There have always been a lot of comparisons of Michael Jackson to Elvis. When he was alive he encouraged them by marrying Elvis’ daughter and dubbing himself the King of Pop, like Elvis’ King of Rock & Roll. In death the similarities will probably continue: rumors will float around that he’s not really dead but just in hiding; there will be Michael Jackson sightings – and without a doubt, there will be a ton of Michael Jackson merchandising (thanks to his family). I’m sure I’ll have a Michael Jackson clock with swinging legs instead of a pendulum hanging on my wall very soon.

The abuse of Michael’s memory got off to a quick start by his family, but that’s not stopping others from jumping on board. This Saturday, British spiritualist medium Derek Acorah conducted a live séance with (of?) Michael Jackson, along with four of his fans. Basically it involved convincing the four fans that he really was in contact with Jackson, and then trying to get them to have an emotional breakdown as a result.

This is how Michael Jackson: The Live Seance worked. Derek Acorah – he of Most Haunted and Derek Acorah’s Ghost Towns fame – rounded up a group of Michael Jackson fans and took them to a house in Ireland that Jackson had stayed in a few years ago. Once there, he spent 20 minutes doing what he does best: trying to convince everyone that he was being inhabited by the ghost of a dead megastar.

And he was certainly very convincing. Because if you were Michael Jackson and you’d just been gifted an unexpected conduit into the world of the living for the first time since your death, you wouldn’t use it as an opportunity to pass on some personal messages to your grieving children, would you? No, the first thing you’d do would be to give a shout out to your man Quincy Jones. Then you’d mutter darkly about journalists before mumbling endless variations of the word “love” a lot too. That definitely sounds like something that Michael Jackson would do. Can’t see anything wrong with that.

Derek Acorah’s shtick is offensive at the best of times, but the sight of him sitting at a table with four fans – including two who were literally dressed up as Michael Jackson and one who appeared to be on the brink of emotional meltdown throughout the seance – and doing his best to goad them all into crying on live television left an especially bad taste in the mouth. Acorah’s manipulation of the vulnerable was in such bad taste that it couldn’t be seen as entertainment on any discernible level. It was depressing. That’s all it was.

In the coming years, Michael Jackson will be endlessly repackaged and commoditised by people with all kinds of vested financial interests, but I’ll be staggered if anything even comes close to Michael Jackson: The Live Seance. That’s unless Sky One secures the broadcast rights to Michael Jackson: The Live Corpse-Defiling any time soon. It wouldn’t be that much of a leap.

[From The Guardian]

I watched some clips from YouTube, and it was so horrible and ridiculous that I felt a pit in my stomach. It’s offensive on so many levels. Obviously to Michael’s memory, but it’s also offensive to watch these four fans being victimized by this hack. They’re legitimately upset, and though to most of us it seems sort of ridiculous and akin to being upset by a Ouija board, it’s very real to them.

In some related Jackson news, yesterday it was revealed that his private funeral cost over a million dollars and he was buried in a $35,000 suit. It seems like for that amount of money, he’d probably like some peace now too.