 No. Nonononononononononono. Ab. So. Lute. Ly. No.
The city of Los Angeles is a half-billion dollars in the hole. Layoffs. Furloughs. Potholes unfilled, trees untrimmed. Animal services, the ethics commission, whack whack whack.
So why, why, in any rational universe, should the city of L.A. pick up the policing tab for Michael Jackson's obsequies at Staples Center?
For the Lakers' victory parade -- certainly a more civically significant event than the excesses that follow Jackson in death as they did in life -- the city found private donors because of the pushback of public opinion over subsidizing the athletic triumph of, as they say, millionaires working for billionaires.
.
So why is there now any thought at all of dipping into a city fund for ''extraordinary events'' to subsidize this one -- which, if a ''public viewing'' becomes part of the memorial, will turn the whole thing into a Michael Jackson corpse carnival?
An earthquake is an extraordinary event. But Michael Jackson's family deciding, gee, let's invite the world (or at least something above 17,000 members of the world) to mourn our relative -- extraordinary to them, and to Jackson fans, certainly, but hardly enough to stick it to the taxpayers of LA.
Council member Jan Perry said the city would ''deeply appreciate'' any private citizen coming forward to pick up the tab. ``Any company, entity, individual who would have such great love, the city would welcome the support,” she told the New York Times.
I nominate the Jackson family to pay the bill, perhaps going halfsies with AEG, which owns Staples (and was the promoter on Jackson's planned comeback concerts). The Jackson estate stands to benefit enormously from this. The undoubted live, free, worldwide news coverage of the memorial, the frenzy of 10, 20, 30 times more fans clamoring outside than can possibly cram into Staples, will generate mind-boggling sales of MJ music. The Staples name will figure into every video clip.
So why should the Jacksons' private arrangement with Staples to commemorate the passing of a man who was almost pathologically averse in life to the public's gaze become, in the end, a public burden?
Hint: that's a rhetorical question.
Photo: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images
Allow me to post a column I wrote back when Michael Jackson was, as the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution says is his right, ''confronted with the witnesses against him'' in the child molestation trial in Santa Maria. That was a little more than four years ago -- March 23, 2005, to be exact.
Remembering everything you've written is beyond most of us who write for a living, but this one had kept haunting the halls of memory, and came back to me again today, as I thought over what sort of man it was who had just died, a man who had been both so public and so elusive.
California Dream's Peaks and Valleys
Michael Jackson, like so many others, paid dearly for a Golden State utopia.
 Could there be a bigger story under the great big California sun than the trial of Michael Jackson?
Could anything top the topsy-turvy fortunes and misfortunes of a brilliant pop star who has sold about as many albums as there are people living in this country? A black man with moon-white skin? A former child star accused of child molesting? A multimillionaire with penury said to be snapping at his heels?
Yes, absolutely. This latest trial of the century will also pass off the front pages in time. Jackson will go to prison or go free. If reports of his financial straits are founded in truth, he may go broke too. And that is where Jackson becomes a part of this larger story, the story of California, the blank-slate state that has room enough for every utopian and dystopian who has a notion to put himself at the center of his own universe -- and room enough to swallow them all up again.
 Michael Jackson and William Randolph Hearst would understand each other. Hearst was an amateur tap-dancer, and I imagine a moonwalking, tap-dancing pas de deux with the Chief and the King of Pop. Hearst's San Simeon land holdings were nearly 100 times larger than Jackson's, almost a quarter-million acres, but each dreamily called his place a "ranch."
Both would speak the language of acquisitiveness: Jackson totted up a $6-million tab in a televised shopping spree in Las Vegas; Hearst emptied the great houses of Europe one linenfold-paneled chamber at a time. My favorite Hearst story has him lusting after some antique he saw in a magazine, sending his buyer out to track it down and bag it. Some time later, the buyer reports back: "Mr. Hearst, you bought that three years ago."
The newspaper genius and the musical genius would be in perfect sync with their determination to be creator and master of their utopian kingdoms, to create a bubble of perfection amid vast imperfection, insulated from the buffeting world by a moat of money.
Hearst spent millions on La Cuesta Encantada (Enchanted Hill), and it came close to beggaring him. Jackson now may find Neverland beyond even his enormous means.
Neither man invented the California utopia; they only planted their flags on its peaks. Nearly five centuries ago, in about 1510, a Spanish writer who had never seen the place willed into being a paradise ruled by an Amazon queen in golden armor and guarded by flying, male-flesh-eating griffins. "Las Sergas de Esplandian" wielded so powerful an influence on poor old Don Quixote that his friends burned it because of the "mischief" it wrought by giving wings to the old man's dreams.
California, half a millennium later, is still an assembly-kit paradise to every newcomer, from the first little R-1 tract house toehold to the topmost tower of San Simeon. California history would not exist without the handiwork of its extreme dreamers, secular and spiritual. Death Valley Scotty and his desert compound ... Simon Rodia's scrap-heap turrets, the Watts Towers ... Jim Jones and the exaltation and isolation of People's Temple before it moved fatally to South America ... the Topanga nudist colony founded by a refugee from Chicago winters ... the Llano del Rio cooperative in the Antelope Valley, briefly home to Aldous Huxley, who wrote of it as a place where "everything that ought not to have been done was systematically done."
A prosecutor has said Jackson is arguably "on the precipice of bankruptcy," a "spendaholic" with a billionaire's tastes and a millionaire's income. A bankruptcy on Jackson's scale would not be a mere reckoning of red ink and black. It would be a magnificent bankruptcy, a not-a-whimper-but-a-bang bankruptcy.
California history is full of those too: Oliver Morosco's, the theater impresario whose name burned in lights and who was in the end run over by a Los Angeles streetcar, with barely enough money in his pocket to pay a streetcar fare. Thomas Thorkildsen's, the early 20th century "Borax king" whose cleaning products were in every kitchen. Carol Burnett would later buy one of his houses, and Brad Pitt bought another, but Thorkildsen died a pensioner in a La Puente nursing home.
Alleged child molesters have no doubt come to the bar of justice in Santa Maria's courthouse before, and they will no doubt again. What becomes of Michael Jackson at trial will occupy a footnote in criminal history, but in his reach and his grasp at that singular utopia of his own invention, he will have written another chapter in the saga of California, a place that exalts and destroys with equal dispassion.
Top photo: Michael Jackson, arriving at the courthouse in Santa Maria in March 2005, Credit: AP Photo / Kimberly White, Pool. Bottom photo: William Randolph Hearst in 1935. Credit: AP Photo.
 Ever noticed how many digital "innovations" in the entertainment industry narrow (or attempt to narrow) the rights of customers? That's one ramification of the decision by Ticketmaster, AEG Live and Miley Cyrus to sell "paperless" tickets to Cyrus' fall tour. The seats are being sold online (only to fan-club members at this point), but buyers won't be able to get into the show unless they flash the credit card used to make the purchase and a matching "government issued ID." As a consequence, if you buy tickets to see Cyrus, you're stuck with them -- even if your plans change or your daughter gets the flu the day of the show. (From a Ticketmaster FAQ page: "There are no refunds for this event.") Nor is there any hope for you if the show sells out before you get the chance to buy in. And forget about giving the seats as a gift. If you buy them, Mom and Dad, you're going along for the ride.
Given the restrictions, "paperless" tickets seem like a lower-value option. But don't expect a discount -- no, in Ticketmaster's view, this is a good thing for customers. Why? According to the company's website, "Paperless ticketing ensures that only fans can purchase tickets and attend the event." In other words, no scalpers or resellers will be jumping in line ahead of Cyrus' devoted followers! Granted, scalpers have become more aggressive and ruthlessly effective now that tickets are sold online. Yet they're hardly the only reason fans have been having a tough time scoring seats to hot shows. As the Journal noted in a damning story in March, some top artists and promoters (including AEG Live) create an artificial scarcity by setting aside good seats for resellers, in addition to the ones reserved for fan clubs. They do this because those artists aren't willing to price the best seats as high as the market will pay for them, yet they, their promoters and Ticketmaster deeply resent the ability of resellers and scalpers to capitalize on that demand. So they find ways to sell tickets at fat-cat prices without the stigma of appearing to cater to fat cats.
Secondary markets are important. They help overcome the inefficiencies in primary markets, while giving purchasers a safety net. If "paperless" tickets are the only option for consumers, there will be no secondary market unless Ticketmaster provides one. That's quite a power grab for a company that's awaiting the Justice Department's approval for a blockbuster merger (with Live Nation, the country's leading concert promoter). Perhaps that's why Ticketmaster is doing this round of "paperless" tickets with AEG Live, one of Live Nation's competitors....
 In Saturday's letters, more thoughts on the situation in Georgia (including responses to columns by Jonah Goldberg and Max Boot), Hillary Clinton and the Democratic convention, "regulatory change" for the Endangered Species Act, Long Beach's library and Isaac Hayes.
Two readers write that they loved Meghan Daum's Aug. 9 column on poor usage of the word "nonplussed," but add that they were themselves nonplussed to see The Times make other usage and grammar errors that day. Writes R.H. Joseph, of McDonough, Ga.: Even as Daum decries people using words outside their original meaning, [Neil] Gabler begins his column with the phrase, "the most ubiquitous." Are there degrees of ubiquity?
*Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Blender Magazine has asked the presumptive presidential nominees for their top 10 favorite tunes. At first glance the answers supplied by Barack Obama and John McCain are pretty predictable -- as if a computer program spit out a list of what their supporters would like them to say. But after a closer look, their choices are quite revealing.
 For example, you might think that John McCain would use this opportunity to prove he isn't a geezer, you know, get some credibility by mentioning Coldplay or John Legend. But nooo, the Arizona senator doesn't cop to popular trends -- or the passage of decades. His list doesn't have a single song that was written in the last 30 years. Seriously, you have to give him credit for embracing the age issue and putting "As Time Goes By" at No. 5.
Worse, McCain listens to ABBA. A lot. "Dancing Queen" and "Take a Chance on Me" make up two of his top three choices, according to the magazine. This is just scary. Everyone knows that ABBA's melody's are crazy addictive, and sure we've all been caught humming bits and pieces of the corniest songs ever written. But it's a guilty pleasure--not something you shout to the world.
Barack Obama's top pick is "Ready or Not" by the Fugees, followed by What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye and "I'm on Fire" by Bruce Springsteen."
These are a little harder to criticize except they are safe, safe, safe: profanity-free hip hop and a classic from The Boss. Hey, wait a minute. Isn't Springsteen one of Obama's celebrity endorsers? Hmm. As for the Fugees, no argument with the song, it's great. But wait: isn't Wyclef Jean an Obama supporter too? And coming in at No. 6 is "Touch the Sky" from, you guessed, Obama fan Kanye West. I suppose it's only fitting that No. 10 on this list is the Obama love letter written by will.i.am: "Yes we can." OK, so I admit I watched that video over and over again when it came out, and I was really moved. And I can believe Obama was glued to it too -- at home, alone in the den where no one could see him. I know I would have been if I were in his place. But that, like singing along to ABBA, should have been a guilty pleasure -- not something to include on a favorites list.
Still, you've got to give them both credit for political savvy -- they know their audiences. Neither man strayed into elitist territory bound to alienate voters by including works by, say, Verdi, Bach or Beethoven. There's no way a Top 10 list of mine doesn't have some Beethoven. But I guess that's why I can't be president. Polls must show that for most Americans, classical music, contemporary country, jazz, punk, reggae or techno simply do not exist.... Riiight. These men both have some explaining to do. How do you leave off Parliament and the Beatles? No Elton John or Led Zeppelin or Earth, Wind & Fire?
There was one singer, however, on both candidates' list: Frank Sinatra. Now what does that say?
 Mark David Chapman, the deeply disturbed, possibly schizophrenic killer who gunned down John Lennon in 1980, was denied parole today for the fifth time. It was the right decision, even if at this point it's unclear whether society needs to be protected from Chapman or Chapman needs to be protected from society.
There was never any trial for Chapman, who was sentenced to 20 years to life after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. To many Lennon fans, that seems like an injustice given that by Chapman's own admission the 1980 killing was premeditated: Chapman staked out Lennon's Central Park apartment building, the Dakota, for days before the opportunity arose to pump four hollow-point bullets into the former Beatle's back. That should have guaranteed life without parole if not the death penalty for Chapman, except that the killer was so unhinged that had the case gone to trial there's a strong chance he would have gotten off on an insanity defense.
Today, Chapman is housed apart from the general population at Attica prison because of his notoriety. But if he's in danger from Lennon fans among his fellow prisoners, it's not hard to imagine (no pun intended) somebody pulling a Jack Ruby on him if he ever gets out. I'm all for being sympathetic to the mentally ill, but Chapman should stay in prison until he dies.
During my drive in this morning, KUSC personality Dennis Bartel (who is not, I'm afraid, one of my aliases), announced an informal poll result that left me not astounded but disappointed.
The question: Should the station continue using United Kingdom titles such as Sir Edward Elgar, Sir William Walton, Sir Loin of Beef, etc. when announcing musical luminaries?
According to Bartel, either two-thirds or three-quarters of his listeners opted to retain these titles on the air. he didn't provide exact numbers, but it was a landslide in favor of toadying to foreign potentates.
He did mention that folks in the anti-title minority were quite energetic, many of them referring to Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution (though as Bartel noted, correctly in my view, this text only enjoins the U.S. from bestowing titles, not private citizens from accepting or honoring them.) He also invited all and sundry to continue emailing their votes and thoughts to him at dbartel@kusc.org.
Please send him an email. In my America only dominatrixes deserve to be referred to by fancy royal titles, so I'm hoping to flip those poll results around. But it wouldn't be very freedom-loving of me to tell you how to vote. Pro or anti, send your ideas to dbartel@kusc.org.
Over at the WashPost, Gene Weingarten is still polishing that Pulitzer they gave him for his widely discussed Joshua Bell busking story from last year, but he's got an embarrassing revelation: Somebody at a long-dead Chicago paper did almost exactly the same story in 1930.
To his credit, Weingarten breaks the story himself, but some commenters are saying, "fiddlesticks!" One demands he give back the prize, and commenter lhooq46 has a critique I can really agree with: What was more unoriginal than the article was the selection of music that Joshua Bell played. I'm sorry, but I would not have stopped to listen for "Thais" or "Ave Maria" no matter how well they were performed - I've heard these pieces hundreds of times & I'm beyond sick and tired of them!!!
But for my money, the best analysis of the original busking stunt came in this vehement and contemptuous article by Richard Taruskin: All concerned knew perfectly well that people at rush hour are preoccupied with other things than arts and leisure, and would not break their stride. But the fulfillment of the self- fulfilling prophecy gave Weingarten the pretext he sought, in an article titled "Pearls Before Breakfast," to cluck and tut, to quote Kant and Tocqueville, and to carry on as if now we knew what really happened at Abu Ghraib.
Bloggers took up the refrain. Notice, wrote one, that "all the children wanted to stop and listen. They knew. But their parents kept them moving on. Sadly it reminds me of an occasion when children wanted to stop and listen to Christ but his disciples didn't let them." Saddest for me was that the weblist of the American Musicological Society, my professional organization, added its meed of clucking and cackling. Scholars are supposed to be skeptical of spin and pose, but here we were piling on. My hat goes off to one Ben H., a netizen who saw through it all. "Perhaps the Post could do a whole series of articles about philistines ignoring Joshua Bell's sublime music-making in different locations," he suggested:
1. Outside a burning building (not one fireman stopped to listen!)
2. At a car crash site (one paramedic actually pushed him aside!)
3. During a graduation exam (shushed by the invigilators!)
4. At a school play (thrown out by angry parents!)
5. On an airport runway (passing jet liners seemed oblivious!)
Death row report sees failed system: A sharply divided California panel says delays undermine the process and reforms could be costly. By Maura Dolan
CAMPAIGN '08: McCain energy record is on/off: He's flip-flopped on nuclear power, ethanol and offshore drilling. By Noam N. Levey
Phone rangers: Rule enforcement will vary. By Hector Becerra and David Pierson
COLUMN ONE: Keeping the ball in play: In a dim Vegas arcade, a man's love for a faded pastime is alive and pinging. Behold the Pinball Hall of Fame. By Ashley Powers
Surprise video puts an end to drug trial By Jack Leonard
China plays hardball on pre-Games visas: As the Olympics near, foreigners are less welcom. Big losers are business and tourism. By Barbara Demick.
Inside Today's Times
IndyMac says it's not failing: Depositors have been pulling money from the thrift.
Put to the test: Two schools that are part of the mayor's reform plan open today.
Even costlier gas predicted: Analysts say Californians may soon be paying $5 a gallon.
Now they just want to sing: The female finalists of "American Idol" are going on tour.
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