Re: Goodbye Michael

Here is an English usage observation:

I have spent today at a conference in a building with common areas
scattered with plasma screens high on the walls, which showed continuous
news broadcasts with no sound. For the early part of the day the legend
across the bottom of the screen read "Michael Jackson is dead". Mid
afternoon the legend changed to "Michael Jackson has died". I think
these two ways of saying the same thing sound subtly different but I
can't work out why.

(There were several people of my age and older at the conference who
were harrumphing about the exaggerated media comments about Jackson's
contribution to culture, and mentioning the Beatles.)

BBC News 24 cancelled Question Time Extra last night so that it could
broadcast an aerial shot of an ambulance parked outside a hospital and
have people say in a dozen different ways that Jackson was probably
dead but nobody yet knew for sure. Rolling news: nothing happening, as
it happens, again and again and again.

Today, the Beeb has decided that Jacko is definitely dead and the new
news is feelings. (Is that pukka English?) What do we feel? What
should we feel? What did we feel twenty years ago? What will we feel
in 2029? This important breaking story is illustrated with
interminable clips of Americans talking about their feelings as only
Americans can.

By contrast, the Iranian English-language satellite news channel Press
TV isn't covering the story at all. Its news stories are all about
what's going on in the world. (Or most of it. The channel is
conspicuously quiet about the Iranian elections.*) It's odd that you
have to watch a channel funded by an illegitimate, anti-Semitic
government to get proper news.**

--
VB

*Jacko v. Ahmadinejad:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvOx4avw8WY>

**You also get Press TV's Shanghai correspondent. Phwoar! She
announced that the Chinese government is to automatically censor
pictures of bare ladies, so if you're in China here's a last chance to
see her nipples:
<http://www.pulseagency.co.uk/female_models/detail.php?
subsection=&page=4&model=8626&photoset=1>

I won't say never, but I haven't so far.  And I'm boggling mildly at
the continuing wall-to-wall coverage of his death.

Quoth "Frank ess" <frank@fshe2fs.com>, and I quote:

Am I alone in the universe in not being able to recognise a
single song by Michael Jackson?

Yes.

He has brought sort of a weird joy to a lot of lives, though. Some of
his pop music is irresistable.

[OT added to subject line for accuracy, not comment]

On 25 Jun 2009, Fred wrote

What a sad life that guy has had.

Weird character, but nevertheless an immense talent.