Thursday, January 28, 2016

Joseph Fiennes playing *that* Michael Jackson??!?

...as you probably have already heard, a British TV-movie producer has cast Joseph Fiennes as the soul singer Michael Jackson in an upcoming production. Salon, predictably, has registered how boggledeth its collective mind hath become at http://www.salon.com/2016/01/27/casting_a_white_guy_to_play_michael_jackson_really_in_an_industry_rigged_against_minority_actors_this_is_just_the_latest_low/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow. Having noted such, I suggested something a bit different in the comments section, as is copied below:

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 ...for decades, there was another famous Michael Jackson, a white South African native who emigrated to the U.S. and was a talk show host on KNX, KABC and KRLA in the Los Angeles market. He was eventually forced out of talk radio because he was a considerate and courteous liberal who refused to become a belligerent conservinazi in the wake of Lardass Limbaugh's bullying of the talk radio sub-industry. And he was constantly getting fan mail intended for the pop music Michael Jackson, and to a lesser extent vice versa. Even when the singer died, people started mistakenly placing memorials to him at the still-alive broadcasting namesake's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. As should be obvious, either Joseph Fiennes or, for that matter, Ralph Fiennes could easily play the broadcasting Jackson with a helluva lot less makeup. And the idea of a comedy about the confusion of one Michael Jackson with another distinctly different Michael Jackson sounds a lot more promising than one trying to get laughs over Marlon Brando's morbid obesity in the wake of the WTC/Pentagon/Pennsylvania terrorist attacks...

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...here is a photo of the broadcasting Michael Jackson about midpoint through his very long tenure at KABC:



...of course, neither Ms. Taylor or Mr. Brando would likely be a part of such a story (did Michael Jackson ever have either Ms. Taylor or Mr. Brando on his KABC or KRLA programs?). Or am I simply so old-fashioned that such a story would actually only appeal to myself and the surviving Mr. Jackson?...