By Warren Hinckle

Editor, argonatut360.com

It is alas a last twist of the knife in Michael Jackson’s tortured life and death that the man who will most profit by from the androgynous diva’s demise is his cultural and political nemesis, the Colorado right-wingnut Phil Anschutz.

The reclusive Anschutz is a deliberately low profile media baron – Forbes called him “a stealth media mogul” — who spends good money on an Everyready battery of lawyers to keep himself out of the spotlight that his cash cow Jackson so adored.

Anschutz is the honcho of AEG, the promotion company that fronted the late Mr. Jackson’s comeback tour and was on the hook upon his unexpected death for some $40 million in advance ticket returns – which Anschutz edged in half by craftily offering Jackson’s bereaved fans “souvenir” tickets to the concert they would never see.

Part of the Anschutz deal with Jackson was the intellectual property rights to the tour – which are now worth widely more with Jackson dead than any possible sum from the physically declining star attempting to do it alive in 40 venues – a grueling tour which the near- bankrupt Jackson who was doing it for the money reportedly begged Anshutz to give him a break on the number of appearances. No sale.

Now Anschutz stands to make mega millions off the film and video rights of the faltering Jackson’s gala rehearsals at Staples Center in Los Angeles – contraire to live concerts, there will be no bad moves a film you can edit.

How far to the cultural and political right is Anschutz, the promoter and now graveyard editor of Jackson’s grand finale? He stood stalwartly against everything Jackson represented, or would have politically stood for, if he had roused from his childish indulgences to stand up for anything.

Anschutz helped fund the repeal move against the Colorado statute giving rights to gays. He poured millions into a losing Christian flicks movie company that made family value-only movies. He had no lack of screens as he is the owner of the largest string of movie theaters in the country.

His Examiner newspapers spun from the decranited original Hearst San Francisco Examiner, which had fallen on hard times, were originally based on a wet dream of  many Examiners – he ambitiously trademarked 40 or 60 Examiners, the number was in  multiple of 20’s, throughout the country in a demented vision of throw- away tabs in journo drag fronting for the right wing of the National Chamber of Commerce’s agitprop. There are many sensible people in the Chamber but Anschutz’s buddies there do not sing in that choir.

There was a Baltimore Examiner, which folded through a combination of public disinterest and neighborhood lawsuits against the environmentally incorrect plastic-wrapped uninvited free rag cluttering doorways. Anschutz’s give away tabloid Washington. D.C Examiner has occasional UFO-people writing on its opinion  pages and has distinguished itself in the political culture of the Federal City as being more to the unreasonable right than the well-designed  broadsheet creationist daily of the Moonies the Washington Star, Anschutz is no stranger to hypocrisy in business, and can rightfully claim a religious exemption usually granted from that part of the Good Book by the extremist Protestant sects the religious Anschutz frequents. He owns the Millennium Dome in London which is losing money but according the British press the abstenious

Anschutz is hoping to recoup his losses by getting rights to a Super Casino. That would all be fair and square enough, but the fabulous irony of  uptight Phil Anschutz making mega-millions from the death of his arch cultural enemy Michael Jackson is as difficult to stomach as the bad stomach that killed Jackson.