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Why iWant iPad

Apple has officially announced the iPad. And iWant one.

The iPad hasn’t even been officially released, and it’s already being panned by critics who just don’t get it. Moments after the iPad announcement, Fake Steve Jobs (Dan Lyons) called it “underwhelming.” Many see it as just a big iPod Touch or an “iPhone on steroids.” Others compare it to Tablet PCs, which have been largely unsuccessful. Some wonder if the iPad will be just a newer Newton, one of Apple’s biggest flops. There are those who are disappointed by the lack of a camera. Or the apparent inability to support Flash content. Or the big bezel around the 4:3 ratio display. Or the onscreen keyboard. Or a host of other nitpicking criticisms that, in my mind, miss the whole point of iPad.

And that point is best summed up by Jonathan Ive in the opening lines of the promotional video: “When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sorta becomes magical. And that’s exactly what the iPad is.”

Yes, the whole point of the iPad is to be magical. Sure, one can already do much of what the iPad can do on a laptop or an iPhone or an iPod Touch. And many of the initial criticisms of the iPad have come from comparisons to other things that can do what the iPad can do.

But I don’t want an iPad because of what it can do. I want an iPad because of how it will do it. And from what I’ve seen, it does indeed look like magic. Understated elegance. Intuitive interface. Brilliant display. Screaming fast. Amazing price. Serious magic.

And iWant that magic.

I don’t want the iPad to replace my MacBook. Nor do I want it to replace my iPhone or iPod. And I don’t expect it to. Yes, I will probably use the iPad to read my email, keep my calendar, show off my photos, listen to my tunes, watch some videos, and surf the web. But I don’t want an iPad just to do those things. I want an iPad because I want to do those things (and more) in a new way, a fun way, even a magical way.

And iWant what could be the iPad’s killer app: iBooks and the iBooks Store. I’ve been holding off on getting a Kindle. I was really tempted to buy a Nook. But I’ll put down my money for an iPad, so I can read books in full color, on a bright, backlit screen. I know there are those who say it will be hard on the eyes, that monochrome e-ink displays are better. I don’t think so. I’ve spent some time with a friend’s Kindle, and I didn’t find it particularly easy on the eyes. If anything, I found it harder to adjust to an e-ink display after spending most of the day looking at a computer screen. Maybe my eyes are different. Or maybe I just don’t buy the argument that a black-and-white display is somehow better than one in full, glorious color. Go figure.

And even if my eyes do tire after an hour or two of reading iBooks on an iPad, at least I can do something else with it besides read books. A whole lot more than I could do with a Kindle, or a Nook. And for not a lot more money.

It would be nice if Apple gave an educational discount on the iPad. Apple typically does give a small price break to educators and students. It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t give one on the iPad, at least not at first. But I would be very surprised if Apple didn’t eventually have some kind of promotion to make the iPad even more affordable for the education market. Perhaps in their next “back to school” promotion, in time to get iPads in the hands of college students everywhere. Who knows? Maybe the iPad will even make reading textbooks fun again. OK, maybe reading textbooks was never fun. But I’ll take anything I can get that would help my students get more out of reading them.

So let the naysayers and critics write all the negative reviews they want. I’ve heard this kind of reaction to Apple products before. Some people have been calling the Mac a “toy” since the day it came out in 1984. Some people predicted the iPod would never catch on, and that the iTunes store would never be successful. Some people even thought the iPhone would be a flop. And some people today think the iPad will be a failure.

Some people never learn. If there’s one thing Apple can do, and do well, it’s create products that people want. And I firmly believe that people are going to want the iPad. Lots of people.

I know iWant one.

The Haiti Earthquake and Journalistic Choices

Yesterday, a tremendous earthquake struck Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world. I’ve been thinking a lot about this tragedy in the last 24 hours, praying for the victims and survivors, and hoping that the relief effort will be swift, compassionate and comprehensive. As I write this, the extent of death and destruction is not yet clear. But from what I’ve heard from news reports, the Haiti Earthquake of January 2010 appears to be one of the worst natural disasters of this century, possibly even more devastating than the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004.

I’ve also been observing how journalists, and especially broadcast journalists, have been covering this story. I first heard of the news on CNN. Wolf Blitzer broke the story during his “Situation Room” broadcast a few minutes after 5 p.m. My wife was watching CNN when the first announcement was made, and soon both of us were scanning the various news channels for updates. We checked out the Fox News Channel and MSNBC, but we kept coming back to CNN, since, for at least the first few hours after the earthquake, CNN had the most comprehensive and detailed reports.

Indeed, I was a bit shocked by how little attention this story received on Fox News Channel and MSNBC during the first few hours after the earthquake hit. CNN was covering the story nonstop from when the news broke shortly after 5 p.m. Fox had a brief “Fox News Alert” around 5:30 during the Glenn Beck show, but didn’t provide any extensive coverage of the story. MSNBC broke the story a bit later than Fox with an update during “Hardball.” But again, MSNBC, like FNC, didn’t give much more than a brief mention about the tragedy unfolding a few hundred miles southeast of Florida.

CNN did what a news channel should do when a big story like this hits: interrupt regular programming, stick with the story and provide as much information as you can to viewers. Both Fox News Channel and MSNBC instead relied mostly on their pre-recorded talk programs. On Fox News Channel, Bill O’Reilly interviewed Sarah Palin, who recently became a regular contributor to Fox News. The only mention of the Haiti Earthquake I noticed on FNC during the O’Reilly show was in the scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen. Similarly, I didn’t hear Keith Olbermann mention the tragedy at all during his show on MSNBC. To her credit, Rachel Maddow did spend a significant part of her show covering the Haiti earthquake, but by then CNN had been covering it nonstop for nearly 4 hours.

I’m rather disappointed that the only cable news channel that stayed with this story from the beginning was CNN. I can understand why MSNBC might have a hard time covering breaking news, as they have the most limited news resources among the three major news channels. But one would think Fox News Channel could have broke away from their routine prime-time lineup to cover a story of this magnitude. While FNC might not have quite the same number of reporters in the field as does CNN, I think they could have pulled out the stops if they had wanted to do so. They certainly could afford to do so. Fox News Channel is watched by more people than CNN, and those higher ratings have helped swelled the bank accounts of Rupert Murdoch and the News Corporation, which owns Fox (as well as the Wall Street Journal and many other media properties).

So why didn’t Fox News Channel, the broadcast news flagship of a company called the “News” Corporation, break away from their pre-recorded prime-time lineup of commentary shows to provide breaking news coverage of the earthquake in Haiti? One can only assume this reflects contrasting “gatekeeping” philosophies, about what is newsworthy and what isn’t. Last night on Fox News Channel, Sarah Palin’s debut as an FNC contributor was news. Last night on CNN, the earthquake in Haiti was news. With all due respect to Ms. Palin, I think CNN made the better journalistic choice.

Adding Flowplayer to Podcast Producer 2

Today I had another breakthrough in my implementation of Podcast Producer 2, a core part of Snow Leopard Server. As noted in my previous posts, PP2 is “still a work in progress,” but it is also a vast improvement in many ways over my previous video transcoding system based on ffmpeg and Drupal. I’ve been consistently impressed with the quality of the videos produced by PP2, although the file sizes are a bit larger than what I squeezed out of ffmpeg. But one thing that hasn’t impressed me is the “plain vanilla” look and minimal functionality of videos presented using the Quicktime plugin.

I realize there might be valid reasons for Apple sticking with the Quicktime plugin rather than using a more modern-looking javascript player. But for the life of me, I can’t think of any reasons that would excuse Apple from not providing its Snow Leopard Server customers with the option to make videos look as good as on Apple’s site. Almost everywhere you look on Apple’s website, you see snazzy-looking Quicktime presented in cross-platform stable players, typically built in javascript. Even the new Quicktime player that is included with Snow Leopard client gives you a javascript option when exporting a video for the web. So why didn’t Apple provide a javascript player option with Podcast Producer 2? At the very least, Apple could have provided some configuration hooks to make it easier to do something other than present videos using the Quicktime plugin.

But where there’s a will…there’s got to be a way. And my “breakthrough” today was in finally finding that way. It isn’t using one of the various javascript players you can find on Apple’s site. Those aren’t at all well-documented, and trying to piece together something workable from the clues found in page sources is not my idea of a fun afternoon. No, the player I’m using to present the Quicktime videos produced by Podcast Producer 2 is Flowplayer, a really great little Flash-based player.

With my previous ffmpeg/Drupal system, I had been using a Flash-based player to present the videos: the venerable JW Player (now a product of Long Tail Video). But for a variety of reasons, I couldn’t get this player to work right with the m4v Quicktime files produced by the PP2 system. And the look of JW Player is getting a bit dated, although not nearly as dated as the look of the Quicktime plugin. Flowplayer, on the other hand, is modern-looking, clean and well-documented. The key to getting Flowplayer to work with PP2/Wiki server was finding just where to put the code…something that I mentioned at the end of my last post.

So today, after editing some code in the wiki.js and compressed_wiki.js files (both located in usr->share->collaboration->javascript), I now have Flowplayer injected instead of the Quicktime plugin whenever a user clicks on a thumbnail. The main edit was to the objectHTML variable (quoted in my previous post). In essence, instead of referencing the Quicktime plugin, I referenced the SWF player file included in Flowplayer, and passed to it the same parameters that had been going to the plugin. To keep things in line with the way the Quicktime plugin had been injected, I used the OBJECT method of inserting Flowplayer. To keep Firefox happy, I echoed this change using the EMBED method found in the embed.innerHTML variable in the code right below the objectHTML variable. I also tweaked the height adjustment, adding 24 pixels to video files and 8 pixels to audio files (using extendHeight?24:8) to accommodate the slightly higher control bar of Flowplayer. And to get the Flowplayer javascript file loaded, I added a call to this file in the head of the default.xsl file in the Wiki theme folder (and in the enclosed compressed folder). And that’s pretty much it.

Now videos on my site look so much better, with a decent looking control bar that I can customize to my heart’s content. Time indicators? Check. Slick color instead of boring monochrome? Check. Volume slider you actually notice? Check. Seek bar with time points? Check. Big bold play and replay buttons? Check. Options galore for tweaking things just right? Check.

It did take some effort to get my head around the code I needed to adjust in Apple’s javascript files. And yes, my changes will most likely be overwritten by a software update, so I’m being careful to backup my edits. But now that I understand where to make the changes, and how, I think I will continue to use Flowplayer instead of relying on the stock Quicktime plugin to present PP2-produced videos.

At least until Apple does the right thing and finally brings to their Server product a decent javascript player…like the ones that have been used for a long time on Apple’s own web sites.

Getting Podcast Producer 2 to Play Nice With Windows

In my last post, I wrote about my experiences with Podcast Producer 2: the good, the bad and the downright ugly. Well, I had a bit of a breakthrough today in getting Podcast Producer 2 to “play nice with Windows,” so I’m posting my “new and improved” workaround.

As I described earlier, the main problem is the way PP2 posts videos to user blogs maintained by Wiki Server (which is a core part of Snow Leopard server). The primary culprits are the width and height tags that are included in the IMG tag that is written to the blog entry. If the video files were of a small resolution, PP2 would typically write out height tags that were empty, which breaks Internet Explorer on Windows, since IE assumes an empty height tag means a height of zero. But even if the video files were at a larger resolution, PP2 would write out width tags that were narrower than the actual width of the video file, presumably to make the thumbnail smaller than the video. That breaks any browser on Windows, since the Quicktime plugin for Windows doesn’t seem to be able to scale videos to fit within the dimensions defined by smaller-than-actual width and height tags. It works fine on a Mac, since it appears that the Quicktime plugin for Mac can shrink videos to fit into whatever dimensions are defined in a web browser.

My workaround was to manually edit these entries, removing the width and height tags. This would make the thumbnails full size, the same size as the associated video files denoted in the ALT attribute of the IMG file (a rather non-standard use of the ALT attribute, but that’s another issue). This workaround was a lot of work: manually editing the HTML of each and every video file produced by my server had become a daily chore. In the last month, I had edited over 1,000 blog entries. But at least the videos would play on Windows.

I had originally thought I should be able to fix this by changing the code found in the “_podcast.html” file found in the WikiTemplates folder in Library->Application Support->Apple->WikiServer. After all, this file looks like the exact template used by PP2 when it posts to WikiServer. But even though I removed the width and height attributes from this template file, it had no effect on the blog entries posted by PP2. I have since found that these templates are not used by PP2; they are used by WikiServer itself. That is, when you go to a user blog, click the plus sign to manually add a blog entry, and select the option to add podcast content, the resulting code is drawn from the _podcast.html file in the WikiTemplates folder. So PP2 must be getting the code from somewhere else.

Today I found out where: in a line of code in /usr/lib/podcastproducer/actions/wikiserver.rb. Near the top of this file is the following line…

MOVIE_ERB_TEMPLATE = "<%= h($properties[\"Description\"]) %> <br> <br> <img src=\"<%= poster_image_url %>\" alt=\"<%= published_url %>\" width=\"<%= width %>\" height=\"<%= height %>\" class=\"aligncenter posterimg\" />"

Bingo. I just took out the width and height tags from this line and restarted the server. Now PP2 doesn’t write out the width and height tags when it posts video podcasts. And I no longer have to manually edit the posts produced by PP2 to enable them to work on Windows. Hallelujah.

While studying this file, I think I discovered what may be the reason why PP2 is mucking up the dimension attributes. Further in this file are these lines of code…

if width > 480
height = PcastQT.info(input_published_path, "height").to_i * 480 / width
width = 480.0
end

So if I understand this correctly, what this does is check if a video is wider than 480, and if so, force it to stay at a width of 480 and adjust the height downward proportionally. That is, if a video has standard “VGA” dimension of 640 wide by 480 high, this bit of code forces it to be 480 wide by 360 high (the original height 480 multiplied by 0.75, or 480/640). And again, this scaling of the thumbnail downward is what seems to be breaking the Quicktime plugin on Windows.

I’m still not sure why videos that are smaller that 480 wide are being posted by PP2 with an empty height attribute, but I have a theory. I notice that in this section of code that the width is explicitly defined by this line of code:

width = PcastQT.info(input_published_path, "width").to_i

But height is not explicitly defined UNLESS the “if width > 480″ is evaluated true. This could be why I’ve discovered that for smaller submitted videos (say at a resolution of 320 by 240) the code being posted by PP2 has an empty height attribute (specifically, height=””). But whether or not this theory is correct, I’m happy that I’ve discovered a fix. By removing the width and height attributes completely from the MOVIE_ERB_TEMPLATE line of code, I’ve effectively addressed both the empty height attribute problem and the scaled-down width attribute problem.

Of course, Apple is likely to rewrite this file with a software update. Here’s hoping they correct this problem, so that I don’t have to hack the same file in the future. But just in case, I’ve documented my fix here for my reference, and potentially for the benefit of others frustrated trying to get Podcast Producer 2 to play nice with Windows.

UPDATE: I think I’ve discovered where the code lives that swaps out the video file for the thumbnail when you click on it. It appears to be in the javascript file wiki.js at /usr/share/collaboration/javascript/wiki.js. Near the bottom of this file is an “expandMedia” function that’s part of the QTMediaExpander class. The “objectHTML” variable appears to contain the code that embeds the Quicktime object…

var objectHTML = '<object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" width="'+img.width+'" height="'+(img.height+(extendHeight?16:0))+'" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab"><param name="SRC" value="/collaboration/fake.qti"><param name="QTSRC" value="'+fullSrc+'?sessionID='+server().sessionID+'"><param name="TYPE" value="video/quicktime"><param name="SCALE" value="aspect"><param name="AUTOPLAY" value="true"><param name="CONTROLLER" value="true"><param name="TARGET" value="myself"><param name="BGCOLOR" value="'+backgroundColor+'"></object>'

I don’t think I should try to hack something here now, not with a PP2 server filled with 1200 videos and counting. But perhaps between semesters or over the summer break I’ll poke around here to see if I can’t get a prettier javascript Quicktime player instead of the plain vanilla Quicktime interface provided by the Quicktime plugin. Many people have requested a player that displays the elapsed time of the video, something I know is possible since Apple has such players on their own website (including here, for example).

And that’s the way it was… Remembering Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite died last night at the age of 92. Or should I say, he was 92 and a half. In my opinion, anyone who lives to be in their nineties has earned the right to keep track of age in half-years. While it’s sad to see him go, I’m glad he lived to a ripe old age.

Much has already been written about Walter Cronkite. Of course, many have noted that he was an outstanding news reporter and news anchor. His work at CBS News greatly contributed to the tradition of excellence established by Edward R. Murrow. Cronkite will long be remembered for his even-handed delivery of the news of President Kennedy’s death in 1963, and his almost giddy reaction to the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. And who can forget President Johnson’s reaction to Cronkite’s 1967 broadcast on the Tet offensive in which Walter concluded the Vietnam War was essentially a lost cause: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” And that’s the way it was; public opinion on Vietnam deteriorated in the years to follow.

I would like to share just a few things about Walter Cronkite from my own perspective, a few tidbits that are less well known, or at least, not widely reported or commented on.

You probably knew that Walter Cronkite sported a mustache. But you might not know that he was one of the first news anchors to have facial hair, and to this day, he remains one of the few men in national TV news to have proudly worn whiskers. NBC news legend Lowell Thomas had a mustache, but Thomas is more associated with radio news (although his radio newscast was simulcast on some early television stations in the 1940s). And H.R. Baukhage, one of the first TV news anchors at ABC (1948-51) appears to have a faint mustache in some of the available photos from that era. But if you don’t count Thomas (who really was a radio guy) or Baukhage (who really was not well known) Walter Cronkite was the first nationally-famous network news anchor to have facial hair. All of the notable anchors of network television news before Cronkite were clean-shaven, including John Cameron Swayzee, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley at NBC, Douglas Edwards at CBS (whom Cronkite replaced in 1962) and John Charles Daly (the first truly memorable anchor at ABC). And of the network TV news anchors since Cronkite, only Max Robinson at ABC comes to mind as having a mustache. Of course, Wolf Blitzer at CNN wears a nicely trimmed set of whiskers, but I’m talking here about national news anchors at the major broadcast networks. In any case, Walter Cronkite remains one of the few men in national TV news to have facial hair.

I also remember Walter Cronkite for his public speaking skill. Beyond his contributions to broadcast journalism, Cronkite should also be noted as someone who clearly understood the importance of speech communication, and vividly demonstrated effective public speaking techniques. His mastery of public speaking was evident in a video he was featured in called “Presentation Excellence.” I remember this video quite well because I used it frequently in the late 1980s when I regularly taught public speaking at William Jewell College. Although it may seem a bit dated now, the advice contained in this video is quite good, and still remains one of the better videos one can use in an introductory public speaking course. One particularly notable section of the video is Cronkite’s analysis of Barbara Jordan’s speech at the 1976 Democratic National Convention (which many rhetorical scholars believe was among the most important speeches of the 20th century). I don’t believe this video is still available, but perhaps CBS will consider releasing an updated version (the original 1984 video was jointly produced by CBS and Fox).

One more thing about Walter Cronkite that I will always remember: the location of the school named after him. That’s because the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is at Arizona State University, the first school that hired me as an adjunct instructor after I completed my master’s degree. In fact, the journalism department at ASU was just being named after Walter Cronkite and elevated to school status in 1984, the year I left Arizona State for a tenure-track post at William Jewell College. If things had worked out a little differently in my career, I might be teaching at ASU today. I still know a few of the long-time faculty members there, including Don Godfrey, always a friendly face when I regularly see him at the annual convention of the Broadcast Education Association. The Walter Cronkite School has become one of the best broadcast journalism schools in the country, rivaling the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State. And certainly one reason for the excellence of the Walter Cronkite School was the active involvement by Walter Cronkite himself in the early years of the school. Cronkite was, after all, a healthy and vibrant man when he was forced to retire from CBS in 1981 at the age of 65. Many people believe he could have gone on to anchor many more years had he been given the chance. But rather than retire to a life of leisure, Cronkite kept active in his golden years, and his imprint on the Cronkite School remains to this day a testament to his exceptional talent.

In memory of Ed, Farrah and Michael

This past week saw the passing of three of my heroes. My memories of each are very different. Each was important to me for different reasons. But they were all significant figures in my life, and especially during my youth. So I just have to share some of my own personal reflections on the trio of celebrities who passed away this week: Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.

Ed McMahonEarlier this week came the news that Ed McMahon had died. This was not entirely unexpected, as it was widely known that Ed had been having health problems. I found the timing a bit ironic in that Ed’s passing occurred in the same month that Jay Leno passed the baton of hosting The Tonight Show to Conan O’Brien. I think Ed would have been pleased with the way Andy Richter is developing in his role as Conan’s sidekick. Unlike the rather minor role that Edd Hall played on Jay Leno’s version of The Tonight Show, Andy is assuming a stronger supporting role to Conan, with a chemistry not unlike what I remember between Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon. Indeed, even Conan’s band leader, Max Weinberg, has assumed a role more like Doc Severinsen than the one which developed between Kevin Eubanks and Jay Leno. In many respects, Kevin was Jay’s Ed, always available to enhance the timing of a joke, and to poke fun of the ones that fell flat.

That’s something Ed McMahon did very well. He clearly understood his role as “second banana” to Johnny Carson, and he was very good at it. He also happened to be an excellent announcer, a profession that I once pursued. He had a great voice, and was one of the last great “live copy” readers, who regularly delivered commercials live on camera, something that is rarely done anymore. People routinely zap past commercials nowadays, but there was a time when people stayed tuned in for live spots, like the very memorable one where Ed McMahon extolled the virtues of Alpo Dog Food with a panting Johnny by his side. They just don’t make TV like that anymore. Here’s a tip to Conan’s producers: let Andy loose on some live commercial copy. I think he could channel Ed’s spirit quite well, and it would be refreshing to see the comeback of live copy on commercial television.

It would also be refreshing to see the comeback of shows like Charlie’s Angels, and of characters like Jill Monroe, brought vividly to life by Farrah Fawcett. Sure, the show was cheesy. Plots tended to be predictable, and villains were often cartoonish. It wasn’t a critically acclaimed show, nor did it try to be. To put it bluntly, it was the classic example of the “jiggle factor” on television, something that later shows like Baywatch refined to perfection. Certainly the vividness of my memories of Farrah Fawcett are rooted in her appearance, and in particular, the provocative pose captured in the iconic poster that could be found hanging in nearly every college dorm room in the country, including my own.
Farrah Faucett's Famous Poster
But while Farrah Fawcett may be remembered for her appearance, we should not forget that Charlie’s Angels was one of the first major dramas on television to feature women starring in roles that had traditionally been reserved for men. It was remarkable for its time. It expanded cultural notions of femininity at the same time it reinforced traditional norms. And I think Farrah understood this fine line that she and the other “Angels” were walking in the cultural whirlpool that was the 1970s. She embraced the contradictions inherent in a character that at one level reflected a “liberation” of women from deeply-held stereotypes and at another level reflected a raw sexuality that resonated with a culture longing for a return to tradition. In short, she was perfect for this role.

Yesterday afternoon, I thought the big news of the day was the passing of Farrah Fawcett. When I mentioned the news of Farrah to someone at work, the response was something like “first Ed McMahon, now Farrah Fawcett, we’re losing the great ones.” But then came word late in the day that Michael Jackson had died. For many people, the death of Michael Jackson was the biggest news of the week, not only eclipsing the passing of Ed and Farrah, but also putting the unrest in Iran on the back burner on CNN.

Michael Jackson was a relatively young man of 50. In contrast, Ed McMahon was 86 years old when he died on June 23. Farrah Fawcett was a much younger 62 when she died on June 25, but her deteriorating health was brought into vivid focus last month by the TV documentary Farrah’s Story. So when Michael Jackson died at a mere 50, just a few hours after Farrah passed away, the news came as an extreme shock. Within a three-day period, we had lost Johnny’s loyal sidekick, an iconic sex symbol, and now, the king of pop. The world had some clues that the days of Ed and Farrah were numbered. But who knew that the man who brought us the best-selling album of all time was soon to become history?

The Best Selling Album of All TimeMichael Jackson had become a tragic figure in his later years. It’s hard to deny that his well-publicized troubles tarnished his reputation. Allegations of child molestation haunted him, even though he prevailed in court. His Neverland Ranch seemed like an almost desperate effort to enjoy a childhood he never had. Some saw his private life as rather odd, even weird. And yes, he was the butt of many jokes on late night television. Michael Jackson’s personal foibles provided a lot of fodder for Jay Leno.

But I think Michael Jackson’s contributions to our culture and popular music are far more weighty than his deteriorating image in the public eye. There will undoubtedly be those who will fixate on the negative. But I think far more of us will remember the Michael Jackson who brought us some of the most memorable music of all time. Certainly this would include the music found on Thriller, an album which has sold over 100 million copies worldwide. No other album has even come close to this figure, and given the state of the music industry, it is very doubtful that any album will ever match this distinction.

While I enjoyed Thriller, my memories of Michael go back much further. When Thriller was released in 1982, I was nearing the end of my career as a radio DJ. I was completing my Master’s degree, and I would soon begin my career as a college professor. Thriller was a great album, but my fondest memories of Michael date back to his earlier years, and in particular, his work with the Jackson 5. One of my favorite Michael Jackson tunes, in fact, is an ode to a rat. Perhaps only Michael Jackson possessed the sheer ethos that could turn the rather silly premise of Ben into a touching musical masterpiece. For me, this song was the one that showcased for me what I liked best about Michael Jackson, an uncanny combination of childlike innocence, unshakable confidence, and a truly remarkable voice.

Yes, I’ll miss the great ones that passed away this week. When so many powerful figures in our culture die in such a short time frame, I think it causes us to appreciate even more the fragility of our own lives. I know that my life has been enriched by the contributions of Ed, Farrah and Michael. Each of these celebrities has had their “ups and downs.” But ultimately, I think each, in their own ways, have left us with enduring memories that will last for generations to come.