What's the deal with airline peanuts?: Jackson's allegations desperate plea for attention

Michael Jackson, once the music industry's most thrilling entertainer, is no longer invincible.

A pale shadow of his former self, both literally and figuratively, he has yet to face the music and realize he has passed his prime 20 years ago.

This summer, the former king of pop took up a crusade against Sony, leveling charges of discrimination against the label for insufficiently promoting his latest album. This in spite of the fact the company waged a $25 million promotional campaign, something rarely allotted even to the most marketable of artists.

"Invincible" reportedly sold just under 6 million copies worldwide, figures that would be good for almost anyone else, but are disappointing for Jackson whose 1982 "Thriller" has sold more than 45 million copies worldwide.

Along with such artists as Sting, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen, Jackson was one of the great pop acts of the 1980s, an era when pop was a good thing.

Whereas the aforementioned singers evolved stylistically and continue to stay on the cutting edge, Jackson has grown primarily by imitating his imitators, a point brought up in a Salon.com article.

"Invincible" is simply a bland rendition of the mindless bubble-gum pop perpetrated by such acts as Britney Spears and N'Sync. Gone is the electricity of "Thriller," "Bad" and even "Dangerous." Jackson hasn't produced anything exciting in almost a decade.

That he had the tenacity to lash out at Sony is astonishing. Industry insiders feel that what the dispute boils down to are the rights to the Beatles catalog which the star could conceivably lose, due to his penchant for borrowing huge amounts of cash from Sony, accumulating a debt of $200 million.

The singer's allegations that the music industry is evil and corrupt are nothing surprising. Music fans have known that for years. What's sad is that while his charges have some basis in legitimacy, his reasoning is ludicrous.

Of course he knows that the only way anybody will take him seriously anymore is by charging racism.

Even Al Sharpton backed away from Jackson's accusations that Sony president Tommy Mottola is "mean, racist and very, very devilish" (in spite of the fact that he was once married to Mariah Carey and has a long history of good relations with African-American musicians).

Is there racism in the music industry? Of course there is. Artists of all backgrounds have been battling over royalties and messy recording deals for decades, but Jackson's finger-pointing only makes a mockery of their struggle.

Wild rumors of skin bleaching and predilections for oxygen capsules, coupled with allegations of child abuse were part of what he claims to be a vast industry-wide conspiracy to discredit him, out of bitterness that a black artist would outsell such white luminaries as Elvis Presley.

Jackson was one of the most bankable artists to come out of the 80s, crossing race barriers and striking a chord with all facets of the population. That Sony would want to ruin such a money maker, because he's black (or at least used to be) is as ludicrous as the NBA wanting to discredit more than 80 percent of its star power.

As proven by boy bands and reality shows, if the entertainment industry has a good thing on their hands they'll put it out front and try to leech every cent out of it, driving it into the ground if they have to.

Jackson never produced music prolifically enough for his sound to be driven into the ground, but he certainly did excel at overexposure.

In song, he loves to berate the media for victimizing him and robbing him of privacy, while at the same time using it to inflate his image to Stalinesque proportions.

The Soviet dictator would be proud watching the promotional campaign for "HIStory" which featured an army of what looked like storm troopers erecting a giant statue of the singer as helicopters soared overhead and searchlights cut across the sky.

The image was larger than life but the music was shrinking.

Jackson long ago became a parody of himself and meager sales of "Invincible" have nothing to do with Sony, marketing strategies or racism. Jackson only has to look at the man in the mirror.