Rush Limbaugh tried to capitalize on the death of Michael Jackson by making the ridiculous statement that Michael Jackson’s success was directly related to the success of Ronald Reagan. He even went so far as to say that he “languished” under Bush 41 and Clinton and “died under Obama”. Now the stupidity of a statement like that could be dissected every which way, but I would argue strongly that Michael Jackson was never not a huge success story. And his success certainly had nothing to do with a particular president.

America has always had a really screwed up sense of what “success” is. Released in 1982, Thriller sold over 100 million copies. To give you an idea of just how insanely successful that album was, AC/DC and Pink Floyd aren’t even half way close to that total. Four years later, Jackson followed up Thriller with the mega-successful Bad, which sold “only” 30 million copies. A cynical person might look at that and say “Whoa, he sold 70 million less records than he did four years earlier. He must not be as popular”. Of course, that would be a retarded comment to make, because 30 million copies sold, even well into the Reagan administration, is nothing to sneeze at. But Limbaugh has fallen into the typical trap that all of the media has been a slave to. Namely that Jackson was only popular in the 80’s and everything after that was just a bunch of weird shit that made the tabloids a lot of money. According to Limbaugh, Jackson “languished” under Bush and Clinton. Is he right?

No. For instance the followup to Bad, Dangerous, released in 1991 under George H.W. Bush, sold more copies (32 million). Does that mean that Reagan actually hindered Jackson’s 1987 sales? Was the economy so shitty that Jackson actually did better under Bush? You see, nobody other than Rush Limbaugh would argue anything as stupid as that. But let’s take this further. Let’s head into the Clinton years. History came out in 1995 and became the most successful double album in history, selling 20 million copies and garnering 5 Grammy award nominations, among others. Incidentally, it sold the exact same amount as one of Jackson’s most celebrated albums, Off the Wall, released in 1979 (Does Rush give Jimmy Carter credit for that album’s success? Just wondering). History culminated with a critically acclaimed and sold out world tour. For a guy “languishing” under Bush and Clinton, Jackson was doing pretty well for himself. 2 years later he released a remix album called Blood on the Dance Floor which quickly became the best selling remix album of all time at 6 million copies sold. Jackson’s last album, Invincible, was released shortly after 9/11 and ended up going double platinum in America and selling over 10 million copies worldwide without him ever touring for it. Jackson has released no albums since 2001 for which I’m sure we can blame Barack Obama somehow.

The point of all this is that for all the child molestation accusations, tabloid headlines, and general oddness of this decidedly troubled artist, he sustained a level of success that most other musicians would kill for long after the glow of Thriller “supposedly faded”. Only in America would people consider, 32, 20, 6, and 10 million albums sold for his final four albums to be a failure. Nobody can be held to the phenomenal sales of Thriller. Ronald Reagan didn’t make that album sell 100 million copies. Michael Jackson did. And unfortunately, our society demands that our artists live up to their great successes. When they don’t, they are torn down. I certainly think that kind of pressure weighed on Jackson and just added to his multitude of emotional and physical problems that were beginning to manifest themselves in the 80’s (Does Reagan get blamed for that, I wonder?).

There has been a steady drumbeat throughout the mainstream media (and yes, Limbaugh is most certainly mainstream media) that Jackson’s career ended in 1987 (if not 1982, as I’ve seen multiple people say that Bad sucks on television). But the fact of the matter is it didn’t. Michael Jackson sold almost 60 million albums in the 1990’s. Anybody who calls that “languishing” is an idiot.

As I watched the news coverage following Jackson’s death, one of the guys who investigated the 1993 child molestation charge was being interviewed. He said something that really hit me. He said that as he did his investigation, it became increasingly clear to him that the accusers were total bullshit. But what was interesting was that he said he had never seen so many people want the accusation to be true. It was almost as if an entire generation of people felt somehow betrayed by Michael Jackson’s changing appearance and increasingly odd behavior. That, culturally, people were prepared to exact a sort of vengeance on the guy simply because they couldn’t understand why he was the way he was and that was everyone’s way of dealing with it. The investigator said he felt particularly sad about all of it. Is it not surprising then that the media’s proclamation that Jackson’s career was “over” effectively began in the late 80’s and coincided when his oddness really started to emerge? And yet, Jackson attained more success in the 90’s than only a handful of other artists. And if the stories about the Dome Project and the hundreds of unreleased songs are correct, Jackson will most likely be a huge success far into the future.

Rush Limbaugh said that Jackson “died under Obama”. Considering the fact that he just broke the download sales record and has the top three albums on the sales charts, I’d say Michael Jackson has been reborn and is finally getting some of the well deserved recognition and exposure for his music that has been lost for so long under the weight of tabloid and pop culture excess.

Long live the King of Pop.

Tags: bad, billie jean, dangerous, jackson limbaugh, Michael Jackson, michael jackson bad, michael jackson sales figures, mj, Rush Limbaugh, thriller

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Entertainment, Los Angeles, Music, News, Nostalgia, Politics, Pop culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.