Jackson Death Souvenirs Already In D.C.
It's no surprise that all Michael Jackson memorabilia is being bought excessively around the world since he died on Thursday. Time and Newsweek already released commemorative issues showing Jackson at various times through his career, the MJ cover band Who's Bad sold out not one, but two shows at the 9:30 Club on Friday night and three of his albums sold upwards of 100,000 copies each over the past 5 days.
But if the music, creepy cover bands, and glossy magazine covers aren't enough, you can now buy a poster announcing his death. From The Washington Post. The newspaper is selling copies of its "commemorative Michael Jackson edition" online for upwards of $50 each. Normally, these commemorative editions are released for such momentous occasions as presidential elections and inaugurations, wars, invasions, and other momentous events. Deaths of notable people certainly qualify as momentous events, but it's a depressing thing to commemorate. And the commemorative edition looks nothing like the actual cover of Friday's Post, where Jackson only covered a third of the front page.
Michael Jackson was iconic and he deserves to be remembered that way. But a $50 print of a fake newspaper cover might not be the way to remember him.
Comments
Leave a Reply
You can follow any responses to this entry through its comments RSS feed.
Blogs Linking to this Article
-
Linked From: July 8th, 2009Marion Barry “I Wouldn’t Suck Your Dick” Collector’s Edition - The Sexist - Washington City Paper
1:44 pm[...] on selling commemorative copies of its Election 2008 issue, its Inauguration 2009 issue, and its Michael Jackson is dead issue. The Washington City Paper’s “You Put Me Out in Denver ‘Cause I Wouldn’t [...]
12:52 pm
Wacko Jacko was a child sex abuser & a self-loathing black man who wanted to be white. Stop the deification, please.
1:06 pm
So, people won't buy real newspapers anymore but they'll shell out $50 for fake newspapers?
:(
2:38 pm
What is this an episode of the Bitter Twins. Angry Al, I've grown to expect this from your posts. Amanda, you are simply tragic. No, people stopped buying newspapers once they were put on the INTERNET! However, folks still want something tangible...hence The Post knowing that a "headline" and fake stories sell. When Elvis died, how many newspapers were sold/collected then? When President Regan died, how many newspapers were sold/collected then? Exactly my point! So you are saying that Michael Jackson's death isn't worth it? And you don't live in a capitalistic society or country?!?
The REAL story is about corporate folks merchandising and cashing in on someone's death. I wouldn't call it necrophilia, but it's pretty close. We know the economy is bad, but folks are "clever" (a euphamism for vampire-ish) and finding ways to generate income. Time is in on it as well, as anything that is fit to print or fit for human consumption will be created. It doesn't take a lot of ingenuity to silk screen some shirts and put glitter on them that say Michael Jackson. It doesn't take much for you to canabalize all your MJ footage and package it as a memorabilia issue. The true question is HOW MUCH of it is going to Michael Jackson's estate...my guess is NONE! His three kids need to eat too!
2:38 pm
Didn't know writing a blog was a contribution to the "deification" process, but it is ironic that the death of this sad individual comes when he, a grotesque shell of his former self, was going to sell tickets (or not) for even more than the "special" edition newspapers would cost.