Greil Marcus on Michael Jackson

[Robin Landseadel]

On Jul 30, 2009, at 7:41 AM, rich wrote:

> another interesting (and, to me a bit more incisive)

Ain't nothin' incisive about "Lipstick Traces." It's as digressive and  
misdirected as anything cooked up in OBA's laboratory of literary  
experiments and slapped-together monsters.

> is this by Hilton Als
>
> . . . In bars like the Starlite, and, later, in primarily black and  
> Latin
> gay dance clubs like the Paradise Garage on Manhattan's Lower
> West Side, the meaning was clear: Michael Jackson was most
> himself when he was someone other than himself. . .

And that someone else had the voice of a hermaphrodite, a counter- 
tenor so pure it could have come from a castrato. MJ was the late 20th  
century Temperance card rendered physically manifest, holding fire in  
his left hand and gasoline in his right.