I continue to be puzzled by people thinking Michael Jackson was excessively “weird”. Uh, he’s a wealthy musician, right? Let’s see, here’s a not-so-wealthy one I might accept as “weird” (note to on-line censor: this is a MAN, therefore his breasts can be viewed and are not erotic or porn):

That’s Genesis P. Orridge, founding member of Industrial Throbbing Gristle, later Psychic TV & the Temple of Psychic Youth, who besides his transformation into his deceased wife once had his teeth pulled to replace them with gold ones. Taking a trip down memory lane, there’s Frank Zappa, Nick Cave, Trent Reznor (moving into the Tate/Polanski house?), Nina Hagen, Bowie in the 70’s, Iggy Pop leaping onto glass, Lou Reed as Transformer, Gibby Haynes and the Butthole Surfers, Exene, Captain Beefhart, Ian Curtis of Joy Division, Patti Smith, Robert Smith. These are mainstream artists. Then there’s Pete Burns of “You Spin Me Round” fame, well-known androgenist along with aficionado of plastic surgery, and numerous underground too-bizarre-for-prime-time artists.

Bowie looks like an alien and people think him a genius. Michael Jackson goes pale and he’s a freak. Every day large numbers of girls get breast implants, people get nose jobs, lip implants, tummy tucks, all sorts of gimmicks to be “cute”. The Red Hot Chili Peppers have how many tatoos, piercings, shavings, and they’re “cool”.

Then look at behavior, whether violent (Phil Spector, Ike Turner, the guys in New Order, Bobby Brown, various gun-wielding rap artists), drug use (Johnny Winter, Sid Barrett, Hendrix, Guns ‘n Roses, Smashing Pumpkins), outrageous spending habits (Jimmy Page and his Aleister Crowley castle, Mariah Carey & her $125 million mansion, and too many other cases of diamonds and limos to count). Aside from Page’s mystical bent, there’s Neil Young’s love of toy trains, Ted Nugent’s gun and bow collection, Demi Moore’s collection of dollhouses (ok, not a musician), Perry Farrell’s burning cupie dolls, and I’m sure many more, some of them distinctly “childish”. And don’t even start on religious conversions that make Spinal Tap look moderate.

In a profession where whites like to act black, it certainly didn’t help Jackson to go the reverse, getting lighter by the decade, though it’s hard to imagine him playing with Slash while looking like he did on Off The Wall. But why are his image changes whack when George Clinton wearing dreads and a diaper is hip? All of this was before the pedophile charges. Was Jacko just too shy (like the Cocteau Twins, the world’s shyest band)? Or was there really something weird about him that made him stand out in a profession full of weirdos? I look at the video of Black and White, and I see him as as a kind of performance art, morphing himself from one profile to another. Perhaps that personal performance has to wait to be appreciated, still too far ahead of its time. We like our art to be artificial, and in that way Jackson’s might have been a bit too real for our comfort.

One artist I appreciate of late is Mickey Rourke, who took his box office pulling good looks and put them in a boxing ring, getting his face looking beat and pummelled and rugged and near-fossilized. Which looks like it means that now he can act, rather than just primp - he’s back in front of the camera with a presence he never had before. Maybe that’s the price of real success, being a freak even to yourself. As Kazantzakis’ St. Francis said, “All roads lead to the earth - God is an abyss - Jump!!!” And jump they did.

[Hmmm... this software seems to have the most braindead version of "autosave" imaginable. Okay, it saved *THE TITLE*. Thanks. No thanks.]

[Re-posted to set the clock back about 8 hours - i.e. the software declared "posted" when my first version crashed. Re-post includes revising "friend" of the Prez to "supporter"].

Adapted from a blog comment earlier.

TPMMuckraker has done some investigating re: the IG firing. A couple of interesting items, such as it doesn't seem Walpin went complaining to The Sacramento Bee, but instead he filed a complaint with Congress, which possibly the Bee used as its source.

It's not explained what effect the false report claiming Walpin had written to The Bee had in his investigation. Walpin did admit he got confused at the May 20 meeting in question, when he said it appeared someone had mixed up his notes in his absence (and that he wasn't feeling very well). "One or two-minute pauses where he was unable to answer questions." Wow. I watched the SEC IG in front of Congress, and she was unable to answer Alan Grayson's questions for an hour while he lambasted and ridiculed her, and she still has her job. And that was over billions of dollars.

The Walpin meeting took place on Wed, May 20. There was a 3-day Memorial Day Weekend May 23-25. Walpin was told to quit or be fired on June 10. That's 14 or 15 work days in there, and presumably the panel needed some time to carefully craft a letter and physically send it to the White House, and the White House needed some time to carefully review the matter, especially seeing Johnson indeed had been found to have misused funds and forced to give half of the amount back, just over $400K (with a sweetheart deal of 10 years to do it). On the night Walpin received his call, he informed his other side he was about to release a similar report on CUNY. Did anyone interview Walpin in those <3 calendar weeks before he was terminated? Did anyone review his work in progress? The answer appears to be "negatory".

Someone was in an awful hurry to remove a successful IG. People have tried to paint Walpin as a Bush hack, but he was in private practice/New York Attorney's office for the 40 years prior to his 2007 appointment as IG - not the typical partisan flack, whatever his comments about Kerry & Kennedy. Let's try that one again - WALPIN PUBLICLY SUPPORTS SOTOMAYOR. When he got his "Dear John" call, he thought it was another paper calling to ask about the Supreme Court nominee. Disliking Teddy does not a rabid wingnut make.

There's little doubt that Sacramento was in a tough spot. They elected a guy who they knew to be disqualified for federal funds. I don't know if there was a satisfactory compromise - such as Johnson would recuse himself from all government grants activities, or to promise really really hard that he wouldn't use any more money to have his car washed. I can sympathize that Sacramento was looking forward to having a friend of their mayor be the newly elected President of the US, and just gushing over the oodles of cash coming their way. But I can't very much sympathize with a rash firing of an independent overseer, especially one who had found malfeasance specifically in the case he was fired for.

Walpin's biggest complaint seems to be that he was locked out of the settlement meetings, a settlement that not only was financially miraculous (estimates are that St. Hope will never be able to pay back the half of the misused funds assessed), but also that the ban on Kevin Johnson and thus Sacramento from receiving federal funds was dropped. 

Why specifically was Walpin fired? He agreed that something went wrong with the meeting on May 20, which was bandied about as the reason for the rapid fire "investigation" through which Obama "lost confidence'' in him. A medical check and a follow-up interview would seem in order there. Then the excuse became "unduly disruptive" with "trouble and inappropriate conduct". Did that inappropriate conduct include the unverified rumor he'd gone to The Bee? Some have made a big deal about St. Hope's "bi-partisan board", but there are a number of Republicans looking to carefully walk the line with the new Democratic Administration, especially if that means their organization can stay alive - how many Democrats have been co-opted by Republicans to save their pet programs in the past? Didn't Republican Michael Bloomberg support both Obama and Caroline Kennedy, rather well-known Democrats?

Overall, the episode is tone-deaf and unseemly. An Administration that has missed several deadlines to provide information to Congress, some of which were months in the making, but can manage to shove an independent IG out the door in a matter of days, one who just happened to be making life uncomfortable for a friend supporter of the Prez.

And perhaps important around here - why isn't TPMMuckraker verifying whether Walpin was the source of The Bee's article or not? Why isn't Muckraker getting the exculpatory evidence that Walpin supposedly didn't turn over to his supervisors? No one can remember what Walpin's oringal actions were that started the concern before May 20, and the big complaint about him in an "Equal Employment Opportunity probe" was that he became "intimidating". Does that mean "angry" or that he bunched up his fists? Does this start to sound like high school? Here's another example of someone who becomes "intimidating" and has to be restrained. But if people were making you the object of investigation for doing your job well, how exactly would you respond?

The reality of this is none of this "reporting" tells us whether Walpin indeed did his job, and it would be nice to have an interview that asks him the tough questions, asks the board members the tough questions, gets the prior infringements and complaints delineated, and perhaps even talks to Kevin Johnson? I mean, these are public funds we're talking about - we do have independent oversight for a reason.

Remember all the feeble crap excuses that Alberto Gonzales gave during the DOJ attorney firings scandal? Do feeble excuses sound better coming from a Democrat?

UPDATE: Obama appointing former head of NRCC as his cyberczar - okay, so what about the impression that "bi-partisan" must mean true? Generally when Rebuplicans and Decromats agree, there are pools and bundles of money to be made. Oodles and oodles.

UPDATE 2: Walpin's response to Brown's complaint is worth reading. Excerpts intentionally not provided - Walpin is methodical and worth considering.

UPDATE 3: Walpin's letter in April to Congress. If this is senility, I'm likely suffering from Alzheimer's. I start to understand how Walpin might have felt bad at the May 20 meeting - with all the board members determined to override Kevin Johnson's suspension to make sure Sacramento could get stimulus funds, I'm sure there wasn't a lot of sympathy to Walpin's interest in referring to the facts of the investigation.