The Big Lie

It was the summer the Michael Jackson video retrospective History was released: 1995. We were visiting friends in Berkeley when Ben, Naneen's teenage son, turned my daughter, then six years old, onto Michael Jackson. MTV was playing every Michael Jackson video ever made and Ben and my daughter sat, danced, sang, well, they became Michael Jackson.

That's when her obsession began. It lasted not quite as long as her obsession with Star Wars.

After several hundred viewings of History, her favorite was Black or White, mine was Billie Jean, my daughter asked this question based upon the quite obvious observation that his looks had changed radically: "If Michael Jackson is a boy, how come he looks like a girl? And if he is Black, how come he looks white now?"

Sensible questions from a six year old. That's when I told the big lie: Maybe he is trying to tell us that gender and race shouldn't be that important.

As deeply disturbed as Michael Jackson might have been, one thing we know for sure: he was extraordinarily talented and gave the world a new era of pop music, changed the world of music videos, and ended the overt racism at MTV, which up to that point would not air music videos by African American performers. Michael Jackson was the break through artist.

Of course, the circus around his death is off the charts. It's been the reason why I haven't turned on a television for the week except to muse along with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The interview NPR did with Spike Lee who worked with Jackson on the 1996 video "They Don't Care About Us," was perhaps the one I want to remember. Remember his talent, his work ethic, his enormous creativity, his gift.

October 1st in History

Whenever I wake up in a state of anxiety, I calm myself with meditation, exercise, and looking back into history. It is humbling to remind ourselves that what appears so pressing today will either fade into a momentary blip in just a few days or weeks, or become one of those tipping points, a moment that changes everything.

October 1 commemorates some important moments, many in baseball, which doesn’t interest me, but here is a site with a more complete list.

October 1, 1994—South African President Nelson Mandela who won the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, began his historic trip to the United States. Talk about a leader! 27 years in prison on Robins Island, and he returns to public life (he was released from prison on the day after my daughter’s first birthday) without a bitter heart, able to transition an apartheid nation into the beginning struggles of a democracy. A treasured gift from my friend Paul is a photograph taken by his brother when Mandela addressed a crowd in Chicago.

October 1, 1988—Mikhail Gorbachev became president of the Soviet Union and presided over its dismantling. In 1990 he won the Nobel Peace Prize. An end to history was declared. And with Sarah Palin watchful at our maritime border with Russia now, we are wary about the rise of post-Soviet Russia, rich with petro-dollars and yearning to reassert itself as a world power.

October 1, 1974—The trial of the Watergate cover-up began, a trial that would keep Americans riveted by the disclosures, day after day, of corruption, arrogance, and disrespect for the rule of law perpetuated by a lawyer, President Richard M. Nixon, his Attorney General John Mitchell, and a crew of ad agency guys who sold us a very flawed piece of presidency. We believed that finally the rule of law would be returned to the White House. You can actually listen to the Watergate tapes on line now through the Nixon Presidential Library.

On October 1, 2008, we are reminded how vigilant we must be in defending the rule of law from corruption.

October 1, 1964—The Free Speech Movement was launched at the University of California at Berkeley, and looking back, this is another one of those events that pushed history. This is the beginning of the culture wars. Everything became political. The Puritanical division between public and private began to erode. Modernity pushed and the next wave of fundamentalism was born. UC Berkeley maintains an archive of the movement on line.

October 1, 1955—And so this list isn’t too depressing, this is the day the Honeymooners premiered and we fell in love with Ed Norton, the guy who worked in the sewers, Ralph Kramden, a bus driver, and their long-suffering but wise wives, Trixie and Alice.

And Happy Birthday, Rolling Stones photographer, Annie Leibovitz,: she was born on October 1, 1949. Ironically, today is also the anniversary of the great modern photographer Richard Avedon’s death in 2004.