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July 15, 2002
Rahul Mahajan
Justice
for Bhopal
Jeffrey St. Clair
Seduced
by a Legend
The Return of Jimmy T99 Nelson
July 14, 2002
Bill Christison
The
DOA (Poem)
David Vest
I'll Never
Get Out of This Band Alive
July 13, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
A Process
of Dehumanization
Gavin Keeney
Go Tell
Karl Rove!
Matt Vidal
Corporate
"Ethics" Red Herrings
Ed Whitfield
Lessons
from Independence Day
July 12, 2002
Sean Donahue
The Other
Harken Energy Scandal: Oil, Death Squads
and Colombia
Walt Brasch
Sin Tax
Scam
"Psst. Cigarettes. A Buck Each."
Steve Perry
A Tale
of Two Twits
Wall Street Burns, Bush Fiddles, But Where's Wellstone?
July 11, 2002
Lloyd Marbet
Arrested
by the Chamber
of Commerce
David Krieger
Law vs.
Force
David Vest
Fountain
of Foo:
Strike Three Called
Irit Katriel
A Deep
Ideological Crisis
Richard Glen Boire
Dangerous
Lessons:
Public School Drug Testing
July 10, 2002
CounterPunch Wire
Third Party
Woes
South Carolina Denies Kevin Alexander Gray Ballot Status
Nassar Ibriham &
Majed Nassar
Bush's
Middle East Plan: Always Changing, Never Changing
Robert Fisk
Ain't That
America:
A Strange Kind of Freedom
Dave Marsh
The Return
of CREEP:
Record Cartel Accounting
Bernard Weiner
Hope and
Despair in
the Body Politic
Gary Leupp
European
Worries and
Bush's Terror War
July 9, 2002
St. Clair / Cockburn
The Atomic
Clock is Ticking:
All Roads Lead to Yucca Mtn.
Jack McCarthy
Florida:
a Terrorist Sanctuary for Bush's Bloody Pals?
Robert Fisk
How a Saudi
Billionaire
Does Beirut
Stanton and Madsen
God, Incorporated
Kurt Nimmo
IDF, Gangbanging
with Tanks
Bill Christison
Disastrous
Foreign Policies
of the US Part 3:
What Can We Do About It?
July 8, 2002
Rick Mercier
Yucca
Mountain Bound
Lev Grinberg
The
BUSHARON Global War
Tariq Ali
How Bush
Used 9/11 to Remap the World
Lori Allen
The Tugs
of War:
Palestinian Life Under Curfew
July 7, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
White
House Crooks
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
|
July
15, 2002
Vincible
Michael Jackson, Race, Class
& the Music Cartel
by Dave Marsh
More than one person who's worked with Michael
Jackson has predicted to me that, if he realizes he'll never
again be the world's most popular entertainer, he'll commit suicide.
Nobody predicted that the suicide would be so public, though.
There's zero credibility to Jackson's
complaint that a Sony Music conspiracy produced all his woes--from
the child molesting charges to royalty injustices. Yet Jackson's
ugly stunts and ludicrous fantasies are important, because they
poison the story just as the public finally begins understanding
the music world's plantation economics.
Michael contends that in order to effectively
fight the undeniable oppression of all black recording artists,
all the other black musicmakers need to fall in line with him.
Yet he didn't make this public demand of the caucasians he actually
hangs with--Elizabeth Taylor, McCauley Culkin, or 'N Sync-even
though that's the more powerful group.
In his essay on "racial solidarity
in the guise of black nationalism," South
Carolina gubernatorial candidate Kevin Gray describes
a pattern by which bourgeois African-Americans, who ordinarily
despise the so-called "black underclass," demand solidarity when their interests
are threatened. Need I point out that Mchael Jackson turned his
back on Gary, Indiana, his majority-black hometown, when deindustrialization
devastated it, or that he has never even whispered support of
black rappers from Tupac on down when they've been censored,
arrested, even murdered?
The dialogue about the music cartel's
scandalous economics ought to stay focused on the truth, which
is one class of people, all relatively poor, being oppressed
by another, far richer class. Just as the cotton industry cheated
white sharecroppers as systematically and thoroughly as black
sharecroppers, white artists and black artists have been identically
cheated by the music industry. You can't make sense of label
chicanery using a racial framework, because the basis of the
thievery is class. A label charges a veteran artist's royalty
account $10,000 for "A&R" every time one of his
masters is used in a TV show or a movie. The artist is white.
EMI pays Mariah Carey more than $50 million for making one flop
album and agreeing not to make any others. Carey is black.
We need to think hard and often about
the role race plays in all of American life. This dilemma-which
is not just America's but the world's--cannot be solved without
acknowledging that not only was our prosperity and power founded
on slavery and peonage, our culture and politics remain based
on white supremacy. White supremacy, which is what generates
racism, infects every white person reading this-including me
and if he's out there, Tommy Mottola. In that sense, calling
us "racist" lets us off the hook, because if we don't
burn crosses while wearing robes and hoods, we feel exempt. It's
only when we confront the unspoken everyday uses of white skin
privilege that we get close to the real race problem.
It's sad that Michael Jackson, who has
been black for 44 years, doesn't get this. He obviously doesn't,
because if he did, he'd never have labeled Tommy Mottola, who
is far from a Klansman, a racist. At least in America, his white
audience isn't likely to forget this, or forgive it.
Yet Jackson, who obsesses over his own
history, can find the real story written right there. When his
first record contract came to an end, Jackson and his family
lost the rights to his master recordings and even to the Jackson
5 name. His old label sued and the settlement cost the group
more than half a million bucks, most of it in waived royalties,
back when half a million meant something to a superstar.
The old record label was Motown, which
was owned by black people and run by a black man.
That doesn't mean that Michael Jackson
didn't get ripped off. In fact, Motown only paid a 5% royalty
to the Jackson 5, so you could say it ripped him off ten times
as much. Is Berry Gordy a racist in Michael Jackon's eyes?
DeskScan
(what's playing in my office)
1. "The
Rising" (track), Bruce Springsteen (Sony)
2. Watermelon,
Chicken and Gritz, Nappy Roots (Atlantic)
3. Try
Again, Mike Ireland and Holler (Ashmont)
4. Dreamland,
Robert Plant (Universal)
5. Little
By Little, The Stevens Sisters (Rounder)
6. Halos
and Horns, Dolly Parton (Sugar Hill)
7. Blazing
Arrow, Blackalicious (MCA)
8. 1000
Kisses, Patty Griffin (ATO)
9. Another
Happy Ending, The Clarks (Razor & Tie)
10. The
Essential Collection, Tammi Terrell (Spectrum/UK)
11. Boy Could Those Guys Sing, The Delcos
(Crystal Ball)
12. Living
in a New World, Willie King and the Liberators (Rooster
Blues)
13. Revolucion:
The Chicano's Spirit, a selection of Chicano grooves
from the early 70s (Follow Me, Fr.)
14. The Shed Sessions, Bhundu Boys (Sadza,
Ger.)
15. Dion
and the Little Kings Live in New York (Ace UK)
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
Marsh is the author of The
Heart of Rock and Soul: the 1001 Greatest Singles.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
Today's Features
Rahul Mahajan
Justice
for Bhopal
Jeffrey St. Clair
Seduced
by a Legend
The Return of Jimmy T99 Nelson
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