"The movie, in effect, resurrects [Michael] Jackson, only to remind viewers that he’s gone, fans say...."

"Awa Cham, 28, a content creator in London, agreed, saying via video chat, 'I feel like I went through this whole grieving process again. I was, like, this is not fair, he should be here.' JaRed Cameron, a musician from the Bronx, said by email, 'I cried, laughed, and I cried some more throughout the whole film.' He added, 'It took me about a week to shake off the rain cloud of "Michael" "withdrawal" since watching the movie.' For others, Jackson’s lifelong loneliness and the abuse he endured as a child added a dimension to their sadness. 'Watching young Michael cry alone in the corner of the bathroom made me so sad,' Victoria Tappa, a physician assistant student in Davenport, Iowa, said via email. 'Even writing this, I have tears in my eyes.'"

From "Feeling Mournful After 'Michael'? It Might Be 'Michosis.' Some Michael Jackson fans are experiencing deep, lingering grief after watching the biopic — a potent reminder that he is gone, they say" (NYT).

"If you find out that an artist whose work you consume is a terrible person, and you still choose to consume it, are you a terrible person?"

Asks Will Leitch, in "The terrible Michael Jackson movie exposes a central cultural question. The film is indefensible. The impulse to see it is deeply human" (WaPo).

I don't know who wrote the headline, but I don't see Leitch attributing deep humanity to the millions of people who are seeing and loving "Michael" — which he and all the critics know "is a bad movie."

Those people who love "Michael" are, in Leitch's words, those who "generally don’t see mass culture as a moral issue, or a political one, or really as having much practical, tangible effect on their lives at all. They go to the movies, listen to music, watch television or read books, not to make some sort of statement about the world but to take a break from it. For most people, art and entertainment are just something that gets you out of the house for a while — and might even make you dance."

In short, they are the very opposite of deep. 

I would have liked to hear a sophisticated analysis of why it is deeply human to want to see Michael again, in his glory, without the ugliness of the accusations. It is deeply human to long for a return to feelings of joy and love that enveloped you when you were young. You're not a nitwit to want that.

"There Must Be More to Life Than..."

"Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I was too young to know [Elizabeth] Taylor as the violet-eyed phenom who first dazzled in 'National Velvet' and went on..."

"... to be perhaps the most famous, the most glamorous movie star in the world. I was, however, just the right age to experience her as a pop culture mainstay and occasional punchline. This was Ms. Taylor’s frosted-tips-and-caftans era, when she appeared in front of a camera only to make soft-focus perfume ads, parodied by 'Saturday Night Live.' It was the time of her union with Mr. Fortensky, a construction worker she’d met in rehab, and whom she married at her friend Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch."

Writes Jennifer Weiner in "Jennifer Lopez Is Becoming an Elizabeth Taylor for a New Generation" (NYT)(free-access link).

I'm not interested enough in Jennifer Lopez to care about her multiple marriages and divorces, and Elizabeth Taylor began a bit before my time, but I remember the Elizabeth Taylor of the 1960s, and that sets me apart from Weiner, who arrived after Taylor's prime. I'm still quite interested in Taylor, even more so after watching this new HBO documentary:

Taylor critiques fame. I thought this review from Chris Cassingham was apt: "At a time when the public’s access to celebrities’ personal lives is simultaneously at its greatest and most calculated, the raw vulnerability of Taylor’s recollections is necessarily tempered when transposed onto something so pedestrian as Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes often is. If the material at [director Nanette] Burstein’s disposal holds within it deep insights about the toxic nature of hypervisible celebrity, about an industry’s exploitations, her film deploys them hesitantly...."

"When [Hugh Hefner] died of cardiac arrest at 91, [his last wife] at first protected his reputation."

"She writes about how, before he died, Mr. Hefner made her promise to 'only say good things.' Ms. Hefner’s resolve to keep that promise began fading in 2019, she said, when she started therapy after watching 'Leaving Neverland,' the documentary that details sexual-abuse allegations from two men who had long-running relationships with Michael Jackson. Looking back at their marriage now, Ms. Hefner said, evokes feelings of regret and disgust. She is still learning how to build healthy relationships and break the codependent tendencies she developed during her relationship with Mr. Hefner. 'When I started dating again, that was hard,' she said, 'because with Hef, he just wanted me by him all the time.' It was only recently, she said with a nervous laugh, that she learned the concept of setting boundaries. 'I didn’t have any when I was at the mansion,' she said. 'If you wanted to be there, you couldn’t have boundaries.'"

From a NYT article with such an off-putting headline that I almost avoided clicking, even though Hugh Hefner is a very longstanding interest of mine: "No More Bunny Business/In a tell-all memoir, Crystal Hefner recounts her former days as a Playboy model and the third (and last) wife of Hugh Hefner."

One of the boundaries you can set in your life is to see yourself as not bound by a promise you made to someone else. Another person can make you feel bound as he sets his boundaries to hold you in. She wanted to be inside that boundary. On balance, at the time, it felt worth it to her. But how can that bind her for life? He could have set it up with enough of a financial penalty that she would have chosen to keep quiet for the rest of her life, but it seems he just "made her promise to 'only say good things.'"

It's almost a generic death-bed wish: Speak well of me when I'm gone. Remember the good. It was good for you too, my darling, wasn't it?

"In my 30 year career, including the entire MeToo era, there’s nothing to report, but, as soon as I say I intend to restore free speech to Twitter & vote Republican, suddenly there is…"

Said Elon Musk, quoted in "Elon Musk calls claims of sexual misconduct ‘politically motivated’" (WaPo).

Musk commented at length on Twitter... writing that “those wild accusations are utterly untrue” and issuing “a challenge to this liar who claims their friend saw me ‘exposed’ — describe just one thing, anything at all (scars, tattoos, …) that isn’t known by the public. She won’t be able to do so, because it never happened.”  

“Moreover,” he added, “the ‘friend’ in question who gave the interview to [Insider], is a far left activist/actress in LA with a major political axe to grind.” 

“The attacks against me should be viewed through a political lens — this is their standard (despicable) playbook — but nothing will deter me from fighting for a good future and your right to free speech,” Musk tweeted. 

He ended the thread: “Finally, we get to use Elongate as scandal name. It’s kinda perfect.”

The top-rated comment over there is: "Musk is starting to sound an awful lot like Trump." And, yes, he is: He's a master of the tweet. But don't worry. He can't run for President. We are securely safe from the foreign-born man following the Trump path to power. And Musk himself is safe from that temptation (and from our suspicion). That door is closed.

Of course, if the allegations are true, that's very bad. But what I'd like to know is how many men are inhibited from coming out as conservative — or just anti-Democrat — because they know there are or could be allegations like this held in reserve. How much control is achieved by this method of only going after political enemies? We can't get all the allegations out, because some men are protected, protected by their own political pretense.

By the way, do you think there's anything odd about Elon Musk's genitalia, or is this a rhetorical trick to make us think he has a means of refuting his accuser? Remember when Michael Jackson was subjected to a bodily search to see if his accuser had accurately described his penis?

"Addressing the root causes of migration is one of several jobs President Biden has handed Ms. Harris, who had no deep expertise with Latin America issues..."

"... or the decades-long quandary of federal immigration reform. He has also asked her to lead the administration’s voting-rights efforts, which are in a filibuster limbo. According to The Times, he has her working on combating vaccine hesitancy and fighting for policing reform, too, among other uphill battles. It’s gotten to the point that every time I see Ms. Harris, I immediately think of 'The Wiz' and hear Michael Jackson singing: You can’t win, you can’t break even/And you can’t get out of the game/People keep sayin’ things are gonna change/But they look just like they’re stayin’ the same...."

That's a NYT column, "Dear Kamala Harris: It’s a Trap!" by a polisci professor named Christina Greer Ms. Greer is a political scientist at Fordham University.

Of course, it's a trap, a set up, and I don't know why Greer doesn't go the whole way and accuse Biden of white supremacy. But what interested me the most was the random appearance of Michael Jackson. Is he uncancelled now?

"Saturday Night Live" dished out a little something for everybody.

Now, play "Santa Clause Is Coming to Town" by The Jackson 5...

"Funk is the opposite of magic. Funk is about rules."

From "The Book of Prince/Prince had grand plans for his autobiography, but only a few months to live"  (in The New Yorker), by Dan Piepenbring. This is about Prince's first interview with Piepenbring, whom he accepted as a collaborator for a memoir ("The Beautiful Ones," due out in October):

Behind his sphinxlike features, I could sense, there was an air of skepticism. I tried to calm my nerves by making as much eye contact as possible. Though his face was unlined and his skin glowed, there was a fleeting glassiness in his eyes. We spoke about diction. “Certain words don’t describe me,” he said. White critics bandied about terms that demonstrated a lack of awareness of who he was. “Alchemy” was one. When writers ascribed alchemical qualities to his music, they were ignoring the literal meaning of the word, the dark art of turning base metal into gold. He would never do something like that. He reserved a special disdain for the word “magical.” I’d used some version of it in my statement. “Funk is the opposite of magic,” he said. “Funk is about rules.”

[Prince said h]e thought I needed to know more about racism—to have felt it. He talked about hip-hop, the way it transformed words, taking white language—"your language"—and turning it into something that white people couldn’t understand. Miles Davis, he told me, believed in only two categories of thinking: the truth and white bullshit...

"'Magic' is Michael’s word"—meaning Michael Jackson. "That’s what his music was about."

ADDED: You can pre-order "The Beautiful Ones" at Amazon.

"Chappelle retains his killer timing and raconteur’s charms, but... he seems more interested in seeking the clapter of like-minded patrons than anything else."

"The comedian sells his self-centered worldview, hard: [Michael] Jackson didn’t molest any kids, because the singer didn’t target a prime candidate like Macaulay Culkin. [Louis] C.K. didn’t do anything wrong, because exposing himself to female colleagues isn’t a crime worthy of reporting to the police. The opioid crisis makes him understand how white people felt during the crack epidemic, because 'I don’t care, either.'"

From "Dave Chappelle’s Sticks & Stones Fights for the Rights of the Already-Powerful/In his new Netflix special, Chappelle rushes to the defense of the people who need it most: celebrities" by Inkoo Kang (in Slate).

"Clapter" is not a typo. In the text at Slate, the word is linked to "The Rise of 'Clapter' Comedy" (at Vulture). That's from January 2018, and you'll see Chapelle's name comes up:

[T]his portmanteau [of clapping and laughter]—evidently coined by Seth Meyers over a decade ago— to bemoan an identifiable strain of message-driven comedy that inadvertently prioritizes political pandering above comedic merit....

Monologue segments have turned into a series of repetitive jokes, middling impressions, and verbatim tweet recitals, but they nonetheless continue to elicit enthusiastic reactions from crowds, who can relate broadly to the overarching sentiment of “Holy shit, our president is bad.”

It’s telling, then, that one of the highest-profile examples of this phenomenon took place during Dave Chappelle’s SNL monologue the weekend immediately following Trump’s election. “America has done it; we’ve actually elected an internet troll as our president,” Chappelle said, parroting a well-wrought observation that had been made thousands of times leading up to the election. Even accounting for his comedy chops, it was a tepid and unoriginal joke that had every reason to fall flat. The crowd nonetheless laughed heartily, evidently looking for anything to latch their very palpable Trump resentment onto....

"Brussels has decided against decorating its iconic Manneken-Pis statue in a Michael Jackson costume as planned for the 10th anniversary of the US pop icon's death, officials said Friday."

"The decision was made in the wake of a new documentary, 'Leaving Neverland,' which since its release this year has revived claims the singer sexually abused children. Brussels' famous Manneken-Pis statue of a nude young boy has been cheekily urinating into a Baroque fountain for 400 years. He is dressed about 130 times a year in various outfits often donated by organisations or embassies to mark a special occasion or event, such as the Chinese new year or the start of football's World Cup."

Yahoo reports.



Well, at least the Belgians aren't clamoring to take down the statue taken down (which is the incipient practice in the United States). What can they do when the thing is such a landmark? How many tourists assemble at the foot of this little boy every day?

Manneken Pis (About this sound[ˌmɑnəkə(m) ˈpɪs], meaning "Little Pisser" in Dutch) is a landmark 61 cm (24 in) bronze sculpture in the centre of Brussels (Belgium), depicting a naked little boy urinating into a fountain's basin. It was designed by Hiëronymus Duquesnoy the Elder and put in place in 1618 or 1619. The current statue is a replica which dates from 1965. The original is kept in the Museum of the City of Brussels.[ Manneken Pis is the best-known symbol of the people of Brussels. It also embodies their sense of humour (called zwanze in the dialect of Brussels) and their independence of mind.

At that last link (to Wikipedia), there are several photos on the Mannekin Pis in costumes (and the explanation that the statue is dressed in costumes several times a week). I'll just pick one, the Dracula:



By the way, the Belgians have installed a female version of the Manneken Pis, the Jeanneke Pis, erected in 1987. Also in Belgium, Het Zinneke (Zinneke = bastard), a statue of a dog urinating. Why Belgians want to be associated with pissing, I'm not so sure. I guess once one thing is very famous, other things will refer to it. Or maybe I just need to understand more about zwanze:

Not easily defined, zwanze is characterised by mockery, self-deprecation, a wariness of power and an incredulous response to all types of authority, which on occasion is too forgiving of official blunders.

"Zwanze is a bit like gueuze (a Belgian beer) and grenadine,” remarks [the author Alain] Berenboom. “It is a combination of bitter beer and sweet syrup, two apparently incompatible products Belgians like to mix to make a drink called Mort subite [Sudden death], which is only fatal for cranky people... "

"His sexual needs were his sexual needs, coming from whatever childhood he has or whatever DNA he has."

Said Barbra Streisand, about Michael Jackson, when she was asked about the new documentary "Leaving Neverland" (Variety).

“You can say ‘molested,’ but those children, as you heard them say [later, as adults], they were thrilled to be there. They both married and they both have children, so it didn’t kill them.”

When asked if she’s angry with Jackson, she replies, “It’s a combination of feelings. I feel bad for the children. I feel bad for him. I blame, I guess, the parents, who would allow their children to sleep with him. Why would Michael need these little children dressed like him and in the shows and the dancing and the hats?”

She's getting a lot of criticism for that. I'm seeing (on Twitter) that people are saying she's defending pedophilia. She's at least empathizing with the predicament of the pedophile.

She also said something negative about #MeToo: "Unfortunately, it’s going to cause a lot of women not being hired because men are worried they’ll be attacked." There, she's empathizing with the right side, the women, but she's empathizing for the wrong reason.

Streisand hates Trump and she's pushing her new album "Walls" (get it?). She seems to be one of those people who feel sure they're on the right side and there's a danger to that. Confident in your goodness, you can get too comfortable displaying your empathy. You can make mistakes. It can be amusing to laugh at such people when they trip up. But I feel bad for her. Her needs are her needs, coming from whatever childhood she had or whatever DNA she has.

How Children Are Robbing Their Parents of Adulthood.

That's what I misread just now and — very interested — clicked on. But it was just that article I already blogged yesterday, "The Unstoppable Snowplow Parent/Helicopter parents are so 20th century. Snowplow parents keep their children’s futures obstacle-free — even if it means crossing ethical and legal boundaries" (NYT).

The article is re-titled as "How Parents Are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood/Today’s ‘snowplow parents’ keep their children’s futures obstacle-free — even when it means crossing ethical and legal boundaries," teased on the front page as "How Parents Are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood."

I don't need to read that again. But I am totally up for exposition of the concept that children are robbing their parents of adulthood. The root problem isn't the failure of children to be adults. It's that the actual adults aren't being adult.

ADDED: This subject has me thinking about the documentary "Leaving Neverland," which I finished watching yesterday. Michael Jackson used children in a twisted effort to keep himself in childhood. As a very rich adult and with no one near him who would stop him, he could buy all the toys and candy a real child might demand and throw tantrums about. Jackson would take the child shopping and encourage him to pile up the cart with everything the child wanted. At Neverland, there was a theater and it had the kind of lit-up glass case that commercial theaters have to entice kids to beg their parents to buy them one box of candy. But with Michael as your adult-kid friend, you just took all the candy you wanted.

How did Michael Jackson get away with the many years of sexual abuse he almost certainly engaged in? The kids' parents were involved, and they bought into this grown-up person's vision of childhood — childhood with no limits on making childish fantasy real. They thought their child was getting something great — better than the calmer, restricted childhood that is the ordinary child's lot in life. The parents could have removed their children from the sexual abuse at any point, but they didn't see it. My question here is: Why didn't they see the lavish candy-and-toys fantasy world itself as detrimental to their child?

"Paris Jackson was hospitalized Saturday after she attempted suicide -- and family sources tell us it's due in large to the fallout from 'Leaving Neverland.'"

"Law enforcement sources tell us police and EMS responded to Paris' LA home at 7:30 AM. We're told Michael Jackson's only daughter slit her wrists. Our sources say she was transported to a hospital and placed on 5150 hold. She's currently in stable condition.... The fallout from 'Leaving Neverland' has been severe.... Paris has had a hard time since her dad's death in 2009. She attempted suicide back in 2013 as well, and has been open about her struggles with depression in the past."

TMZ reports.

ADDED: "'F– you you f–ing liars,' the model and actress tweeted at [TMZ] just minutes after they published their report.... It was followed by another tweet from her: eight question marks and a scowling emoji." the Wrap reports.

"[Michael Jackson] nurtured relationships, including with the boys’ mothers. He spent hours on the phone with James and Wade, he would also call their moms, just to talk to them."

"Jackson also spent time at the Safechucks’ modest home in Simi Valley, Calif. He could have been anywhere in the world, Stephanie Safechuck said, but he chose to be with them. 'He was a son I started to take care for,' Stephanie Safechuck said. 'He would spend the night, I’d wash his clothes.' She said that she once told Jackson that she had prayed for her son’s success in getting into commercials, and that he went on to find success right away. In response, she said, Jackson told her that he had prayed, too. He had prayed for a friend, and then he found James."

From "'Leaving Neverland': Viewers React With Shock at Disturbing Accounts of Life With Michael Jackson" (NYT).

I've watched about half an hour of this 4-hour documentary. I don't know if I will keep going, but if you've watched some or all of this, talk to me about your reaction to the mothers. They are still, after all these years, lit up and glowing.

I'm experiencing them as I'm absorbing the college admissions scandal, which challenges me to understand parents who experience their own emotions through their child and re-envision bad as good when it is — in some twisted way — seen as for the good of the child.

I've often entertained the thought that parenthood elevates a person into altruism — a mundane and relatively easy form of altruism, but altruism nonetheless. You must and so you probably will subordinate your own desires and pleasures for the sake of another person.

But in the college admissions scandal — and, perhaps, in "Leaving Neverland" — parenthood drives you further away from ethical behavior. You prioritize getting things for your child, and you feel urgent and justified, and you lose sight of right and wrong.

I've been thinking about this problem in light of that question from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "Is it OK to still have children?" If I were a young woman today — looking at Lori Loughlin and Stephanie Safechuck — I might think what a terrible risk it is to become a mother.

"Silencing music by a dead person who committed crimes does nothing to stop those kinds of crimes from happening in the future."

"If we consistently threw out all music by people who once acted horribly, we’d have no John Lennon, no Beatles, no Miles Davis. Of course, the Beatles revolutionized rock and pop music, and Miles Davis revolutionized jazz. So we’d be left musically impoverished, just to make ourselves feel good."

Writes my son John (at his blog post, "Should we stop listening to Michael Jackson?"), adding, "And yes, I am that guy!," linking to an Onion piece, "Man Always Gets Little Rush Out Of Telling People John Lennon Beat Wife."

And it's not just music. Don't forget "Red-blooded Caravaggio killed love rival in bungled castration attempt." So, burn this:



In case you're wondering, that painting is "Mary Magdalene Cannot Believe Martha Failed to Provide a Fork."

"As a 19-year-old, her former professor concludes, Melania clearly had ambition to match her intelligence."

"If not she could have chosen a much easier academic path instead of one that demanded proficiency in engineering, statics and dynamics. 'She passed exams on construction engineering and statics; she managed to complete an experiment and defend her paper at the faculty,' Vogelnik told us. To write her paper, Melania had to understand the effects of pressure, visualize a structure, build a wooden model, take photographs of it, describe the experiment in a way that showed knowledge of urban architecture and put it all together in a book... But then, 'at the end of the first year she did not show up at the exam,' the professor recalls. 'She must have realized that it would take her six to seven more years of studies before she could start making good money as an architect.' Melania had decided to become a model, which is also a fiercely competitive field....."

From "Young Melania: From Model Student to Cover Girl/The first lady might have been a talented architect or designer, but modeling took her in a different direction" (The Daily Beast).

Also from the article, this quote from her old professor: "If only she visited us in Slovenia, people would treat her like a queen. It also says she's "the world’s most famous living Slovene," which made me wonder who are the famous dead Slovenes? There's a list, of course, at Wikipedia. Wikipedia is fantastic at lists like this — "List of Slovenes." The only ones I know are Peter Handke and (hmmm) Mickey Dolenz. And the Senators Tom Harkin and Amy Klobuchar. But none of them was dead at the time The Daily Beast proclaimed Melania the world’s most famous living Slovene.

Among the dead Slovenians is Frankie Yankovic:



Not more famous than Melania, I think. "Known as 'America's Polka King,' Yankovic was considered the premier artist to play in the Slovenian style during his long career. He is not related to fellow accordionist Weird Al Yankovic...."

Apparently, Weird Al is not of Slovenian descent. But Weird Al's parents decided that he should play the accordion because he had the same last name as Frankie Yankovic. I learned that from a list of 20 things about Weird Al (at Mental Floss), where I also learned that Michael Jackson was a big fan but Prince not only rejected getting parodied, he even tried to require Al not to look at him.

ADDED: Mickey Dolenz was born in Los Angeles, but his father George, an actor (the one on the right)...



... was born in the Slovene sector of Trieste, which was at the time in Austria-Hungary and is now in Italy.

The layers of abuse of the child actor Corey Feldman.

The Daily Mail reports:

The former child actor had claimed in October that he had given the names of sexual predators in Hollywood to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office in 1993 during their investigation into Michael Jackson's molestation charges.

But the sheriff's office previously denied the claims, saying they had no records of Feldman revealing such information, however they have now changed their tune and stated that an audio recording has been found in a container from the original Michael Jackson child abuse investigation.

I don't know what really happened, how much sexual abuse there may have been, but the abuse by the police seems clear. Why didn't they act on his complaints? (Did they only care about getting Michael Jackson? Why?) Their lying, saying they had no records, had to have been for a reason, for their advantage, some advantage they betrayed the public trust to take, self-interest they put above the abuse of children.

And why have the police now admitted they have the evidence? Because it is in their interest now?

Feldman, who is 46 years old now, began his acting career when he was 3 years old. The report to the sheriff's office happened 27 years ago, when he was 19. Imagine growing up within this confusion and deceit, then speaking and not being believed, and having to go forward into the years of adulthood, 27 years of darkness before finally you are taken seriously.

Corey Feldman went to the police in 1993, but "all they cared about was trying about to find something on Michael Jackson.”

But Jackson was innocent, the former child actor told Matt Lauer.

I told them, [Michael] is not that guy. And they said, maybe you don’t understand your friend. And I said, no, I know the difference between pedophiles and somebody that is not a pedophile because I have been molested. Here’s the names, go investigate. And let me push this forward, there are thousands of people in Hollywood that have the same information. Why is it all on me? Why is it, if I don’t release the names in the next two months, six months or a year, I’m the bad guy. I’m the victim here. I’m the one who has been abused. I’m the one who is trying to come forward and do something about it....

Lauer presses him to go to the police now, but "There’s a statute of limitations, Matt, in the state of California," so to go to the police would only expose himself to lawsuits and threats of violence. He's asking for lawyers and security people to step up and help him, and they he will "get this message done.

I vow I will release every name that I have any knowledge of, period. And nobody’s going to stop me this time, as long as people support this.

Feldman says "there are thousands of people out there" who know, and that you could look at the "teenage soda pop clubs" where the child actors went back then. He wouldn't name the place(s) — I think he's afraid of liability — but he says you can look back at the teen magazines of the time and find the name.

I wonder what connection, if any, this story has to the Kevin Spacey allegations discussed earlier today, here.

How does an ad like this happen?

So uh... #Dove – what’s happening here? pic.twitter.com/v0PzdtWTBc

— Chasity 👩🏾‍💻 (@chasityscooper) October 7, 2017

They must not have perceived how it looks.

WaPo:

Was Dove saying that inside every black woman is a smiling redheaded white woman? Was Dove invoking the centuries-old stereotype that black is dirty and white is pure? Or that black skin can or should be cleansed away?...

I doubt it!

The Dove brand sheepishly admitted that it had “missed the mark” with a not-so-vaguely racist advertisement that has made it the latest target of consumer rage.

I think that must be true. True and bad. But who could believe the alternative?

ADDED: I think the images in the tweet are screen shots and that to understand the idea that led to the ad, we should be looking at video. This gives some idea of the effect (which includes a third woman, with a intermediate skin tone after the white woman). I'm guessing that the idea was that transforming from one race to another was thought to show racial harmony, as clearly happens in the famous face-morphing sequence in the Michael Jackson video "Black or White":