The truth about Michael Jackson

[JTD]

Well put. I agree 100%.

Arrested Development
The tragedy of Michael Jackson.
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Tuesday, June 14, 2005, at 3:35 PM PT

Jackson: Little big man

I've never believed Michael Jackson was a pedophile. To begin with, he doesn't fit the profile. Child abusers tend to do the same thing again and again. According to one study, the average molester of boys commits 280 crimes over a lifetime. Yet despite the lure of getting rich by making accusations against Jacko, only two alleged victims have ever come forward with detailed allegations.

What's more, those two accusations, separated by 10 years, don't conform to a pattern. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the accuser in the recent case—the cancer victim—alleged groping by Jackson. Jackson's previous accuser, whose family settled a civil suit in 1993 for $20 million, accused the singer of more extreme abuse, including oral sex.

But the main reason I never bought the prosecutor's depiction of Jackson as a premeditating sexual predator "grooming" his victims is that it doesn't ring true in psychological terms. Whether or not he has ever touched a boy inappropriately, Michael Jackson seems too emotionally stunted to act in any grown-up way, including a deviant sexual one. Naive, juvenile, and terribly damaged, he seems pathetically incapable not just of criminal intent, but of adult consciousness.

People tend to throw up hands at Michael Jackson's multifarious bizarreness. But is it really so strange? The boy was forced to work by a cruel and physically abusive father starting at the age of 7. (If he'd been sent into a factory or coal mine, instead of onstage, we'd have more compassion for him.) As a boy, he was denied what even most abused and underprivileged children have: school, friends, and play.

Instead, Michael was made into a performing sexualized freak, a boy whose soprano voice kindled passion in grown women. He was made to witness adult sexuality at an age when it can only have been terrifying and incomprehensible to him. By 10, he was performing in strip clubs and hiding under the covers in hotel rooms while his older brothers got it on with groupies. At 11—the age at which his psyche seems frozen—he was a superstar. "My childhood was completely taken away from me," he has said. Almost everything that seems freakish about him can be explained by his poignant, doomed effort to get his stolen childhood back.

To describe the world Michael Jackson has created around himself as a childhood fantasy isn't quite accurate. Thanks to wealth and celebrity, he has been able to live as a superannuated child. With the help of plastic surgery and dramatic affectation, he has made himself look and sound pre-pubescent. He amuses himself with fancy toys, fantastic pets, amusement park rides, and a personal magician.

What emerged at the trial wasn't the picture of a man playing with children in order to seduce them. It was the picture of a man playing with children because he sees himself as one of them. He and his friends in the "Apple Head Club" stayed up all night playing videogames, watching television, and eating popcorn. In the absence of parental authority, they would sometimes drink wine out of Coke cans, make crank calls, look at dirty magazines, and try to gross each other out (head-licking, anyone?). A child in his own mind, Jackson sees all of his behavior as completely innocent. It was a sleepover party, not a seduction or even the sublimation of one. Hence his sincere-sounding admission to Martin Bashir, the British filmmaker whose 2003 documentary Living With Michael Jackson initiated his recent troubles, that sleeping with young boys is loving, and not sexual. Jackson appears not to comprehend adult sexuality enough to get why people might divine a more sinister intent.

There is, of course, a literary precedent here. "I am Peter Pan," Jackson told Bashir. Even without his cosmetic remodeling as Mary Martin, this identification would be hard to miss. At the Neverland Ranch, as in the Darling nursery, the boys all sleep in the same room. Michael, like Peter, casts himself as father, big brother, and ring-leader. He takes his lost boys on romps and adventures. Girls are not welcome. One of the few exceptions was his sister, whom he calls "Tinkerbell." But as Jackson knows, Peter Pan is not entirely a happy story. The boys will return from Neverland and grow into adults. Peter cannot.

A more interesting comparison may be between Jackson and the author of that fantasy, J.M. Barrie. Like Jackson, Barrie suffered from a kind of arrested development, brought on by the death of his beloved older brother when he was 6. According to Andrew Birkin's book J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys: The Real Story Behind Peter Pan, Barrie's marriage remained unconsummated, while his deepest relationships were with the Llewelyn Davies brothers, the five boys he met in Kensington Gardens in London who formed the basis for the characters in Peter Pan. Barrie performed tricks for the children, played with them, more or less moved into their home, and fantasized, in print, about sharing his bed with them. But there is no evidence of any physical involvement. The best guess is that Barrie was celibate or asexual.

Today we find the idea of nonsexuality more bizarre than deviant sexuality. But in Michael Jackson's case, it seems more plausible than any other explanation. All of Jackson's oddities seem to be reactions to what he suffered as a child. Manhandled by strangers, he became a mask-wearing, gloved germophobe. Tyrannized and abused by his father, he turned hyperbolically gentle and generous to children. Terrified by adult sexuality, he froze in pre-adolescent immaturity.

"I haven't been betrayed or deceived by children," Jackson once said. "Adults have let me down." Kudos to 12 in Santa Barbara, Calif., who didn't.

[kevin]

That is how it seems to me. The article presents a good case.

[timNms]

Poor baby. So he grew up with an abusive parent and he was "forced" to perform on stage at an early age. There came a time in his life when he was old enough to make up his own mind, but he chose to stay in show business. Regardless of whether one is rich and famous or if one had been a factory worker, I still have no pity for anybody who blames their current situations on things that happened to them in the past. To me, that is a cop-out....seems to be the trend these days. Blame the parents for the mess YOU have made of your life.

There are lots of kids who have endured abuse by one or both parents, yet you don't see them having numerous plastic surgeries on their faces to make themselves look like something out of a horror movie. You also don't see them inviting young boys to sleep over with them and spend the night in their beds! Did Jackson do anything inappropriate with those boys? My opinion is yes he did. First of all, he invited them to sleep in HIS bed. Secondly, we have no idea how many boys have spent the night in his bed over the last ten to fifteen years. We also don't know how many of those boys' families he's paid off to keep their mouths shut. If he were truly innocent as some would like to believe, why did he settle the civil law suit ten years ago?

Personally, I don't feel sorry for the man. He's wealthy enough that he could get professional help with his mental issues, if things are/were as bad as he makes them out to be.

[Miss Mary]

I read that article and it certainly is a different angle, a compassionate one, to attempt a sincere understanding of MJ.

My very first thought after I read it was this:

Drew Barrymore did not have a conventional childhood either! She was an alcoholic at some sad young age, of what 11 or 13? Hanging out in clubs until 1 or 2 in the morning. She turned her life around. It can be done. She's just been one of my most favorite former child actresses and I've long admired her body of work, her sweet personality (it comes across loud and clear). Another is Macauley Culkin. MJ is just so odd, it's as if he doesn't fit in anywhere. Now that is sad. I'm not that uncaring towards the man, to feel bad for his raw deal.

Another example of a show biz family would be the Osmonds. That family was performing at very young ages. The parents were pretty strict from what I read. None of them turned out as bizarre as MJ did.

I don't know where I'm going with this reply...it's kinda all over the place isn't it? I really can't say for certain MJ abused kids, but somewhere along the line, he thought hanging out with children when he was long past the age of 21, was morally correct. Why didn't someone sit him down and say you can't keep doing this? That's what I want to know.....

Mary

[banshee]

Why didn't someone sit him down and say you can't keep doing this?

If my motivation is money and Jackson is my cash cow why would I dare shut down the cash cow?? I'm thinking those who surrounded him feared losing a job, therefore, instead of doing what was morally right they kept their mouths shut.

[Brent]

Oh Puh-leeze.

Jackson was as much a child molester as O.J. was a murderer.

AKA-He's guilty as sin

[JTD]

Oh Puh-leeze.

Jackson was as much a child molester as O.J. was a murderer.

AKA-He's guilty as sin

Bit biased, eh, there, Brent.

12 jurors in a very conservative jurisdiction looked at the evidence and acquitted him. Just because you're charged with something does not automatically make you guilty.

It really gets to me that you so automatically dismiss things without really providing back-up.

Just because we don't understand it doesn't make it criminal. I think that if you combine all of his behaviour such as dangling his child off the balcony, the names he has given to his children, who he identifies most with, his abusive family background, it all fits in with this psychological profile.

It's not actually a defence for molestation. It's an explanation for why he engages in the non-criminal behavior he does.

Look at famous people. The list of eccentrities is long. Howard Hughes with his excessive hand washing comes to mind.

[HurryKane]

I'll have to agree with Brent in that I'm convinced MJ is a pedophile. The starstruck jury in that case convicted the kid's mother for being foolish enough to let her son sleep in the same bed as a grown man, instead of convicting MJ for his actions. His entire life fits the pedo profile, right down to the choosing of similar-looking, vulnerable children with weak families and grooming them to become his victims. I read the grand jury testimony of the boy and believe it would be quite difficult for a child to make all of that up.

I am hopeful that MJ will stick by his plan to no longer have kids over to "slumber parties" or whatever it is he calls it.