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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous
I don't usually watch Tavis Smiley but I like Dr Cornel West and their conversation sounded good from the first few words which caught my attention. They had a brilliant discussion about Michael Jackson and his cultural impact worldwide, and talked in detail about many of things from this thread. I watched the whole thing because it was so good. I especially thought Dr Dyson's points on the significance of the symbol and achievements of Michael Jackson essentially arguing that Michael Jackson was an important figure in black and world history to elevate black people and culture in general from the lowered state to a level of universal equality, in part because of his great success and exposure worldwide and in america. Y'all should check it out, it was a very thought provoking discussion.
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i just listened to it and while i don't really know either of the guys speaking I was far more convinced by Dyson's argument than i was West's, although i think they were both pretty ludicrous in some of their claims regarding Jackson-the-artist. To talk about a song like Man in the Mirror (which I do like) as though it were some kind of existentialist tract is to ultimately deflect from Michael Jackson's true worth as an artist. He wasn't great because he was comparable to Dostoevsky or Beethoven (as at one point Cornell suggests). He was one of the greatest and most influential pop stars of our time largely because he probably did more to popularise black music with a mass white audience than anyone before him. Why that shouldn't be enough I don't know.