The First Book of Michael Read Online Free PDF Page A

disgust at the enforced censorship. Footage shot during the recording of ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ shows a silhouetted Michael angrily throwing equipment around a studio. Ensuing variations of the track – released on later compilations – replaced the ‘trashing’ sound Michael had cut over the censored words, with an equally auditory jarring repetition of the lyrically arrhythmic word from the first part of the line – “Kick me, kick me / Don’t you black or white me.” The song is thus forever both scarred and sanctified by this intentional lack of proper rectification. Or – to paraphrase Michael’s adlib at the denouement of said track – “it’s there to remind us.”
    During the Diane Sawyer interview that Michael organised in order to promote the HIStory album, the “vainglorious” HIStory short film was shown. It is a work that irrefutably borrows heavily from the Nazi propaganda piece, Triumph of the Will . As part of this interview, Michael defends his use of the terms ‘Jew’ and ‘Kike’ in ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ with the retort that he was merely utilising the imagery to illustrate the extent to which he himself had become a victim. As in, how Jewish people were victims when subjugated by the atrocities meted out upon them during the Holocaust. Indeed, the word ‘Kike’ is derived from the Hebrew word for ‘circle’ – a derisory term given to Jewish immigrants as a result of their being required to draw a circle on themselves instead of a cross, upon their arrival in America after fleeing World War II atrocities.
    And – certainly – Michael had also been marked and victimised.
    In conversation with Rabbi Schmuley Boteach, Michael argued,
    “Well I'd say, they don't care about us, those who are treated unjustly, those who have been bastardised, being called '"nigger", being called the word that they misunderstood me for when I said those who say "kike" to people. When I was a little kid, Jews, we had Jewish lawyers and Jewish accountants and they slept in my bed next to me and they would call each other "kike". I said "What is that?' and they said, "That's the bad word for Jews. For blacks they say 'nigger'. I said "Ohhh." So I always knew when people have been bastardised, they've been called 'nigger', they've been called "kike". That's what I am saying and they used it. They took it all wrong. I would never… you know?”
    And in his official statement rebuffing the allegations, said,
    “The song, in fact, is about the pain of prejudice and hate, and is a way to draw attention to social and political problems. I am the voice of the accused and the attacked. I am the voice of everyone. I am the skinhead, I am the Jew, I am the Black man, I am the White man. I am not the one who was attacking… I am angry and outraged that I could be so misinterpreted.”
    Yet, insofar as far as being “a victim” is concerned, one cannot ignore Michael’s stance on the criminal violence flaunted by the nuclear power state of Israel upon the displaced Palestinian people. A situation Michael laments in another HIStory track, ‘Earth Song’, with the words: “What about the Holy Land? / Torn apart by creed” and even more explicitly in his lyric: “God’s a place for you / Oh, Palestine / I believe in you / Oh, Palestine, I will die for you”.
    Michael liked to highlight social injustice – wherever it was, and in whatever form it took. He shone the spotlight on instances of oppression. In fact, almost two decades prior to the furore forged by the deaths and social disharmony resultant of Brazil’s efforts to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup , Michael had already strived to focus the world’s attention on the injustice of the wealth divide there, by means of the ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ short film (‘Brazil Version’ – in which he performs both the Black Panther salute and the Nazi goose step, and whilst singing the words "The government don't wanna see",