Flattery will get you nowhere, Michael

I love this story. The other day, at some mammoth showbiz awards ceremony or other, Britney Spears invited Michael Jackson up on stage, remarking en passant that for her, he was "the artist of the millennium". When Mr Jackson got to the microphone, it became embarrassingly obvious that he was under the impression that he was being given some kind of trophy, or acclamation, as the Artist of the Millennium. He observed he was grateful with all his heart, when he was a little boy he could never have dreamt, etc, etc, until he was finally hauled off. In fact, all the organisers were trying to give him was a cake.

I find this quite a resonant story, and, funny as it is, the weirdness of the episode becomes apparent when you observe that Mr Jackson displayed no kind of scepticism or surprise on hearing that anyone, anywhere, might consider him "the Artist of the Millennium". His demeanour was not that of one about to say "Oh, don't be so ridiculous." Perhaps he had envisaged the awards committee lightly passing over Hildegard of Bingen, Bach, Beethoven and Wagner before unanimously deciding that the most deserving candidate was living among us. Anyway, I hope he enjoyed his cake.

The weird thing about this extremely funny story is that you just know that someone, somewhere, really would give Michael Jackson a trophy naming him the Artist of the Millennium, and no one would think it funny or remarkable at all. I suppose Britney Spears was just being polite in saying that – she seems a well-brought-up girl, and it's not her fault if her name sounds exactly like a terrible heavy-metal band from Birmingham, after all.

But yes, of course, most cultural life today really can't think of anyone more magisterial than Michael Jackson. Take a poll of people, and ask them who the greatest Briton ever was, or the greatest film, or the most important event in world history (these are recent examples), and a very significant number will feel no qualms that they can only reach for things which happened in the last five years – JK Rowling, 11 September, the movie of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Of course, this sort of inability to see beyond the foreground is not new. No doubt, if you'd asked the same question in 1820, the death of Princess Charlotte and the books of Maria Edgeworth would have loomed large. What I think is new is the evident failure of the cultural élite to regard these absurd homages with appropriate scepticism. Quite a lot of them actually seem to believe it.

One of the oddest aspects of the English and the American relationship is that both regard the other as prone to insufferable pomposity. On the American part, I think they often misread English dryness as superciliousness. From our point of view, the self-regard and grandeur of the American élite seems deplorable and absurd, and instantly invites that very English question, "Who does he think he is?"

The steadily mounting entourages; those interviews in which some starlet refers to herself in the third person throughout; the competitive bouts of ostentatious expenditure on Cristal champagne in terrible nightclubs on the Côte d'Azur – Europe has seen nothing like it since the court of the Sun King. A friend told me that they'd found themselves being introduced at a small, private party to one of these awesome cultural despots, and put out his hand; she looked at it, and inquired what the fuck she was supposed to do with that, exactly?

Pomposity, really, is the word, and at the heart of it is something which looks absurd and harmless, but in reality is a steady erosion of cultural life: the awards ceremony. Francis Bacon long ago gave the only plausible defence of gross flattery, that by praising qualities which princes in reality lacked, you might incite them to try a bit harder in that direction. There is no reasonable defence for going round telling people with large bank accounts and moderate talent that they are the Greatest Creative Genius of All Time. The second anyone starts to believe the proposition, it is bound to have a damaging effect. The recipient, sooner or later, finds it hard to maintain that vital sense of dissatisfaction with what he has done, the bitter struggle to outdo the past. An audience which actually believed it would hardly see any necessity to investigate anything else, and quickly lose any real standards of judgement.

Of course, it will not happen, because anyone intelligent will pay no attention to such sycophancy, but it is still a bit sad when a pleasing singer or a modestly pleasing novelist falls for it, and evidently starts thinking, "Well, no need to try so hard, then." When he's finished his consolatory cake, Mr Jackson ought to put Parsifal, or Sgt Pepper, or Winterreise on the hi-fi, and think a bit about the competition. It would be terribly good for him.

p.hensher@independent.co.uk