, dan Terapi Ramuan Herbal di Yayasan Aquatreat Teraphy Indonesia hasil penelitian Ir. H.A. Juanda di Jalan Sidikan.
Istri saya saat ini sedang menjalani terapi pak Juanda, dimana pengobatan alternatif pak Juanda menghususkan diri menangani Penyakit TORCH saja. Syukur alhamdulillah istri saya mengalami banyak kemajuan yang menggembirakan setelah dilakukan uji lab kembali kandungan virus CMV-nya banyak berkurang.
Kebetulan aku masih punya catatan tentang ahli pengobatan TORCH
Alamatnya sbb:
Bpk. Juanda
Jl. Kemang Raya No 11
Jakarta
Telp 717 92329
Perumahan Indra Pata
Jl. Sutiragen 9 No 6
Warung Jambu, Bogor
Telp 0251 341 094
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