"Back In The Day"

Joel told me about this MJ article in GQ. I decided to pass it on to you all.

Simply put, it's a great article. The thing I enjoyed the most about it? Its honesty.

Sullivan doesn't put Michael on an untouchable pedestal, but he doesn't ridicule him unnecessarily either. He portrays the ups and downs, postives and negatives of a human being, a human being who just happened to be the biggest pop star in the world.

I think the most striking lines in the piece are the first three paragraphs:

How do you talk about Michael Jackson unless you begin with Prince Screws? Prince Screws was an Alabama cotton-plantation slave who became a tenant farmer after the Civil War, likely on his old master's land. His son, Prince Screws Jr., bought a small farm. And that man's son, Prince Screws III, left home for Indiana, where he found work as a Pullman porter, part of the exodus of southern blacks to the northern industrial cities.

There came a disruption in the line. This last Prince Screws, the one who went north, would have no sons. He had two daughters, Kattie and Hattie. Kattie gave birth to ten children, the eighth a boy, Michael—who would name his sons Prince, to honor his mother, whom he adored, and to signal a restoration. So the ridiculous moniker given by a white man to his black slave, the way you might name a dog, was bestowed by a black king upon his pale-skinned sons and heirs.

We took the name for an affectation and mocked it.

And with that, I encourage you to keep reading...