First Joe Jackson promotes his new record label during the BET tribute to his deceased son Michael. On Friday Joe Jackson told Good Morning America that his grandhildren, Paris and Blanket, have "talent" and could step into their dad's footsteps. Now tabloid rumors are spreading that Joe's trying to package Michael's children as the Jackson 3. According to MJ's unofficial biographer, Ian Halperin, Joe has offered recording contracts to Prince Michael I and Paris and wants the grieving kids to begin a world tour in 2010. It doesn’t get any more obscene than that. I’ve certainly heard of people pulling jewelry off of the dead, or pillaging through a dead person's belongings before the corpse is cold and in the ground. But pimping the deceased’s grandchildren is a new form of sacrilege. If this posthumous lunacy turns out to be true somebody should put Joe Jackson on public display as the last black man to attempt to pimp his grandkids and didn't live to tell about it. Yeah, I'm talking about taking down the bootleg patriarch and feeding brother to the wolves.
Keith Josef Adkins is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and social commentator.