Bye bye

[Alastair]

Jazzcorner has been very good to me, and I've talked with some lovely people over the years, but I'm afraid I can't stay any longer. Why?

Originally Posted by lois gilbert

I moved this thread to SpeakOut because I believe Michael Jackson is so important to music and entertainent. I respect that many of you don't agree with me, but to be so vile and so venomous, and quite frankly slanderous, I can no longer see the point of keeping this thread open.

Peace and light

Lois

Unless posts have been deleted, I can't see anything in the thread which deserves this censorship.

Say hello at Facebook, if you haven't already.

[Tom Storer]

I think you're overreacting just a wee bit. This is quite a free-wheeling board, with considerably less censorship and self-censorship than most. We all know this site is a private concern, and Lois acts, sometimes unpredictably, to discourage posting she feels crosses the line into poor taste or offensiveness. Because she's not a full-time moderator, her interventions are sporadic and can seem arbitrary or surprising. We may or may not agree with her reasons for closing or deleting a thread, for example, but it's not as if she's systematically blocking any particular viewpoint. In this case, she just got annoyed about some frank and not always complimentary talk about Michael Jackson. I don't think our rights are being trampled in an outrageous way. She just doesn't want us saying mean things about Michael Jackson. But if you feel your principles can't allow you to accept that, so be it.

[walto]

Yeah, Alastair--don't leave--just start a new thread.

Or use this one!

[Uli]

bye bye.

[Jesse]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPw-3e_pzqU

[Pete C]

Any man's voluntary self-banishment diminishes me.

[Captain Hate]

This is Lois's bbs and she can do whatever she blah blah blah; well she can but that doesn't mean we have to blindly agree with it and not question why she got gulled into creating an Other Music forum by the standard grievance-mongers because "the music that's being talked about is not jazz". And spare me the crock about MJ was working on something that might have included some JAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Wow, somebody call Ken Burns and tell him to prepare another chapter in his sociology stories posing as history that has absolutely nothing to what's being played in the clubs. I keep looking on Dime and Youtube for clips of Michael Jackson live at the Village Vanguard, or Velvet Lounge, or Ronnie Scotts or Yoshis but can't find a damn thing. I had the greatest rock record in the history of mankind ready to be massaged in the studio and that stupid Phil Spector got himself popped for icing a skeev and it all went for naught.

[Pete C]

I think the era of public topical bulletin boards is over. We can all start our own Facebook microcosms where we're the sun and everybody else is our satellite, and we don't have to worry about some new person we don't know (and who may even be one of us posing as not one of us) having the audacity to join in the conversation without our permission.

[Gentle Giant]

I agree with Hate (scary). Lois has every right to do what she wants, but if we're only allowed to praise her decisions and opinions and not register our own, then that's not cool.

Basically, the rules are that if you're outspoken and opinionated and don't watch your mouth or your temper, you're gone; but if you're a paranoid Train Wreck like Goody, who creates a self-absorbed shitstorm with every post, you're free to pollute the board as much as you want.

That's the reason I post less frequently here these days.

[baksheesh]

Interesting reaction there Alastair. I like a man who sticks to his principles, but question the alternative of Facebook, which IMHO is a load of old cobblers.

[Gentle Giant]

Originally Posted by Tom Storer

I don't think our rights are being trampled in an outrageous way. She just doesn't want us saying mean things about Michael Jackson.

That sounds a lot more like China or Iran than the US of A to me. If I say MJ was a drug-addled pedophile with mental illness presenting itself as severe body-image issues, I'm not hurting anyone, and I should have the right to say so if that's what I believe. Even if I don't believe it, I should have the right to say it.

[Mike Schwartz]

Lois' BBS and all that.....quite surprized that the King Of Pop RIP thread was ultimately placed in Speakout, long the exclusive place for most things Jazz (and the Blues).

Jackson, stating the obvious, would be a polarizing figure one would think no matter where he might appear.
Lois apparently siding in the MJ *greatness* camp.

Just as a reminder as to the types of things that may have lead to the thread's closure was this obituary, which I thought was spot on many of the points madeL

The Man in the Mirror
By James Howard Kunstler
on June 29, 2009 6:01 AM

As America entered the horse latitudes of summer, befogged in a muffling stillness on deceptively calm seas, we were distracted for a while by visions of a pale death angel moonwalking across the deck of collective consciousness. Eerie parallels resound between the sordid demise of pop singer Michael Jackson and the fate of the nation.

Like the United States, Michael Jackson was spectacularly bankrupt, reportedly in the range of $800-million, which is rather a lot for an individual. Had he lived on a few more years, he might have qualified for his own TARP program -- another piece of expensive dead-weight down in the economy's bilges -- since it is our established policy now to throw immense sums of so-called "money" at gigantic failing enterprises (while millions of ordinary citizens wash overboard, without so much as a life-preserver). Anyway, Michael Jackson was on the receiving end of one huge bank loan after another long after his pattern of profligacy was set and obvious. They threw money at him for the same reason that the federal government throws money at entities like CitiBank: the desperate hope that some miracle will allow debt servicing to resume. Michael could burn through $50-million in half a year. It didn't seem to affect his credibility as a borrower. When his heart stopped last week, he was living in a Hollywood mansion that rented for several hundred thousand dollars a month. You wonder how the landlord cashed those checks.

Like the USA, Michael Jackson was a has-been. He hadn't recorded a song worth listening to in over two decades. He had done almost nothing but spin his wheels, hop around the globe from one place to another at enormous expense, and make himself available for award ceremonies to stoke his ego (and give advertisers a reason to promote some televised award show). He existed strictly on image, an anorectic figure nourished by moonbeams of attention, famous for saying that he loved his worshippers when the truth was he merely sucked the life out of them. In his last years, he even looked a bit like Nosferatu, the personification of the un-dead, and his fascination with ghouls was the basis for his biggest hit way back in the last century. A zombie nation deserves a zombie mascot.

He was a poseur, vamping in weird military outfits as though he were a five-star general in the Honduran army, or a character from a melodrama by the reprobate Jean Genet. He once materialized during halftime at the Superbowl in a shower of sparks, thrilling the multitudes while grabbing and stroking his sex organs, as though that was a heroic activity -- and indeed the nation seemed to emulate him as its culture became dedicated more and more to acting out masturbation fantasies. America was a fat man jerking off on the sofa watching a vampire of no particular sex vogue deliriously on the boob tube.

More than once the authorities tried to pin charges of child molestation on him for suspicious activities at his boy-trap, Neverland Ranch, with its carnival rides, private zoo, video game galleries, and inexhaustible supplies of sugary treats. The first time he settled with the alleged victim's family for $22-million. They just walked away with the loot and happily shut up. The second time, he moonwalked out of a court-of-law while weeks later jurors mysteriously went on TV to say, well, they did kind of think after-the-fact that he really did those things he was accused of, but, you know.... The defendant himself behaved as though his trial were a TV celebrity challenge show on another planet, arriving on one occasion twenty minutes late in pajamas with some lame excuse about a backache. He spent the last years of his life wandering a few steps ahead of his creditors, gulling concert promoters into "comeback" schemes (with walking-around money up front), and with three bought-and-paid-for children, obviously not his own, for consolation.

When he dropped dead last week, the nation's morbidly maudlin response suggested a cover story for the relief of being rid of him and all the embarrassment he provoked. One CNN reporter called him a genius the equal of Mozart. That's a little like calling Rachel Maddow the reincarnation of Eleanor Roosevelt. A nation addicted to lying to itself tells itself fairy tales instead of facing a pathology report. Yet, like Michael Jackson, the undertone of horror story still pulses darkly in the background. The little boy who grew up to be the simulation of a girl was really a werewolf. The nation that defeated manifest evil in World War Two woke up one day years later to find itself stripped of its manhood, mentally enslaved to cheap entertainments, and hostage to its own grandiosity. Maybe in grieving so exorbitantly over this freak America is grieving for itself. All the loose talk about "love" from the media and the fans gives off the odor of self-love. America is "the man in the mirror," the gigantic, floundering Narcissus, sailing into the stormy seas of history.

[baksheesh]

I thought it made some good points, and served to balance the nauseating flavour of the media hype, not least that fecker at the memorial who called him 'the greatest entertainer in the history of the world'.
You have to fight this kind of hyperbole and fight for some balance.

[Mike Schwartz]

Originally Posted by baksheesh

I thought it made some good points, and served to balance the nauseating flavour of the media hype, not least that fecker at the memorial who called him 'the greatest entertainer in the history of the world'.
You have to fight this kind of hyperbole and fight for some balance.

As did the piece from Australia....

[groover]

I liked the Australian piece, too.

He may have been the most popular entertainer globally in history ever. In the current state of the music industry, that achievement may never be equalled.

But the other stuff is true, too.

Alastair, have a couple pints of Avery's for me. Cheers!

[baksheesh]

The Australian piece made some more good points, BUT i did think the Goebbels reference was a bit out of order...

[Valerie]

you folks seem to be missing Lois' point or twisting the facts to suit yourselves. her closing the thread wasn't because of differing opinions being stated. the posts were ugly, despicable, nasty and mean-spirited.

[Peterdubya]

I thought putting it out of the jazz area was a good idea.... after all Billy Mays was taken out of speakout....
I think it's most amusing that Mr Dolan and now Alistair are both gone because of a Michael Jackson thread.
Quite a divisive figure.

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by Peterdubya

I think it's most amusing that Mr Dolan [is] gone because of a Michael Jackson thread.

Don't blame the vehicle.

[Gentle Giant]

Originally Posted by Valerie

you folks seem to be missing Lois' point or twisting the facts to suit yourselves. her closing the thread wasn't because of differing opinions being stated. the posts were ugly, despicable, nasty and mean-spirited.

So why not just delete the offending posts but keep the thread open for further discussion and debate? The points being raised, about both his art and his life, were all valid fodder for a BBS.

[baksheesh]

Originally Posted by Valerie

you folks seem to be missing Lois' point or twisting the facts to suit yourselves. her closing the thread wasn't because of differing opinions being stated. the posts were ugly, despicable, nasty and mean-spirited.

Hmmm... Maybe there should have been a warning stating that it was intended as a celebratory thread only.
To be fair, there were several distinctly unsavoury aspects of the man's life, and i think the culture of victimhood has gotten out of control.
I mean Diana was far from the saint she was made out to be, ditto John Lennon - the point is that these people were human beings, responding to incredible pressures and it's just as despicable in a way, to beatify them.
I remember recently in Ireland a notorious politician died, who screwed a lot of people over in his time, and took advantage of his position with both hands, but people lauded him like a great and glorious figure.
Other figures that come to mind are Ronald Reagan and John Paul II.
I know the old saying - 'don't speak ill of the dead', but this kind of hyperbole that we're seeing, and have seen in the past, is actively destructive.

[groover]

Originally Posted by baksheesh

I thought it made some good points, and served to balance the nauseating flavour of the media hype, not least that fecker at the memorial who called him 'the greatest entertainer in the history of the world'.
You have to fight this kind of hyperbole and fight for some balance.

Whenever anyone makes a statement like that about any form of art, which is subject to no objective form of measurement, I take as that person's opinion and nothing more. It doesn't bother me.

O.K, maybe a little.

[clinthopson]

Since Speak Out, I think, is supposed to be a jazz thread, Jackson's insertion was entirely inappropriate. It would have been more appropriate in the Alley.

Of course, if it was there, you old meanies would still post those nasty, unkind, albeit accurate comments.

[baksheesh]

Snrf! Snrf!

[John L]

Originally Posted by Tom Storer

I think you're overreacting just a wee bit. This is quite a free-wheeling board, with considerably less censorship and self-censorship than most. We all know this site is a private concern, and Lois acts, sometimes unpredictably, to discourage posting she feels crosses the line into poor taste or offensiveness. Because she's not a full-time moderator, her interventions are sporadic and can seem arbitrary or surprising. We may or may not agree with her reasons for closing or deleting a thread, for example, but it's not as if she's systematically blocking any particular viewpoint. In this case, she just got annoyed about some frank and not always complimentary talk about Michael Jackson. I don't think our rights are being trampled in an outrageous way. She just doesn't want us saying mean things about Michael Jackson. But if you feel your principles can't allow you to accept that, so be it.

What Tom said. Lois does not run this board in an oppressive way. If she should decide to close a thread every now and again , so be it. Those who object to a dicussion about Michael Jackson in Speak Out should practice what they preach and stop posting about him here.

[lonely-at-the-top]

Originally Posted by Alastair

I'm afraid I can't stay any longer. Why?

...perhaps because you like the attention? Why not just live quietly and for good?

Kindergarten days are long gone

Why?

Boohoo

[Tom Storer]

Originally Posted by Pete C

I think the era of public topical bulletin boards is over. We can all start our own Facebook microcosms where we're the sun and everybody else is our satellite, and we don't have to worry about some new person we don't know (and who may even be one of us posing as not one of us) having the audacity to join in the conversation without our permission.

I have an eerie feeling of déjà entendu.

[Tom Storer]

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

I agree with Hate (scary). Lois has every right to do what she wants, but if we're only allowed to praise her decisions and opinions and not register our own, then that's not cool.

Who ever suggested that we are only allowed to praise her decisions and opinions and not register our own?

Basically, the rules are that if you're outspoken and opinionated and don't watch your mouth or your temper, you're gone

It's a question of how you don't watch your mouth or your temper. Lois bans people when they're consistently discourteous and get into personal conflicts complete with ad hominem attacks. It has nothing to do with the opinions they express or how outspoken they are about them. And it's not like she has a hair trigger: usually it takes literally years of controversy before she bans someone for good. It hasn't happened often. I liked DEEP and Scott as much as anybody, but hey. If you're not going to play nice you have to accept the consequences.

That sounds a lot more like China or Iran than the US of A to me. If I say MJ was a drug-addled pedophile with mental illness presenting itself as severe body-image issues, I'm not hurting anyone, and I should have the right to say so if that's what I believe. Even if I don't believe it, I should have the right to say it.

You do have the right to say those things, Jason, just not necessarily in every single place you might want to. A message board is a publication, really. You can't get your every opinion published everywhere you want to. That doesn't mean you are being robbed of your right to express yourself.

Say the wrong thing in China or Iran and you can end up doing hard labor. Having a thread closed on Jazz Corner, or even being banned from Jazz Corner, doesn't really compare.

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by Tom Storer

I liked DEEP and Scott as much as anybody,

So everybody's equal in your affections?

[Tom Storer]

You're parsing incorrectly.