The MJ Butter Chronicles: Fair sculpture plans scrapped

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"The People Speak" reads the NYT headline. No amount of Facebook protests and polls could stop the Iowa State Fair powers-that-be from bowing to more than 65,000 votes worth of pressure to withdraw plans to carve a butter sculpture of Michael Jackson.

"We started hearing concerns from the public that he wasn't an Iowan and didn't have a connection to the fair," the fair's marketing director told the paper.

No such concerns were raised about Tiger Woods or Harry Potter, previous honorees. And in truth, Ms. Chappell said, the King of Pop and his four brothers did perform at the fair in 1971. But apparently the link was too tenuous (or discomforting) to a majority of those who cast votes last week in the fair's admittedly "unscientific online poll."

The fair based its decision on an informal poll of its own on its website. The poll drew more than 100,000 votes, about 65 percent of which voted to nix the plans.